Compassionate Travel – A Guide To Animal-Friendly Holidays

The Compassionate Travel Guide aims to create greater awareness around the issues of unethical and damaging captive wildlife interactions in tourism. 

Dr Louise de Waal, part of Green Girls in Africa and an active member of our Cape Town chapter, spreads the word about Compassionate Travel through her #HandsOffOurWildlife campaign.

In this Q&A, Louise sheds a light on the issue of captive and wild animals involved in tourism and the role of the tourism industry can play to change it.

👉 Join Africa Travel Massive’s Compassionate Travel Discussion on 28 August, 2018 to share your voice on these issues.

What is Compassionate Travel?

Compassionate Travel is a guide to animal-friendly holidays – an initiative of the Born Free Foundation, Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries, and Wildlife SOS India.

The Guide is a response to the increased worldwide animal welfare concerns in the tourism industry, the desire to expose those activities that cause suffering and harm, change legislation to reduce exploitation, promote tourism experiences that help protect and conserve wild animals and their natural habitats, and encourage the flow of lasting benefits to local communities, i.e. a desire to champion compassionate travel.

According to the guide, compassionate travel means making careful choices and informed decisions about what we do on holiday.

It means being aware of our “animal footprint” and how our chosen holiday activities might affect the welfare and conservation of wildlife.

How was Compassionate Travel born?

Animals have long been considered as mere things, the property of people, with no legal status. However, there is a global movement that increasingly recognizes animals as sentient beings. Beings that have the capacity to experience both positive and negative emotions, including pain and distress.

In 1997, the concept of animal sentience was written into the basic law of the European Union, but their legal status remained firmly in the category of “things” or common goods. That changed when New Zealand amended their Animal Welfare Act in 2015, recognizing all animals as sentient beings, making it not only easier to prosecute people in animal cruelty cases, but also facilitate the banning of animal testing and research.

Many people want to be responsible but are confused as to what kind of activities involving captive and wild animals are acceptable, what the effects of captivity are on the health and well-being of these animals, and what the commercial demand for captive wildlife means for the survival of the species in the wild. This needed to be changed.

Is public awareness changing in terms of how we perceive animals?

This last decade has seen a real shift in public awareness of animal sentience. People are becoming more cognizant of animal suffering. This was especially evident from the fallout of the acclaimed documentary Blackfish released in 2013, which highlights the controversies and welfare issues around performing captive orcas in facilities like SeaWorld.

How has the tourist industry responded to this global movement on sentience?

This shift in attitude on the status of animals in society at large, requires the tourism industry to also adjust their position. The British Travel Association ABTA was the first to take positive action and published a series of Global Welfare Guidelines for Animals in Tourism in 2013.

The aim of these guidelines is to encourage good practice in animal protection and welfare by providing businesses with knowledge and guidance.

The Dutch tour operator association (ANVR) developed these ABTA Global Welfare Guidelines further and published an extended list of unacceptable practices. Practices that are widely perceived to cause significant animal welfare concerns and, in some cases, even safety risks to visitors and staff.

Some of the unacceptable activities recognized by the ANVR over and above the ABTA guidelines include:

• the use of wild animals as photographic props (including wild cats, great apes, reptiles, birds, spiders, scorpions and crustaceans);
• walking with lions and other wild cats;
• elephant riding and other activities that involve direct human-elephant contact;
• bird of prey displays and falconry centers using tethering.

Can you list three main points that the guide covers?

The guide explains the issues, i.e.:

• why certain animal/wildlife experiences are unethical and are a cause for concern in terms of animal welfare;
• how to shop responsibly for souvenirs on holiday;
• and how to reduce your animal footprint, i.e. what kind of wildlife activities to support while on holiday.

Some of the other big issues include the animal cruelty people are willing to partake in for the perfect wildlife selfie, elephant tourism, and captive cetaceans in dolphinaria.

How can other tourism professionals learn more and get involved?

Hands-on wildlife interactions is very much driven by a narcissistic desire to have that perfect wildlife selfie taken that can be shared on social media. The consequences of these wildlife selfies can be devastating for the animals concerned, with reports of some animals actually being killed in the process.

But the popularity of these unethical wildlife activities remains. Many so-called “sanctuaries” continue to justify their hands-on captive wildlife interactions through often plausible conservation messages. Messages that are not easy to verify by the visitor, who wants to believe in the good these facilities do for their animals.

It is time for us all to be more compassionate. To take joint responsibility for the welfare of our captive and wild animals. To reduce our animal footprint.

Compassionate Travel aims to change this false perception in tourism. The guide can be downloaded for FREE from Horizon Guides.

The goal is creating a more responsible tourism industry that doesn’t impact negatively on the welfare and conservation of wildlife in both their natural habitat as well as in captivity.

Connect with Louise and join the online discussion about Compassionate Travel (scheduled for 28 August, 2018).