Sentience, welfare, ethics and human entertainment
Donald M. Broom, University of Cambridge
It has sometimes been thought acceptable to watch gladiators fighting, as long as they are slaves, to laugh at shows involving physically deformed and mentally subnormal people, and to remove livelihoods and dwellings to make way for tourism developments as long as the people concerned are poor or black. There are various parallels when non-human animals are used for, or affected by, human entertainment activities. These issues raise questions about which individuals and communities have value and deserve respect. It has been written that God gave us dominion over the world but who are "us" and what should dominion mean? Is it right to focus greatly on humans when terms like health and welfare mean exactly the same for humans and other animals? Which humans and which other animals are sentient and to what extent does the answer matter? Developments in our understanding of brain function, our ability to scientifically assess animal welfare and our determination of sustainability will be mentioned in discussing some human entertainment activities.
Presencing Animal Welfare in Tourism
Tackling Absencing as a Cause of Unhealthy Relationships and Poor Mule Welfare in the International Mountain Tourism Industry
Glen Cousquer, University of Edinburgh
The international mountain tourism industry is literally carried on the back of the pack mule. The extent to which these beasts of burden are exploited, neglected and abused has, however, largely gone unnoticed. This has, in part, been because there have not been processes in place to counter the ways in which the industry absences itself from the mule and, in doing so, perpetuates exploitative relationships based on the abuse of power and a failure to turn to, meet and dialogue with the mule. This presentation introduces the twin concepts of absencing and presencing to explore how we can become more aware of the attitudes and intentions that inform these relationships and the welfare this gives rise to.
In adopting this focus, it becomes possible to see and appreciate the between and identify whether individuals turn to the other and engage in a spirit of I-Thou or whether they turn away, objectifying and exploiting the other as they engage in a spirit of I-It. The challenge for those responsible for the health and wellbeing of pack mules working in mountain tourism lies in recognising this turning and using this awareness to address exploitative practices. These insights have the potential to transform how we understand the question of how we should attend to the other, whether human or nonhuman, working in tourism. It raises important questions about how a growing awareness of our attitudinal stance can allow new norms to be defined that promote mutuality, reciprocity and dialogue as the basis of healthy relationships and welfare.
How the travel industry is managing animal welfare
Clare Jenkinson, Association of British Travel Agents
Clare will explore why animal welfare is an important issue in the tourism industry, the development of industry guidelines on animal welfare and how these guidelines are being implemented around the world.
Considering the impact of Wildlife Tourist Attractions
Tom Moorhouse, WildCRU
Wildlife Tourist Attractions (WTAs) were audited for their impacts on the conservation status and welfare of their subject animals. We scored these impacts for 24 types of WTA, visited by 3.6-6 million tourists a year, and compared our scores to tourists’ feedback on TripAdvisor. Six WTA types (impacting 1,500-13,000 individual animals) had net positive conservation/welfare impacts, but 14 (120,000-340,000 individuals) had negative conservation impacts and 18 (230,000-550,000 individuals) had negative welfare impacts. Despite these figures only 7.8% of all tourist feedback on these WTAs was negative due to conservation/welfare concerns. We demonstrated that WTAs have substantial negative effects that are unrecognised by the majority of tourists, suggesting an urgent need for tourist education and regulation of WTAs worldwide. As a follow up, we studied the potential for information campaigns to affect tourists' decision making, using a survey of Chinese and English speaking subjects. The respondents were able to discern beneficial from detrimental WTAs, and preferred beneficial WTAs, when primed to consider the likely impacts of WTAs on wildlife conservation and animal welfare, but that the effect of priming was smaller for Chinese respondents.
Elephants and Tourism – A pathway to an elephant-friendly future
Jan Schmidt-Burbach, World Animal Protection
World Animal Protection is raising public awareness globally and working together with the travel industry, governments and tourism venues to shift the use of wild animals in tourism away from exploitative practices towards more animal-friendly alternatives. One priority area of this campaign has been the worrying situation of elephants in tourism. This talk will outline the concerns by World Animal Protection, as identified through long-term, large scale research of elephant venues and tourism, which has documented ongoing suffering of over 3,000 elephants in tourism venues. This talk will also showcase a pathway that can lead to sustainable change, reducing suffering of animals, enabling ethical practices for tourists and travel companies, and support needs of local communities involved with elephants. Close to 200 travel companies have committed to stop supporting practices such as elephant shows and elephant rides in favour of replacing them with elephant-friendly alternatives. Some of these companies and World Animal Protection are working directly with elephant venues to change their practices. While ongoing and increased efforts are certainly needed, we are witnessing some positive developments that will help to eventually phase out conventional elephant entertainment and end the suffering of these endangered animals.
World Animal Protection is raising public awareness globally and working together with the travel industry, governments and tourism venues to shift the use of wild animals in tourism away from exploitative practices towards more animal-friendly alternatives. One priority area of this campaign has been the worrying situation of elephants in tourism. This talk will outline the concerns by World Animal Protection, as identified through long-term, large scale research of elephant venues and tourism, which has documented ongoing suffering of over 3,000 elephants in tourism venues. This talk will also showcase a pathway that can lead to sustainable change, reducing suffering of animals, enabling ethical practices for tourists and travel companies, and support needs of local communities involved with elephants. Close to 200 travel companies have committed to stop supporting practices such as elephant shows and elephant rides in favour of replacing them with elephant-friendly alternatives. Some of these companies and World Animal Protection are working directly with elephant venues to change their practices. While ongoing and increased efforts are certainly needed, we are witnessing some positive developments that will help to eventually phase out conventional elephant entertainment and end the suffering of these endangered animals.
Building Strategic Partnerships
Daniel Turner, Animondial
The travel industry has a role and responsibility to better protect the welfare of animals involved in tourism. Since 2004, I have been committed to ensuring travel industry professionals have the information and the tools required to safeguard animal welfare. In my former capacity as project lead on tourism policy at the Born Free Foundation, I adopted a pragmatic approach to travel industry engagement, delivering improved practice and longer-term solutions to the recurring problems. This focused on building capacity and developing standards, including the Travelife Animal Attraction Handbook (2008) and ABTA’s Global Welfare Guidance for Animals in Tourism (2013), as well as other documentation to help identify, measure and manage associated risk in animal tourism. These efforts, and those by others, have led to significant strides being made by the British and Dutch travel industries to acknowledge tourism’s impact on animals, establish guidelines and encourage best practice.
There is still so much to do of course, particularly to improve the implementation of standards, but this must be a collaborative effort by all stakeholders. It is vital to understand the roles, responsibilities and constraints of outbound and inbound tour operators, travel agents and trade associations, attraction providers, academia and NGOs, in order to define effective actions and achieving success. ANIMONDIAL, a new ‘animals in tourism’ consultancy, aims to do just that through building strategic partnerships that uphold scientific knowledge, encourage higher standards in practice and improve animal welfare across global tourism destinations. ANIMONDIAL looks forward to working with you to deliver these objectives.