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Growing Wildlife-Based Tourism Sustainably: A New Report and Q&A

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

While wildlife and biodiversity are increasingly threatened by habitat loss, poaching, and a lack of funding for protection, nature-based tourism is on the rise and could help provide solutions for these issues.
The publication Supporting Sustainable Livelihoods through Wildlife Tourism highlights successful wildlife tourism programs in seven countries in Africa and Asia that can be used as models to promote conservation and boost economies.
World Bank lead economist Richard Damania answers questions on the drivers, innovations and challenges for wildlife tourism, and why the World Bank Group and governments should support sustainable tourism strategies.

Wildlife tourism is a powerful tool countries can leverage to grow and diversify their economies while protecting their biodiversity and meeting several Sustainable Development Goals. It is also a way to engage tourists in wildlife conservation and inject money into local communities living closest to wildlife. Success stories and lessons learned from nature-based tourism are emerging from across the globe.

“Here is a way of squaring the circle: provide jobs and save the environment,” said World Bank lead economist Richard Damania, who has extensive experience in understanding the link between tourism and the economy . In 2016, travel and tourism contributed $7.6 trillion, or 10.2%, to total GDP, and the industry provided jobs to one in 10 people, according to the World Travel & Tourism Council .

While nature-based tourism, which includes wildlife tourism, has been expanding rapidly in the last decade or so due to increased demand and opportunities, wildlife and biodiversity are increasingly threatened by habitat loss, poaching, and a lack of funding for protection.

Which is why more than ever countries need to look to concrete examples of well-planned, sustainably-run tourism operations that have led to increased investments in protected areas and reserves, a reduction in poaching, an increase in the non-consumptive value of wildlife through viewing , and opportunities for rural communities to improve their livelihoods through tourism-related jobs, revenue-sharing arrangements, and co-management of natural resources.

A recently-released publication— Supporting Sustainable Livelihoods through Wildlife Tourism —developed by the World Bank Group and the Global Wildlife Program , funded by the Global Environment Facility , showcases sustainable wildlife tourism models that can be applied to developing countries, and offers solutions and case studies to bring insight into this sector as a mechanism for inclusive poverty reduction and global conservation.

The Global Wildlife Program spoke with Damania to learn more about the growth, challenges, and innovations in wildlife-based tourism.

Why should the World Bank support conservation endeavors, and how does wildlife tourism help support our mission?

Enlightened self-interest is one obvious reason why we need to promote wildlife tourism. It provides the most obvious way to reconcile the interests of nature with the imperative for development and growth. Tourism simultaneously creates jobs while, when done well, protects natural habitats.

Prudence and precaution are another reason why investments in nature-based tourism ought to be promoted. The science of “ planetary boundaries ” warns us that many fragile natural environments and ecosystems are reaching their limits and in some cases, the hypothesized safe boundaries have been crossed. Further damage will imply that we lose important ecosystem services such as watershed and soil protection with damaging consequences for development.

But, in my mind, perhaps the most important reason is humanity’s moral and ethical imperative as stewards of global ecosystems. Simply because humanity has the ability to destroy or convert ecosystems and drive species to extinction does not make it ethically justifiable. There needs to be an ethical balance and that is where ecotourism comes in. We need jobs and economic growth, but here is a way to get jobs and growth in ways that meet our moral and ethical obligation.

What have been the drivers behind a burgeoning nature-based/wildlife-based tourism sector?

I think there are two things that drive it: as habitats diminish there is more scarcity and their value goes up. Everyone wants to see the last remaining habitats of wild gorillas for instance, or the few remaining wild tigers in India. In sum scarcity confers economic value.

Another force driving demand is the internet and rising lifestyles—you can learn about animals and habitats you might not have known existed, and more people have the ability to visit them. So, you have supply diminishing on one hand, and demand rising on the other hand which creates an opportunity for economic progress together with conservation.

What is your advice to governments and others who are developing or expanding on a nature or wildlife-based tourism strategy?

Tourism benefits need to be shared better . There is a lack of balance with too many tourists in some places, and none elsewhere. Some destinations face gross overcrowding, such as South Africa’s Krueger National Park or the Masai Mara in Kenya where you have tourists looking at other tourists, instead of at lions. We need to be able to distribute the demand for tourists more equally. The Bank has a role to play in developing the right kind of tourism infrastructure.

Those living closest to nature and wildlife must also benefit . The local inhabitants that live in the national parks or at their periphery are usually extremely poor. Having tourism operations that can benefit them is extremely important for social corporate reasons, but also for sustainability reasons. If the benefits of tourism flow to the local communities, they will value the parks much more.

We also need to be mindful of wildlife corridors . We know that dispersion and migration are fundamental biological determinants of species survival. Closed systems where animals cannot move to breed are not sustainable in the long run. As we break off the corridors because of infrastructure and increasing human populations we are putting the ecosystems on life support.

There are some who believe we can manage these closed ecosystems, but it takes an immense amount of self assurance in science to suggest this with confidence, and it is unclear that one can manage ecosystems that we do not adequately understand. A measure of caution and humility is needed when we are stretching the bounds of what is known to science.

What are some of the innovative partnerships that are helping the wildlife-based tourism businesses in developing countries?

One very successful model that has combined wildlife conservation and management and community benefits and welfare is the Ruaha Carnivore Project in Tanzania, part of Oxford University’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unite ( WildCRU ). They use a payment for ecosystem services (PES) scheme and do all the right things.

Another example are the community conservancies in Namibia. The community manages the land for wildlife and there are a variety of profit sharing commercial tourism arrangements—although not everything always works fairly or perfectly. Incentives matter deeply and communities need to be guided and need technical assistance in setting up commercial arrangements.

The Bank needs to understand these better and find ways of scaling those up. The IFC has a very good role to play here as well.

To learn more and to explore numerous examples of community involvement in wildlife tourism from Botswana, India, Kenya, Malawi, Namibia, South Africa and Uganda, read the report Supporting Sustainable Livelihoods through Wildlife Tourism or find a one-page fact sheet here .

The Global Wildlife Program (GWP) is led by the World Bank and funded by a $131 million grant from the Global Environment Facility (GEF). The program is working with 19 countries across Africa and Asia to promote wildlife conservation and sustainable development by combatting illicit trafficking in wildlife, and investing in wildlife-based tourism.

