Wildlife tourism refers to encounters with wildlife that people intentionally seek out. We're not referring to instances in which you're traveling and just happened to see wildlife. In wildlife tourism, seeing wildlife is the goal. Wildlife tourism requires payment of money and the animals aren't those we'd see in our backyards or local parks. Tourism by definition entails a departure from what happens in everyday life. The goal in wildlife tourism is to watch whales or see rare birds, for instance. Wildlife tourism can also include what the anthropologist Jane Desmond refers to as extreme animal tourism. These involve very costly travel, often to bucket list destinations. These once in a lifetime trip set the bar for other encounters with wildlife. Examples of extreme tourism include travel to the Canadian tundra to see polar bears, or to the Galapagos to see the tortoise's blue-footed boobies and other species unique to the islands. It includes travel to Antarctica to walk in a colony of 10,000 penguins and it includes a photo safari to South Africa's Kruger National Park. Wildlife tourism can be categorized as consumptive as in hunting or fishing and non-consumptive as in photographing or simply watching the animals. Although all these activities involve travel to a destination for the purpose of encountering wildlife, we'll put the spotlight on non-consumptive tourism or the viewing of animals in the wild. To understand wildlife tourism, it will help to first understand something important about tourism in general. Tourism itself involves an ideological reframing of history, tradition, and place. For example, think about going to a tourist destination, let's say Paris. When we think about what it would be like to visit such places, we build our imaginings on ideas about what they're like. These might be based on previous experiences. When I asked you to think about going to Paris or anywhere else, your vision includes selective aspects of those places. One person's imagined trip to Paris might involve lots of time in museums and trying to stay away from crowded attractions. Another person envision seeing all the most famous sites starting with the Eiffel Tower. Yet another person focuses on food and wine. In each imagined trip, we selectively bring elements of the place and it's history as we know it. We bring in ideas about what the people are like. Those ideas are deeply influenced by culture. Before we've even thought about going to Paris, we've already learned things about Paris through movies, and television, and music, and school, and other sources. Culture has given us a large stock of knowledge that we use to make sense of our trip to Paris. Sociologists have referred to this stock of knowledge as virtual capital. This has nothing to do with Bitcoin. It has to do with the images, concepts, and experiences that a person would draw on during that trip to Paris. That's the ideological reframing I mentioned. Some aspects of the trip will meet those expectations, some will exceed them, and some won't measure up at all. If you can imagine a visitor from another planet going to Paris, never having known that Paris exists at all, you can see how having no virtual capital would make that experience very different from one you might have imagined for yourself. You would visit Paris armed with virtual capital, which would shape your experience significantly. Well, enough about Paris, back to wildlife. We encounter wildlife armed with virtual capital too. When we travel to encounter animals, say we go on a photo safari, our experiences influenced by information that we've acquired through education and representation of animals in Disney films, through nature documentaries, childhood stories, and other sources. Our virtual capital primes us for our encounters with wildlife while on our safari. The intriguing sociological questions about wildlife tourism have to do with the consequences of the experiences for human beings. Of course, there are questions about the consequences for wildlife too, but sociologically, we can ask, when people go on photo safari or to see polar bears, what are they seeking? What motivates their interest in seeing and perhaps interacting with wild animals? Can the experience measure up? There are two theories that can help us answer these questions. The first is the Biophilia Hypothesis. This idea comes from the work of the biologist, E. O. Wilson. The Biophilia Hypothesis suggests that human beings have an innate need to experience nature. Genetics and evolution have wired us to affiliate with animals, plants, and other forms of life, Wilson claims. In this line of thinking, we supposedly feel better and function better when we're exposed to the natural world. As modern life increasingly takes us indoors away from nature, we continue to find ways to experience it. This explains why people have plants in their homes and offices, for example, and why they enjoy walks in the park. For those with the means to engage in wildlife tourism, the restorative effects of the experience account for the motivation. A second explanation comes from what's called Attention Restoration Theory. This originated with the environmental psychologists, Rachel and Stephen Kaplan. They point out that people's lives require two kinds of attention. Direct attention requires concentration, effort and often involves uninteresting, but necessary tasks. We have to block out distractions while we concentrate on the task before us. This causes mental fatigue and frustration. In contrast, indirect attention or fascination requires no effort. It easily engages our concentration. The argument is that although human existence requires direct attention, we can't sustain it without fatigue. It's at the root of a lot of human error. We need ways to restore our effectiveness and recover from the effort of direct attention. Sleep is one way we can recover. It allows the brain to be restored so that we can return to direct attention. Another way to recover is to engage in activities that fascinate us and thus require no effort. Direct attention can get a rest. We could be fascinated by many things and encounters with wildlife are only one of them. In this line of thinking, wildlife tourism is a restorative experience that reduces the fatigue of direct attention. It takes people away from the day-to-day demands of direct attention and it requires little, if any, effort. Watching wildlife can restore mental well-being so that we can return to the direct attention our lives require. The takeaway here is that the Biophilia Hypothesis and Attention Restoration Theory are linked. They both explain why people seek out encounters with wildlife. Attention Restoration Theory tells us why people need sources of fascination in their lives and the Biophilia Hypothesis tells us why they seek out natural environments, in particular. Wildlife tourism is not so much an escape, is a different kind of experience. Finally, I want to mention two points. First, these are anthropocentric explanations. They don't attempt to account for the effects wildlife tourism has on animals, and second, not everyone can afford the restorative experience of wildlife tourism. It's a privilege. But anyone can watch a bird and it costs nothing to do so. They're all around us, inviting us to experience fascination and renewal.
