Tourism and Animal Rights: More than Meets the Eye

Abstract

Is there a place for animal rights in tourism? This is the intriguing question raised by David Fennell in a recent theoretical article ‘Tourism and Animal Rights’ published in Tourism Recreation Research Volume 37(2), 2012. Based on his appraisal, the implications of applying animal rights ideology to tourism are clear-cut: the abolishment of most forms of animal use for leisure and entertainment, including hunting, fishing, and captive sites such as zoos and aquaria, which violate the inherent value of the animals, i.e., their right to be treated as ends-in-themselves, rather than as means to an end. Perhaps the only form of tourism that can be compatible with the rights' view, in Fennell's analysis, is ecotourism, which includes non-consumptive activities such as wildlife observation and photography. Viewing animals in their natural habitat – if conducted responsibly while prioritizing the well-being of the wildlife over commercial interests – can be regarded as a morally superior form of tourism, according to the animal rights theory. Nevertheless, this intuitive conclusion (i.e., the wilder the setting in which the tourist–wildlife encounter takes place, the better the rights and welfare of the animals are protected) faces considerable challenges that should be taken into consideration in this discussion. One of the prominent reservations regards the aforementioned perspective as naive at best, since it suffers from an unrealistic and overly-romantic view of the natural world (see Bostock 1993). This critical assessment is well represented in the words of Piscine Molitor ‘Pi’ Patel, the protagonist of Yann Martel's fantasy novel Life of Pi (2001), in an attempt to defend the morality of zoos (p. 20): Animals in the wild lead lives of compulsion and necessity within an unforgiving social hierarchy in an environment where the supply of fear is high and the supply of food low and where territory must constantly be defended and parasites forever endured. What is the meaning of freedom in such a constant? Animals in the wild are, in practice, free neither in space nor in time, nor in their personal relations...One might even argue that if an animal could choose with intelligence, it would opt for living in a zoo, since the major difference between a zoo and the wild is the absence of parasites and enemies and the abundance of food in the first, and their respective abundance and scarcity in the second. Pi concludes his argument with a rhetorical question directed at the reader: ‘Think about it yourself. Would you rather be put up at the “Ritz” with free room service and unlimited access to a doctor or be homeless without a soul to care for you?’ (p. 22). The studies of Shani and Pizam (2009) and Shani (2012) found that this reasoning had resonance with at least some visitors to animal-based attractions, who feel that captive settings offer some advantages to the exhibited wildlife, as they are free from predators, food concerns, and territorial struggles. This might seem (and rightly so) a patronizing human standpoint on animals, yet it does raise the question of whether in this day and age, wildlife in their natural habitats are truly better off than their counterparts in captive sites, especially due to the current global environmental crisis that has had some fatal effects on the world's wildlife population (resulting in the sharp increase in the number of threatened and endangered animal species). Relentless demographic and commercial forces have led to habitat destruction and modification, overexploitation of wildlife for various purposes (e.g., meat, medicine and craft), and pollution that derives from accelerated industrial growth (Shani and Pizam 2010). Under such inescapable conditions, the image of life in the wild as pastoral, noble and ‘free’ appears to certain critics simply as detached from the grave reality.