Full Report: Supporting Sustainable Livelihoods through Wildlife Tourism
Fact Sheet on Key Messages
Report: Twenty Reasons Sustainable Tourism Counts for Development
Report: Women and Tourism: Designing for Inclusion
Blog: Africa can Benefit from Nature-based Tourism in a Sustainable Manner
Feature: Ramping up Nature-Based Tourism to Protect Biodiversity and Boost Livelihoods
Website: Global Wildlife Program
Website: Environment
Website: Competitiveness
Global Environment Facility

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A Year Without Travel

For Planet Earth, No Tourism Is a Curse and a Blessing

From the rise in poaching to the waning of noise pollution, travel’s shutdown is having profound effects. Which will remain, and which will vanish?

By Lisa W. Foderaro

For the planet, the year without tourists was a curse and a blessing.

With flights canceled, cruise ships mothballed and vacations largely scrapped, carbon emissions plummeted. Wildlife that usually kept a low profile amid a crush of tourists in vacation hot spots suddenly emerged. And a lack of cruise ships in places like Alaska meant that humpback whales could hear each other’s calls without the din of engines.

That’s the good news. On the flip side, the disappearance of travelers wreaked its own strange havoc, not only on those who make their living in the tourism industry, but on wildlife itself, especially in developing countries. Many governments pay for conservation and enforcement through fees associated with tourism. As that revenue dried up, budgets were cut, resulting in increased poaching and illegal fishing in some areas. Illicit logging rose too, presenting a double-whammy for the environment. Because trees absorb and store carbon, cutting them down not only hurt wildlife habitats, but contributed to climate change.

“We have seen many financial hits to the protection of nature,” said Joe Walston, executive vice president of global conservation at the Wildlife Conservation Society. “But even where that hasn’t happened, in a lot of places people haven’t been able to get into the field to do their jobs because of Covid.”

From the rise in rhino poaching in Botswana to the waning of noise pollution in Alaska, the lack of tourism has had a profound effect around the world. The question moving forward is which impacts will remain, and which will vanish, in the recovery.

A change in the air

While the pandemic’s impact on wildlife has varied widely from continent to continent, and country to country, its effect on air quality was felt more broadly.

In the United States, greenhouse gas emissions last year fell more than 10 percent , as state and local governments imposed lockdowns and people stayed home, according to a report in January by the Rhodium Group, a research and consulting firm.

The most dramatic results came from the transportation sector, which posted a 14.7 percent decrease. It’s impossible to tease out how much of that drop is from lost tourism versus business travel. And there is every expectation that as the pandemic loosens its grip, tourism will resume — likely with a vengeance.

Still, the pandemic helped push American emissions below 1990 levels for the first time. Globally, carbon dioxide emissions fell 7 percent , or 2.6 billion metric tons, according to new data from international climate researchers. In terms of output, that is about double the annual emissions of Japan.

“It’s a lot and it’s a little,” said Jason Smerdon, a climate scientist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory . “Historically, it’s a lot. It’s the largest single reduction percent-wise over the last 100 years. But when you think about the 7 percent in the context of what we need to do to mitigate climate change, it’s a little.”

In late 2019, the United Nations Environment Program cautioned that global greenhouse gases would need to drop 7.6 percent every year between 2020 and 2030. That would keep the world on its trajectory of meeting the temperature goals set under the Paris Agreement, the 2016 accord signed by nearly 200 nations.

“The 7 percent drop last year is on par with what we would need to do year after year,” Dr. Smerdon said. “Of course we wouldn’t want to do it the same way. A global pandemic and locking ourselves in our apartments is not the way to go about this.”

Interestingly, the drop in other types of air pollution during the pandemic muddied the climate picture. Industrial aerosols, made up of soot, sulfates, nitrates and mineral dust, reflect sunlight back into space, thus cooling the planet. While their reduction was good for respiratory health, it had the effect of offsetting some of the climate benefits of cascading carbon emissions.

For the climate activist Bill McKibben , one of the first to sound the alarm about global warming in his 1989 book, “The End of Nature,” the pandemic underscored that the climate crisis won’t be averted one plane ride or gallon of gas at a time.

“We’ve come through this pandemic year when our lives changed more than any of us imagined they ever would,” Mr. McKibben said during a Zoom webinar hosted in February by the nonprofit Green Mountain Club of Vermont.

“Everybody stopped flying; everybody stopped commuting,” he added. “Everybody just stayed at home. And emissions did go down, but they didn’t go down that much, maybe 10 percent with that incredible shift in our lifestyles. It means that most of the damage is located in the guts of our systems and we need to reach in and rip out the coal and gas and oil and stick in the efficiency, conservation and sun and wind.”

Wildlife regroups

Just as the impact of the pandemic on air quality is peppered with caveats, so too is its influence on wildlife.

Animals slithered, crawled and stomped out of hiding across the globe, sometimes in farcical fashion. Last spring, a herd of Great Orme Kashmiri goats was spotted ambling through empty streets in Llandudno, a coastal town in northern Wales. And hundreds of monkeys — normally fed by tourists — were involved in a disturbing brawl outside of Bangkok, apparently fighting over food scraps.

In meaningful ways, however, the pandemic revealed that wildlife will regroup if given the chance. In Thailand, where tourism plummeted after authorities banned international flights, leatherback turtles laid their eggs on the usually mobbed Phuket Beach. It was the first time nests were seen there in years, as the endangered sea turtles, the largest in the world, prefer to nest in seclusion.

Similarly, in Koh Samui, Thailand’s second largest island, hawksbill turtles took over beaches that in 2018 hosted nearly three million tourists. The hatchlings were documented emerging from their nests and furiously moving their flippers toward the sea.

For Petch Manopawitr, a marine conservation manager of the Wildlife Conservation Society Thailand, the sightings were proof that natural landscapes can recover quickly. “Both Ko Samui and Phuket have been overrun with tourists for so many years,” he said in a phone interview. “Many people had written off the turtles and thought they would not return. After Covid, there is talk about sustainability and how it needs to be embedded in tourism, and not just a niche market but all kinds of tourism.”

