Is it ever OK to touch wildlife?
34 wanderlust.co.uk April 2020
EXPLORE OPINION
The Conscious
Traveller
The possibility of a wildlife encounter can entice travellers to journey across
continents, but how close should you get? Meera Dattani shares her thoughtsConfession. I’ve ridden an elephant.
I once swam with dolphins that weren’t
wild. I visited a cheetah ‘sanctuary’. And
as a naive backpacker trekking around
Thailand, I ended up at the country’s
notorious Tiger Temple, although I did
quickly realise the animalsweredrugged
and I refused to pose forphotographs.
I can’t say I’ve never
got it wrong, but knowledge is power- and now I feel armed to the hilt.
And yet, there are grey areas. While
riding elephants is almost universally
accepted as ‘not OK’, some might
say bathing and feeding them is fine.
Or that swimming with dolphins
in a captive facility is terrible, but
touching wild manta rays on
a snorkelling trip is fine. But those
seemingly palatable alternatives are
unnatural scenarios and animals can
become stressed from human touch.
If you’ve ever been to Madagascar,
you’ll have seen how widespread ‘interactive lemur parks’
are – more astonishing given there are sightings to be had
in the wild. But once people see pictures of tourists with
a lemur on their shoulder, they seek that same experience - sometimes, sadly, for the ’Gram. While some lemurs at
these establishments might be rescued (former pets or
abandoned animals), others may be wild-caught, to bulk
up numbers – and profits. Which is a no.
By definition, wildlife is, well, wild life. I recently
interviewed primatologist Dr Tara Clarke, a lecturer
at North Carolina State University’s Department of
Sociology and Anthropology, and while we talked about
lemurs, what she shared applies across the board:
“Lemurs are wild animals so behaviour can be
unpredictable and there’s the possibility of disease
transmission. Observing – not handling – lemurs on
educational tours would be better. Some animals are
psychologically traumatised too, so the best thing
travellers can do is avoid these places, not take or share
photos, and tell business owners how they feel.”
But it’s another story if creatures in the wild come to
you, for example, the grey whales of Baja California,
renownedfortheirfriendly nature, who approach boats
withseeminglygenuine curiosity. Or similarly, the whale
sharks around Nosy Be island,
Madagascar, whose hulking
quasi-ghostly frames glide around
you while you snorkel. While in
Cambodia, I visited the Wildlife
Release Station in the Cardamom
Mountains, which rehabilitates
tracked animals then returns them
to the wild. We observed bearcats,
pangolins and hornbills in their
enclosures, but always with guides
educating us about conservation.
Such wildlife encounters are often
the much-anticipated highlight of
our travels. I’ll cross continents
hoping to see sloths in Costa Rica, lemurs in Madagascar,
mountain gorillas in Uganda’s national parks, and badgers
in the wilds of central Sweden, but these days, I’m much
more careful how I go about it.
Last year, I visited Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary
in Sierra Leone, home to rescued orphaned baby chimps.
A sanctuary, by definition, is a place of protection, a safe
place, so while a lesser ‘sanctuary’ might allow interaction
for extra dollars, here, quite rightly, there’s no touching,
holding (or hugging) of baby chimps – no matter how
adorable. But we all need to spread the word that this is
thenormforwildlifeinteraction,nottheexception.Freelance travel journalist and co-editor of Adventure.com,
Meera is also an expert on solo travel and has co-authored
two Rough Guides. Read more @no_fixed_plansel st
uni ted
as ‘not OK’, some
might say bathing and
feeding them is ine