Managing Wildlife-based Tourism: Edging Slowly Towards Sustainability?

Higham, James; Bejder, Lars

doi:10.2167/cit345.0

Cited by 29 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…Drawing on decades of detailed behavioral observations, this study showed a significant decline in dolphin abundance associated with vessel-based dolphin watching tourism involving only two tour operators. Discovery of this impact triggered government intervention leading to the revocation of one of the marine mammal watching tourism permits (Higham & Bejder, 2008).…”

Section: Use Levels and Impactsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Increased Use Levels, Effort, and Spatial Distribution of Tourists Swimming with Dwarf Minke Whales at the Great Barrier Reef

Curnock¹,

Birtles²,

Valentine³

2013

Tourism in Marine Environments

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A permitted tourism industry has developed at the Great Barrier Reef based on swimming with dwarf minke whales (Balaenoptera acutorostrata subsp.). Using sightings reported by tourism operators and vessel effort data, this study found a 91% increase in the number of whale encounters over six seasons (2003–2008) and a small number of encounter “hotspots” accounted for a substantial proportion of these encounters. Analysis of industry effort data revealed that a shift in effort among existing permitted operators was the most likely cause of the increase in whale encounters. Although the number of permitted operators has remained capped since permits were introduced in 2003, this study found substantial latent capacity in these permits. Further research is needed to identify social carrying capacity-related issues for high use areas targeted for minke whale encounters, and it is recommended that the number of permits not be increased while the potential for cumulative impacts of tourist interactions on whales remains unknown.

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Section: Use Levels and Impactsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Increased Use Levels, Effort, and Spatial Distribution of Tourists Swimming with Dwarf Minke Whales at the Great Barrier Reef

Curnock¹,

Birtles²,

Valentine³

2013

Tourism in Marine Environments

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“…As a consequence the number of operators was reduced to half by the Western Australian Government. Higham and Bejder (2008) contend that this was a milestone event in the management of wildlife tourism since it was a move from simple acceptance of the Precautionary Principle towards objective science. It also provides an excellent example of the progression towards LAC III in the Duffus Dearden model and the kinds of management interventions required at this point.…”

Section: Discovered That Duffus Andmentioning

confidence: 99%

Revisiting Duffus and Dearden’s wildlife tourism framework

Catlin¹,

Jones²,

Jones³

2011

Biological Conservation

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Wildlife tourism can be broadly viewed as any tourist activity that has wildlife as its focus of attraction. This can either be in the form of consumptive (i.e. hunting and fishing) or nonconsumptive (i.e. wildlife watching) activities and can be based on either captive or free ranging wildlife (Higginbottom 2004). Duffus and Dearden coined the term non-consumptive wildlife-oriented recreation (NCWOR). They focused their attention on the non-consumptive free ranging form: "a human recreational engagement with wildlife wherein the focal organism is not purposefully removed or permanently affected by the engagement" (Duffus and Dearden 1990 p215). For the purpose of this paper 'wildlife tourism' which focuses on non-consumptive uses of wildlife will be used in place of NCWOR since this is the more frequently employed term in the wider literature. Duffus and Dearden (1990) essentially hoped to demonstrate through their conceptual framework, that a multi-disciplinary approach is required by both managers and researchers in order to enhance wildlife conservation and the visitor experience appropriately. Until recently their theory has remained highly 3 respected, but gone largely untested. Given a number of recent developments in the literature of wildlife tourism and in tourism more generally it is pertinent to discuss Duffus and Dearden's (1990) wildlife tourism framework in light of these recent studies. Duffus and Dearden Wildlife Tourism TheoryDuffus and Dearden (1990) were the first to propose a conceptual framework for understanding the complexities of non-consumptive wildlife tourism (Figure 1). They brought together research from a range of different disciplines, including biology, recreation, tourism, animal behaviour, and wildlife management to create their model. Their work was conceived at a time when there was a transition in wildlife tourism management, from perspectives that focused on bag limits, to a multi-disciplinary approach attempting to understand and manage the complexities of wildlife tourism. Their framework identifies three major dimensions of wildlife tourism interaction, namely, the wildlife tourist; the focal species and its habitat; and the historical relationships between them. From this platform they then discuss the relationships between these components of wildlife tourism. Figure 1: Duffus and Dearden's wildlife tourism frameworkSource: (Duffus and Dearden 1990) Duffus and Dearden (1990) state that the popularity of a species for a tourism focus is largely dictated by the historical relationship between humans and that particular species. They contend that this demand for the physical or experiential consumption of a particular species is a direct result of prior human impact on the species and its environment. That is, tourists are drawn to species that are rare or uncommon, which is often a result of increased past or present negative anthropogenic pressures. On the other hand, the opposite is true for animals 4 that are regularly or readily seen, such as domestic pets and agr...

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“…The last estimate was that whale watching attracts approximately 13 million people in 119 different countries generating US$ 2.1 billion (O'Connor, Campbell, Cortez, & Knowles, 2009). Managers charged with ensuring the protection of cetaceans are concerned about both the short-term and long-term effects of these interactions, and are seeking to implement regulatory schemes (Higham & Bejder, 2008;Higham et al, 2009). The swim-with dolphin programs rely primarily on free-ranging spinner dolphins and their predictable daily behavior.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using Ostrom's common-pool resource theory to build toward an integrated ecosystem-based sustainable cetacean tourism system in Hawai`i

Heenehan

Basurto

Bejder

et al. 2014

Journal of Sustainable Tourism

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and Clyde Streets, Dunedin 9054, New Zealand This paper explores the suitability of community-based conservation measures to complement a proposed command-and-control approach for two multi-user bays with spinner dolphins in Hawai`i, USA, which have considerable dolphin watching tourist activities and human-dolphin interactions. The paper uses Ostrom's common-pool resource theory as an analytical lens, with an assessment of the attributes of the resource and the user(s) to explore questions of governance and sustainability. In Hawai`i, spinner dolphins move predictably from offshore overnight feeding grounds into shallow bays for daytime rest, interacting frequently with humans using these bays for tourism and other social, recreational, and subsistence purposes. To reduce the current negative interactions with dolphins, managers are seeking to implement a command-and-control approach, namely time-area closures. Our analysis indicates that viewing the bay as a resource with tourism as one of many human demands, instead of specifically focusing on dolphins, reflects an ecosystem-based approach and acknowledges complex management demands. We found that while unrealistic to expect community-based conservation to spontaneously emerge here, cultivating some of Ostrom's attributes among stakeholders might lead to a more productive set of institutional arrangements that would benefit the dolphin population, with the methodology used potentially leading to a global management model.

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Managing Wildlife-based Tourism: Edging Slowly Towards Sustainability?

Cited by 29 publications

References 29 publications

Increased Use Levels, Effort, and Spatial Distribution of Tourists Swimming with Dwarf Minke Whales at the Great Barrier Reef

Increased Use Levels, Effort, and Spatial Distribution of Tourists Swimming with Dwarf Minke Whales at the Great Barrier Reef

Revisiting Duffus and Dearden’s wildlife tourism framework

Using Ostrom's common-pool resource theory to build toward an integrated ecosystem-based sustainable cetacean tourism system in Hawai`i

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