In addition to the sea turtles, elephants, leaf monkeys and dugongs (related to manatees) all made cameos in unlikely places in Thailand. “Dugongs are more visible because there is less boat traffic,” Mr. Manopawitr said. “The area that we were surprised to see dugongs was the eastern province of Bangkok. We didn’t know dugongs still existed there.”

He and other conservationists believe that countries in the cross hairs of international tourism need to mitigate the myriad effects on the natural world, from plastic pollution to trampled parks.

That message apparently reached the top levels of the Thai government. In September, the nation’s natural resources and environment minister, Varawut Silpa-archa, said he planned to shutter national parks in stages each year, from two to four months. The idea, he told Bloomberg News , is to set the stage so that “nature can rehabilitate itself.”

An increase in poaching

In other parts of Asia and across Africa, the disappearance of tourists has had nearly the opposite result. With safari tours scuttled and enforcement budgets decimated, poachers have plied their nefarious trade with impunity. At the same time, hungry villagers have streamed into protected areas to hunt and fish.

There were reports of increased poaching of leopards and tigers in India, an uptick in the smuggling of falcons in Pakistan, and a surge in trafficking of rhino horns in South Africa and Botswana.

Jim Sano, the World Wildlife Fund’s vice president for travel, tourism and conservation, said that in sub-Saharan Africa, the presence of tourists was a powerful deterrent. “It’s not only the game guards,” he said. “It’s the travelers wandering around with the guides that are omnipresent in these game areas. If the guides see poachers with automatic weapons, they report it.”

In the Republic of Congo, the Wildlife Conservation Society has noticed an increase in trapping and hunting in and around protected areas. Emma J. Stokes, regional director of the Central Africa program for the organization, said that in Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park, monkeys and forest antelopes were being targeted for bushmeat.

“It’s more expensive and difficult to get food during the pandemic and there is a lot of wildlife up there,” she said by phone. “We obviously want to deter people from hunting in the park, but we also have to understand what’s driving that because it’s more complex.”

The Society and the Congolese government jointly manage the park, which spans 1,544 square miles of lowland rainforest — larger than Rhode Island. Because of the virus, the government imposed a national lockdown, halting public transportation. But the organization was able to arrange rides to markets since the park is considered an essential service. “We have also kept all 300 of our park staff employed,” she added.

Largely absent: the whir of propellers, the hum of engines

While animals around the world were subject to rifles and snares during the pandemic, one thing was missing: noise. The whir of helicopters diminished as some air tours were suspended. And cruise ships from the Adriatic Sea to the Gulf of Mexico were largely absent. That meant marine mammals and fish had a break from the rumble of engines and propellers.

So did research scientists. Michelle Fournet is a marine ecologist who uses hydrophones (essentially aquatic microphones) to listen in on whales. Although the total number of cruise ships (a few hundred) pales in comparison to the total number of cargo ships (tens of thousands), Dr. Fournet says they have an outsize role in creating underwater racket. That is especially true in Alaska, a magnet for tourists in search of natural splendor.

“Cargo ships are trying to make the most efficient run from point A to point B and they are going across open ocean where any animal they encounter, they encounter for a matter of hours,” she said. “But when you think about the concentration of cruise ships along coastal areas, especially in southeast Alaska, you basically have five months of near-constant vessel noise. We have a population of whales listening to them all the time.”

Man-made noise during the pandemic dissipated in the waters near the capital of Juneau, as well as in Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve . Dr. Fournet, a postdoctoral research associate at Cornell University, observed a threefold decrease in ambient noise in Glacier Bay between 2019 and 2020. “That’s a really big drop in noise,” she said, “and all of that is associated with the cessation of these cruise ships.”

Covid-19 opened a window onto whale sounds in Juneau as well. Last July, Dr. Fournet, who also directs the Sound Science Research Collective , a marine conservation nonprofit, had her team lower a hydrophone in the North Pass, a popular whale-watching destination. “In previous years,” she said, “you wouldn’t have been able to hear anything — just boats. This year we heard whales producing feeding calls, whales producing contact calls. We heard sound types that I have never heard before.”

Farther south in Puget Sound, near Seattle, whale-watching tours were down 75 percent last year. Tour operators like Jeff Friedman, owner of Maya’s Legacy Whale Watching , insist that their presence on the water benefits whales since the captains make recreational boaters aware of whale activity and radio them to slow down. Whale-watching companies also donate to conservation groups and report sightings to researchers.

“During the pandemic, there was a huge increase in the number of recreational boats out there,” said Mr. Friedman, who is also president of the Pacific Whale Watch Association . “It was similar to R.V.s. People decided to buy an R.V. or a boat. The majority of the time, boaters are not aware that the whales are present unless we let them know.”

Two years ago, in a move to protect Puget Sound’s tiny population of Southern Resident killer whales, which number just 75, Washington’s Gov. Jay Inslee signed a law reducing boat speeds to 7 knots within a half nautical mile of the whales and increasing a buffer zone around them, among other things.

Many cheered the protections. But environmental activists like Catherine W. Kilduff, a senior attorney in the oceans program at the Center for Biological Diversity, believe they did not go far enough. She wants the respite from noise that whales enjoyed during the pandemic to continue.

“The best tourism is whale-watching from shore,” she said.

Looking Ahead

Debates like this are likely to continue as the world emerges from the pandemic and leisure travel resumes. Already, conservationists and business leaders are sharing their visions for a more sustainable future.

Ed Bastian, Delta Air Lines’ chief executive, last year laid out a plan to become carbon neutral by spending $1 billion over 10 years on an assortment of strategies. Only 2.5 percent of global carbon emissions are traced to aviation, but a 2019 study suggested that could triple by midcentury.

In the meantime, climate change activists are calling on the flying public to use their carbon budgets judiciously.

Tom L. Green, a senior climate policy adviser with the David Suzuki Foundation , an environmental organization in Canada, said tourists might consider booking a flight only once every few years, saving their carbon footprint (and money) for a special journey. “Instead of taking many short trips, we could occasionally go away for a month or more and really get to know a place,” he said.

For Mr. Walston of the Wildlife Conservation Society, tourists would be wise to put more effort into booking their next resort or cruise, looking at the operator’s commitment to sustainability.

