Play is a privilege in both humans and animals: how our recreation influences wildlife

Abstract

Nature‐based tourism nets roughly 8 billion annual travelers globally to all regions of Earth, with many visiting around 200,000 formally protected areas. Financially well‐off tourists pay for playful activities and effects on wildlife are potentially large and relatively uncertain. Our commentary makes 3 points. First, variation in resource privileges and associated benefits characterizes not only humans but other species. Among animals, well‐nurtured populations engage in more playful and leisurely activities than do those nutritionally impoverished. Privilege depends partially on birth sites, parents, and local conditions, but for humans recreation expands with monetary advantage. Second, nature‐based tourism has 2 generalizable effects on wildlife, each involving degree of habituation. Among non‐habituated populations, local site abandonment is frequent and modulated by seasonality, individuals' physiological states, and whether recreation is motorized or not. For habituated populations, tolerance emerges to increasing recreational exposure with some populations of species learning to rely on humans to shield as a buffer against possible predation. Third, desert bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis nelsoni) offer a robust example of the issues surrounding the effects of tourism on wildlife because of the geographically complicated relationship between recreational pursuit and wildlife on public lands of the western United States. While protected for decades, females have failed to habituate to different forms of recreation at certain sites. The result has been flight or site abandonment. Biodiversity protection at numerous scales has made strong gains but is still needed where progress is stymied by income disparities, privilege, and increasing recreation ventures.