Wildlife tourism is growing, representing about 4% of the global tourism and travel sector and is estimated to reach 7.7% at the start of the next decade.
However, with the increasing demand for trips to exotic places to observe and interact with wild animals in their natural habitats, problems can arise if things are not done well. Several reports note tourists injured or killed on safaris for getting too close or provoking lions and elephants, conflicts with local communities due to less ethical behaviours, and the list goes on.
One of the risks of interactions between humans and wild animals is related to the food that the former give to the latter. In an article published in the journal Ecologial Solutions and Evidence, lecturer and researcher Shermin de Silva from the University of California, San Diego (United States of America), warns that conflicts can be exacerbated when humans feed wild animals.
Through almost two decades of data on interactions between tourists and Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) in Udawalawe National Park in southern Sri Lanka, de Silva and colleagues noticed that some of the animals congregated in specific locations near tourists to beg for food. The elephants, the researchers say, have not only habituated to human presence but also to the consumption of sugary foods, with cases already recorded of elephants that breached physical barriers to approach tourists more closely.
In 2021, a man died after being trampled by an elephant that broke part of the park’s fencing. There have also been cases of elephants killed by poachers, by road collisions, and by falling into ravines and pits.
In addition to increasing the likelihood of negative encounters, feeding elephants resulted in the ingestion of plastic packaging and wrappers, and the greater proximity raises the risk of disease transmission from humans to animals.
“Many people, especially foreign tourists, think that Asian elephants are domesticated and tame, like domestic animals,” says Shermin de Silva in a statement. “They do not realise that they are formidable wild animals and they attempt to approach too closely to take photographs or selfies, which can end badly for both parties,” she notes.
It is estimated that between 800 and 1,200 Asian elephants live in Udawalawe National Park, and this study found that 66 males, or between 9% and 15% of the local male population, were observed begging for food from visitors.
Wild animals habituated to receiving food from humans and that actively seek it out for this purpose “may become dangerous, resulting in injury or death of wildlife, people, or both,” the authors write in the article.
Wildlife tourism is an important economic vector in several countries and local communities, but researchers say that the increased risk of dangerous or fatal interactions undermines the potential benefits of this activity.
Experts consider that it is not possible to regulate adequately the feeding of elephants by tourists, so the park authorities should strictly ban the practice, for the safety of people and animals.
Even though they acknowledge that many people, when feeding wild animals, do so with good intentions, the costs are too high and should be mitigated as much as possible.
Shermin de Silva believes that the animals may even abandon their natural foraging behaviors, lose knowledge learned about natural food sources, and become overly dependent on humans.