“My hope is not that we stop traveling to some of these wonderful places, because they will continue to inspire us to conserve nature globally,” he said. “But I would encourage anyone to do their homework. Spend as much time choosing a tour group or guide as a restaurant. The important thing is to build back the kind of tourism that supports nature.”

Lisa W. Foderaro is a former reporter for The New York Times whose work has also appeared in National Geographic and Audubon Magazine.

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Can tourism be nature-positive?

Wildlife tourism provides essential income to support communities and conservation in many places in the Global South, but mismanaged tourism is also a major cause of nature loss. The tourism sector must reform to protect the unique places people travel to see, and every IUCN Member has a part to play in this transformation - write Cam Do and Olivia Schlaepfer of the Yale Tropical Resources Institute, an IUCN Member organisation.

Originally from Viet Nam, Cam Do graduated from Yale with a Bachelor’s in Global Affairs with Distinction and a Certificate in Data Science. At Yale, Cam was a member of the Dwight Hall Socially Responsible Investment Fund, the nation’s first undergraduate-run fund of its kind. She plans to pursue a career at the intersection of finance and corporate and environmental sustainability.

A Swiss-American senior at Yale University with a passion for conservation, Olivia Schlaepfer has worked with the IUCN WCPA Tourism and Protected Areas Specialist Group on post-Congress monitoring of Motion 130 on sustainable tourism since 2021. Following graduation from Yale with a Bachelor’s in Environmental Studies and a Certificate in Advanced Language Study in French in 2023, she plans on pursuing a Master’s in environmental communications and corporate responsibility.

Cape Town, South Africa

The COVID-19 pandemic drove the global tourism industry to a grinding halt. With would-be travelers stuck at home, many tourist destinations were left deserted. In the Global North, news articles and social media posts led us to believe that wildlife had flourished during our absence. The phrase ‘nature is healing’ became a popular refrain, following reports of decreased pollution and unanticipated animal sightings in urban areas.

But was nature really healing? In reality, the decline in global travel decimated essential income for many protected areas, where biodiversity and local communities need it most. The sudden drop in tourism led to job losses and food insecurity, forcing households to return to wildlife and natural resources to survive. Poaching surged in some places in the Global South.

Before the pandemic, wildlife tourism had been steadily increasing. A 2019 study found that it had grown to have a direct economic value of USD 120 billion annually, providing over USD 344 billion of wider economic benefits and supporting 21.8 million jobs worldwide. With more visitors came more funding; with greater funding, better protection. For example, in the Philippines, Kenya and Zambia, over half of funding for protected areas comes from visitors. In Botswana, it’s more than 80%.

Mismanaged wildlife tourism can do more harm than good. Long before the pandemic, construction of infrastructure for tourists was a major cause of habitat loss.

However, research also shows that mismanaged wildlife tourism can do more harm than good. Long before the pandemic, the construction of large and luxurious accommodation, roads and other infrastructure for tourists was a major cause of habitat fragmentation and loss in popular destinations. Single-use disposables worsened plastic pollution problems. Greenhouse gas emissions from travel intensified climate change, and demand for extravagant food, hot showers and uninterrupted battery charging over-exploited local energy resources in remote areas.

Cozumel, Mexico

Keenly aware of the need for the tourism industry to address its negative impacts while preserving its positive impacts, members of the IUCN WCPA Tourism and Protected Areas Specialist Group (TAPAS Group) set out to highlight the issue by bringing Motion 130 to the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Marseille. With insights from decades of research, IUCN Member Instituto de Ecología Aplicada (ECOLAP) emerged to sponsor the Motion. ECOLAP works with communities and wildlife reliant on ‘nature-based tourism’ and being based in Ecuador, home to the Galapagos Islands, is all too familiar with the opportunities and challenges tourism entails.

The Motion – now Resolution 130 - received overwhelming support from IUCN Members, who voted to invest more resources and further integrate tourism into the Union’s Programme. Work is ongoing to bring the Resolution to life through new ideas, projects and networks that help ensure nature-based tourism supports conservation and communities. But organisations like ECOLAP, the TAPAS Group and a handful of environmental NGOs cannot do this on their own. Every IUCN Member has a part to play, but ultimately individual tourists and tourism businesses must ensure the unique flora and fauna people travel to see are preserved.

We call on tourism businesses to join the Nature-positive Travel & Tourism Alliance, and demand that airlines and governments reinvest profits back into habitat conservation, communities and carbon mitigation.

Progress was made at last year’s UN Biodiversity Conference (COP15), when the World Travel & Tourism Council, the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, and numerous travel and tourism industry ‘heavyweights’ came together to make a pact to become guardians, rather than consumers, of nature. As signatories to the Nature-positive Travel & Tourism Alliance, almost 150 businesses have committed to give more importance to biodiversity and ecosystem health in their decision making. This pact helps guarantee that companies will strive to reduce the environmental footprint of tourism operations and value chains; increase their biodiversity impact monitoring; provide more support for Indigenous rights; and promote education for travelers, partners and communities about the need for conservation. It is a monumental step for the industry and an indication that the private sector can help reimagine nature-based tourism. We call on every tourism business to make the same commitment.

Machu Picchu, Peru

T ourists must step up too and make sustainable choices that minimise our individual footprint when travelling.

Individual tourists must step up too. Importantly, as tourists we must be cognisant of our choices and select companies and destinations that are sustainable, equipped to handle the experiences we seek, and able to contribute positively to nature and local communities. When travelling, we must be aware of our individual footprint and aim to minimise it. We must ask for opportunities for ‘voluntourism’ - in which tourists participate in voluntary work - and demand that airlines and governments reinvest profits back into habitat conservation, communities and carbon mitigation. Most of all, we must hold businesses and ourselves to higher standards of sustainable use, for example by maintaining appropriate viewing distances for wildlife; even if that means our vacations are a little less extravagant and our photographs a little ‘less wild'.

Today, the opportunities for sustainable tourism are rich and diverse. Well-managed it can share cultures, connect people with biodiversity, support local economies and provide vital funding for conservation, so long as we take care of the places we visit. Guided by Resolution 130, it’s the responsibility of us all - governments, businesses and individual visitors - to make sure that we do.

The authors would like to thank Dr Yu-Fai Leung, Dr Shane Feyers, Dr Kelly Bricker and Dr Anna Spenceley for their crucial support for Resolution 130 and its implementation.

Disclaimer Opinions expressed in posts featured on any Crossroads or other blogs and in related comments are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of IUCN or a consensus of its Member organisations.

IUCN moderates comments and reserves the right to remove posts that are deemed inappropriate, commercial in nature or unrelated to blog posts.

User Information User name: Sandra Nickel Roles:

Thank you for outlining these important steps to make tourism nature-positive. These are reminders we all need to hear.

Monitoring the resolution

User Information User name: Ron Mader Roles:

Very interesting, and good to see Resolution 130. That said, I don't quite get it. Can someone explain what the resolution calls for? For example, who and how will this resolution be monitored by the IUCN and others? 🌏 https://www.planeta.com/iucn2020-motion130

totally agree! Just happen…

User Information User name: Juan De Dios Morales Roles:

totally agree!

Just happen to be a very fine Line between carrying capacity, Tourism-based development and Market (Price for travelling) and democratization of Tourism. At the end, natural areas should be take care way more than a Urban monument of a City, but how to compete to that kind of cheaper that can also hold larger amount of people. Perhaps, then is when tourism should be redesigned and clients be able to pay higher prices. And, in that way find the correct income threshold.

Nature-Positive Tourism

User Information User name: Paul Rogers Roles:

Hi - a very nice article, although I'm a little surprised it didn't refer directly to the Nature-Positive report recently produced by the World Travel and Tourism Council and specifically the accompanying tool-box to enable companies of all sizes to develop nature-positive action plans? While I've heard some suggest the toolbox is too challenging for businesses to engage with, I'm not convinced this is case and think we need case studies and examples to showcase the successes and challenges...

Questions about the report

Interesting. Downloading the report now - https://action.wttc.org/vision-for-nature-positive-travel-and-tourism - and asking how this vision and toolbox will be used in a practical manner. I will be updating links on Planeta.

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Lion-watching in the Western Cape of South Africa.

The world needs wildlife tourism. But that won't work without wildlife

Habitat loss, pollution, climate change, over-exploitation and poaching are all threatening a lifeline for local communities

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W ildlife-based tourism is growing rapidly worldwide as the number of tourists continues to grow and as we, as travellers, seek out new and more enriching personal experiences with local cultures and wildlife. This is what inspired me to take six months unpaid leave from the grind of legal practice many years ago and backpack around South America with my little sister. Experiencing the natural beauty of places like the Amazon rainforest, Iguazú Falls and Machu Picchu and the local people fighting to protect them was life-changing.

The UN World Tourism Organisation estimates that 7% of world tourism relates to wildlife tourism, growing annually at about 3%, and much higher in some places, like our Unesco world heritage sites. A WWF report shows that 93% of all natural heritage sites support recreation and tourism and 91% of them provide jobs. In Belize, more than 50% of the population are said to be supported by income generated through reef-related tourism and fisheries.

I’ve just come back from the Northern Rangelands Trust in Kenya, where I saw amazing work with local communities to protect wildlife. The trust’s mix of funding includes almost 30% of revenue coming from tourism. It employs over 1,000 Kenyans. I spoke with local people who told me that the rhino and the elephant bring them security, healthcare and education, and no one must interfere with these animals. They are today the best protectors of the wildlife, working with local rangers. Their development is being achieved through conservation.

The result: in this region elephant poaching is down by 50%. No rhinos have been poached for four years. Tourism revenue is growing. And it is not the only example: wonderful examples of success exist in many other places, including in the Chitwan national park in Nepal, where again local people are front and centre.

But the very assets that underpin this wildlife-based tourism – the wildlife itself – are under severe threat. The threats come from a multitude of sources: habitat loss, pollution, infrastructure, climate change, over-exploitation and illegal trade, the most immediate threat to wildlife. If we lose the wildlife, we lose the wildlife-based tourism and the jobs that goes with it.

The surge in illegal wildlife trade witnessed in recent years is industrial in scale and is driven by transnational organised criminals. They target high-value wildlife without regard for the animals or people’s lives. They corrupt local officials, recruit and arm local poachers, plunder local wildlife, create insecurity and put local communities into a poverty spiral.

The international community is fighting back. There is a global collective effort underway to take on these criminals. But they are hard to beat. We cannot rely on law enforcement alone. We need the private sector, especially the transport, travel and tourism sectors, to join the fight. Many in the transport sector, especially airlines, have come on board largely thanks to HRH the Duke of Cambridge, through his Transport Task Force initiative. It is an inspired initiative that has seen the likes of the president of Emirates Airlines standing up for wildlife and even painting four of his planes with tigers and elephants . The tourism sector must join us as well, as must each one of us, as tourists.

It is true that, if poorly managed, tourism can have negative impacts on wildlife and the environment, as we have seen in the Galapagos, where there sheer volume of tourists poses a serious threat to the islands’ unique wildlife. But on a crowded planet of over 7 billion people, growing to over 9 billion, we need viable land use options that support wildlife, and wildlife-based tourism is a critical part of the mix in ensuring the survival of wildlife and in fighting wildlife crime.

John Scanlon visits the Northern Rangelands Trust in Kenya.

Well-managed wildlife-based tourism can offer an economic opportunity that supports wildlife. It must be responsibly managed and operators must engage with staff, customers and, most importantly, local people. Staff can be eyes and ears for the police, and customers can stop buying illegally or unsustainably sourced wildlife products. Engaging local people is the key, and that takes effort.

Evidence shows that when local people have a stake in it they will be the best protectors of wildlife , as is evident in the Northern Rangelands Trust.

Many wildlife destinations are remote from capitals, where there may be limited employment opportunities. This may open up opportunities for tourist operators. They can invest in local communities in a way that will benefit them, benefit wildlife and benefit their business.

Tourism operators have the power to lift local people out of poverty in a manner that will be mutually beneficial and self-sustaining. Or they can choose not to engage with local communities and to invest in a manner that sees all of the profits go offshore – in which case I would say they are no better than the poachers and the smugglers.

The reality is that the tourism sector is not a fringe player in the fight against illegal wildlife trade – it is right at the centre of it. Tourism operators are on the front line of this fight along with the customs and rangers and inspectors.

How operators engage with their staff, customers and local communities, and where they choose to invest, can change the trajectory of the survival of our wildlife. By doing the right thing tourism operators will not just be protecting wildlife. They will be investing in maintaining the core natural asset that underpins their own wildlife tourism venture.

But operators can’t do it alone. How we behave as individual tourists is ultimately what counts, and that is our choice. We have a personal responsibility to hold operators’ feet to the fire. We cannot support the bad ones, no matter how good the price. And let us never forget: wildlife and the local people living among it are to be not just enjoyed but respected by all of us.

Elephant conservation
Wildlife holidays

Global wildlife tourism generates five times more revenue than illegal wildlife trade annually

In 2018, wildlife tourism directly contributed $120.1bn to global GDP, versus the $23bn in revenue attributed to the illegal trade in wildlife, or 5.2 times more, according to new research from the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC). This includes viewing and experiencing animals in their natural habitat, which accounts for 4.4% of all direct tourism GDP last year and directly provided 9.1 million jobs worldwide.

Released on World Elephant Day, the research shows that the total economic contribution of wildlife tourism totals $343.6bn – equivalent to the entire economy of Hong Kong.

Asia-Pacific forms the largest regional market worth $53.3bn in direct GDP and responsible for 4.5 million jobs. In second place is Africa, where 3.6 million people are employed through wildlife tourism, which was worth $29.3bn last year.

Gloria Guevara, President & CEO, WTTC marked the release of this research, which falls on World Elephant Day, by saying, “Our message to tourism businesses, employees and visitors across the globe is that wildlife is worth far more alive than dead.

“Wildlife tourism is a rich segment of the industry, showing how our precious species can legitimately enrich tourism businesses without being harmed. In fact, the wildlife tourism market is so strong – worth five times more than the illegal trade – that it provides a strong incentive for communities to protect and display animals to the world rather than killing them for a one-off cash bonus. For years, we have professed the role and value of Travel & Tourism in alleviating poverty, and wildlife tourism is a key part of that.

“With more than 110 signatories to date, the WTTC’s Buenos Aires Declaration Against the Illegal Trade in Wildlife commits the travel industry to helping to eradicate the scourge of wildlife trafficking in the world, working together to responsibly inform the behaviour of one billion travellers across the world. This new research compounds the rationale behind our work, demonstrating the power and potential of travel to displace such illicit activity.”

Highlights from the report include: • Over one-third of all direct tourism GDP across Africa in 2018 attributed to wildlife (36.3%) • North America is the third largest wildlife tourism economy after Asia-Pacific and Africa, directly contributing $13.5 billion to GDP last year • 21.8 million jobs globally are supported by wildlife tourism – equivalent to the population of Sri Lanka • Case studies of wildlife tourism and its value in Brazil, Germany, China, India, Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania, Thailand, the UK and the USA.

This research is one piece in a series of comprehensive reports from WTTC analysing the impact of various travel segments, with the next focusing on medical tourism.

The collapse of tourism and its impact on wildlife tourism destinations

Journal of Tourism Futures

ISSN : 2055-5911

Article publication date: 15 June 2020

Issue publication date: 30 November 2021

To evaluate some of the current discussion about the possible impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on wildlife tourism destinations. There could be either positive and/or negative impacts and this viewpoint provides some reflection on what the future might hold for some if not many wildlife tourism destinations when the global tourism industry resumes.

Design/methodology/approach

A combination of tourism and environmental impact research studies and online resources are used to demonstrate the wildlife tourism-conservation nexus and provide a commentary regarding the impact of COVID-19 on the wildlife tourism system.

This paper provides a context and viewpoint on the possible implications of post COVID-19 reflection for wildlife tourism operations in the future.

Research limitations/implications

This viewpoint paper captures only a snapshot of rapidly emerging online perspectives but at the same time draws together relevant research that emphasises the importance of wildlife tourism.

Practical implications

This paper enables an appreciation of the implications of not reflecting on the way that tourism and the environment are currently/recently managed and funded. One possibility is that we could arrive at a different baseline that reflects degraded wildlife tourism conditions. If, in a post COVID-19 world, a new awareness of the vulnerability of species and the tourism upon which it is dependent arises, this could open the door for improved tourism management and conservation of species that are of high tourism value.

Social implications

This paper offers a synthesis of views that fosters understanding of the possibility of damage to wildlife tourism resources due to the social and economic impacts of COVID-19 on the global nature-based tourism sector.

Originality/value

The viewpoint proffered in this paper provides scope for a rapid evaluation of the current status of wildlife tourism, its vulnerability and the need to reflect on the industry in a post COVID-19 world.

Wildlife tourism
Conservation
Tourism management
Future scenarios

Newsome, D. (2021), "The collapse of tourism and its impact on wildlife tourism destinations", Journal of Tourism Futures , Vol. 7 No. 3, pp. 295-302. https://doi.org/10.1108/JTF-04-2020-0053

Emerald Publishing Limited

Published in Journal of Tourism Futures . Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this license may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

Wildlife tourism and COVID-19 in context

At the time of writing the COVID 19 pandemic has resulted in about 4.18 million confirmed infections and 283,877 deaths, the tourism industry is in shutdown, globally there is an estimated 75 million job losses in the general tourism and hospitality industry and the world is heading for economic recession ( World Travel and Tourism Council, 2020 ; Worldometer, 2020; World Economic Forum, 2020 ; UNWTO, 2020 ). By April 2020 the global travel and tourism industry as we know it had collapsed, contrasting with earlier predictions that globally, rapid growth in tourism would reach up 1.8 billion international visits by 2030 ( Holden, 2016 ; UNTWO, 2017). Of particular relevance to the content of this viewpoint has been the continuing growth in tourists visiting natural areas and the increased desire for wildlife tourism experiences ( Balmford et al. , 2009 ; Curtin and Kragh, 2014 ; Holden, 2016 ; Steven et al. , 2020 ). Alongside the growth in people wanting to visit protected areas, such as national parks, and see wild animals in their natural habitat there has been a steady growth in the number of tourism providers to service the demand. At this moment in time, and in virtually every country in the world, there are numerous lodges and hotels providing for wildlife tourism and thousands of local guides who deliver client services for tourists. Lodge owners, host country tourism networks and local communities also work in combination with major international wildlife tour operators, who service clients, largely sourced from the North America, the UK, Europe, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand ( Buckley, 2003 ; Curtin and Wilkes, 2005 ; Newsome et al. , 2013 ; Rockjumper, 2020 ; Naturetrek, 2020 ; Natural World Safaris, 2020 ).

Overall, there is substantial and vital reliance of the global nature and wildlife tourism industry on the integrity of the natural environment, a need for ready access to protected areas and the necessity of maintaining wildlife populations. In recent times there has been discussion about the degradation of tourism sites and protected areas caused by increasing congestion and inappropriate use ( Newsome and Hughes, 2018 ), over-tourism ( Ruck, 2012 ; Tourism-Review, 2016 ; Capocchi et al. , 2019 ) and the combined impacts of uncontrolled tourism access and development ( Newsome et al. , 2013 ; Schulze et al. , 2018 ). Furthermore, pressure on the integrity of the natural environment for tourism is further exacerbated by poor and ineffective protected area management, landscape level pressures such as increasing urbanisation and agricultural encroachment and climate change ( Leverington et al. , 2010 ; Newsome et al. , 2013 ; Watson et al. , 2014 ; BirdLife International, 2018 ; Rosenberg et al. , 2019 ; Trisos and Pigot, 2020 ).

The COVID 19 pandemic and its impact on tourism and visitation to protected areas has highlighted various issues that are being reported in the press, considered in online discussions and published in past and recent peer-reviewed literature. These articles raise various questions such as is the current lack of tourism a problem or positive for wildlife tourism destinations and when normality resumes, will we have a renewed understanding of the sustainability of wildlife tourism destinations? The objective of this viewpoint, therefore, is to evaluate some of the current discussion about the possible impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on wildlife tourism destinations. Consideration is given whether there are positive and/or negative impacts and some reflection on what the future might hold for some, if not many, wildlife tourism destinations when tourism activity resumes.

Impacts of the pandemic on wildlife tourism destinations

There is no doubt that there is evidence for some positive changes for the environment with the most noticeable effect, at the global level, being the reduction in greenhouse gas and air pollution signatures detectable from satellites ( BBC, 2020 ; Gardiner, 2020 ). In particular air quality has been seen to improve over China and Europe ( NASA, 2020 ; France24, 2020 ). In addition to this, it is highly likely that the pressures brought about due to over-tourism ( Simmonds et al. , 2018 ; Narrandes, 2019 ; Nature Seychelles, 2019 ) and the inappropriate use ( Newsome, 2014 ; Newsome and Hughes, 2018 ) of protected areas have also eased since international bans on travel have been applied (The Guardian, 2020a).

Moreover, advances have been made in raising awareness, at all levels, of the global bush meat trade which remains a significant pressure on the integrity of wildlife populations everywhere ( Aljazeera, 2020 ; Reuters , 2020a, 2020b ; The Guardian, 2020b ). Wittemyer (2011 , 2020 ) observes that the trade in wildlife has had a high environmental cost in Africa and this is likely to worsen alongside the COVID 19 pandemic due to loss of human life and the ensuing economic downturn.

A lot of iconic wildlife tourism experiences, already impacted and at risk of further damage by wildlife trafficking and bush meat consumption, could be put in danger because of the wider impacts of COVID 19 such as job losses in tourism and inadequate protected area management ( ACF, 2020 ; Weber et al. , 2020 ). For example, In Africa gorilla tourism programme managers, because of the need to minimise human contact with habituated apes, are re-evaluating and calling a temporary halt to any further tourism and may apply on-going restrictions when the resumption of normal ecotourism takes place in the future. The New York Post (2020) provides a general report on the known susceptibility of great apes to human diseases and the risk of gorillas contracting coronavirus from tourists. Weber et al. (2020) also note that, under normal tourism conditions, gorillas come into close contact with tourists despite strict wildlife tourism interaction regulations being in place. While gorilla tourism programmes have been temporarily discontinued in the Democratic Republic of Congo, others remain open in Uganda but there are no tourists because of widespread travel bans. Conservation groups, however, believe the real risk to the remaining critically endangered gorilla populations in Africa is likely to be due to increased poaching activities if funding for patrols declines or anti-poaching programmes are relaxed due to a lack of tourism brought about by COVID-19 (ACF, 2020).

While poaching, reduced environmental protection and ecological damage are going to be difficult problems to combat, we can hope that COVID 19 will bring conservation issues surrounding the integrity of wildlife tourism to the fore. There is an urgent need for major funding while critical policy implementation and expertise and staffing gaps remain in regard to pre-COVID 19 problems such as over-tourism, ensuring optimal protected area management effectiveness and tackling the illegal trade in wildlife ( Brown, 2017 ; Schulze et al. , 2018 ; Newsome et al. , 2019 ; Prakash et al. , 2019 ). At the same time, the current pandemic is also creating a situation where local communities are going to lose income because of a lack of tourism ( Lowe, 2019 ). Such a loss of employment especially for rangers is likely to create further difficulties in controlling a rise in poaching activity and protecting wildlife from human intrusion ( Losh, 2019 ; UNEP, 2019 ); Nashulai, 2020 ; Vyawahare, 2020 ).

Active, well managed, ecotourism programmes provide more opportunity for wildlife protection, inject money into local economies, and in many cases result in good conservation outcomes and positive local community development ( Buckley, 2003 ; Buckley et al. , 2012 ; Newsome and Hassell, 2014 ; Lowe, 2019 ; Bisby, 2020 ). The current lack of tourism at many wildlife tourism destinations thus presents as a problem and the longer travel restrictions are in place the more risk there is of habitat loss and poaching at many, and currently iconic wildlife, tourism destinations. ( Newsome, 2015 ; Brown, 2017 ; Schulze et al. , 2018 ; Maron, 2020 ). In addition, as wildlife tourism is inextricably linked to conservation efforts around the world the decline in, and postponement of, conservation actions and programmes is a further problem in regards to efforts to understand and protect the natural resources which ecotourism relies on ( Alberts, 2020 ; Foster, 2020 ; Dinneen, 2020 ).

Following on from the concerns raised above, the general consensus is that pandemics such as COVID-19 are closely linked with human population growth and environmental degradation ( Pimental et al. , 2007 ; Robbins, 2012 ; Wood, 2014 ; Ostfeld, 2017 ; The Guardian, 2020c). Reasons forwarded to explain the link between human activity and viral diseases include human encroachment into natural areas, deforestation, disruptions to natural ecological relationships, humans coming into close contact with disease carrying species, trafficking of wildlife, loss of biodiversity and compromised human health due to poverty. Wittemyer (2020) calls for strong global cooperation and action on the illegal trade in wildlife targeted for human consumption. Challender et al. (2020) suggest the need for stronger policies on regulating the trade in wildlife that consider public health issues associated with animal - human disease transmission.

Clearly, humanity has a lot of work to do when it comes to environmental management, but we should not underestimate the role that wildlife tourism and associated ecotourism activities can play in informing the world about wildlife and stimulating us to think about our relationship with nature. As previously stated the global nature-based tourism industry has and can lead to a constructive valuation of wildlife, deeper understanding of our place in the natural world, encourage positive environmental conservation efforts and provide employment for thousands of people aiding in poverty alleviation.

Wildlife tourism in a post-COVID-19 world

Both the positive and negative effects of wildlife tourism have been established for a long time ( Higginbottom et al. , 2001 and Green and Higginbottom, 2001 ). While negative pressures associated with tourism appear to be currently reduced at many wildlife tourism situations, most of the rapidly disseminated on-line reporting on the loss of tourism revenues is signalling “down the track” threats to wildlife because tourism funds a lot of conservation and helps to protect wildlife ( Buckley et al. , 2012 ; Rowe, 2020 ). However, at the same time, the COVID 19 pandemic is considered to be a watershed moment in global awareness about the trade in wildlife and especially in relation to the fate of endangered species such as pangolins ( Briggs, 2020 ). Eventual outcomes will depend on individual country situations and the motivation and lasting engagement of local communities. In terms of wildlife trafficking there is some hope in South East Asia ( Reuters , 2020a, 2020b ), but tourism operators and conservationists in Africa have reported that a longer-term recession of wildlife tourism will lead to poaching losses of valued wildlife ( Deliso, 2020 ; Paxton, 2020 ).

In re-iterating the reality mentioned above this viewpoint re-emphasises that wildlife tourism is not always run in a sustainable fashion ( Newsome, 2013 ; Prakash et al. , 2019 ). This is mostly due to one or more of the following situations: poor tourism management scenarios, over-tourism or inadequate protected area management. Despite this somewhat negative reality there are many examples where overall the impacts of wildlife tourism are positive and lend hope for environmental, social and economic sustainability ( Buckley, 2003 ; Newsome and Hassell, 2014 ; Bisby, 2020 ). The lack of wildlife tourism associated with the COVID 19 pandemic, will in all probability, compromise conservation work, increase the threat to wildlife populations and jeopardise the integrity of wildlife tourism programmes. The location, nature and extent of the aftermath will only become apparent in years to come. One possible positive outcome is that in those situations where tourism is currently poorly managed, especially in combination with over tourism, there is scope for environmental recovery and the possibility of re-assessing how a protected area and attendant wildlife tourism could be managed into the future.

Assuming there is no critical damage in the first-place, the resumption of tourism can end up with two possible end spectrum scenarios. At the negative end, tourism “players” and protected area managers do not reflect on previous conditions and the way that tourism and the environment were managed and things go on as before. Given this possibility, and particularly after the impact of COVID 19, we could end up with a new baseline of damaged conditions, further losses of habitat, and depleted populations of wildlife at many locations. The nature and quality of wildlife tourism that ensues from this situation is likely to be poorer, less satisfying and left in an even more vulnerable situation than it was before COVID 19.

At the positive end of the spectrum, post COVID 19, we reach a new awareness of the vulnerability of species and the tourism upon which it is dependent on for survival. This provides a realistic platform for increased funding for tourism management and conservation with the aim of protecting ecosystems vital for sustainable tourism and economic growth. From this scenario, a more secure future for wildlife, better quality ecotourism and greater visitor satisfaction can be realised.

The reality, however, is likely to span the full spectrum of different scenarios reflecting different local conditions. This could occur in the context of damage already done, according to losses and damage connected with an absence of tourism and how rapidly the wildlife tourism resumes and the specific philosophy and economic circumstances of tour operators. The ultimate scenario also depends on political support and funding, adequate financing of protected areas and the active role of NGO’s and the renewed confidence, or otherwise, of local communities. All of this raises the important question as to whether the COVID 19 pandemic will be a good or bad outcome for wildlife tourism.

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Corresponding author

About the author.

David Newsome is based at Department of Environmental and Conservation Sciences, Murdoch University College of Science, Health, Engineering, and Education, Murdoch, Australia.

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Wildlife is our world heritage.

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Why Wildlife?

Asia and the Pacific

Wildlife tourism refers to the observation and interaction with local animal and plant life in their natural habitats.

It encompasses segments such as eco-tourism, safari tours and mountain tourism among others. Wildlife watching tourism occurs mainly in protected areas. Nature, national parks and wildlife are considered the most important tourism assets for tourists travelling for instance to Africa.

A WWF report shows that 93% of all natural heritage sites support recreation and tourism and 91% of them provide jobs. For instance, in Belize, more than 50% of the population are said to be supported by income generated through reef-related tourism and fisheries.

Wildlife represents biodiversity, essential for our health and the well-being of the whole planet.

Wildlife represents biodiversity, essential for our health and the well-being of the whole planet. We live in an interconnected ecological system, where each macro- and microorganism, whether animal, plant or fish affects the other. Alteration of the natural habitat of any organism will trigger a dynamo effect, so non-equilibrium in the ecological system as a whole endangers the life cycle of many species. Around 40,000 species of animals, fungi and plants benefit humans. More than the third of our pharmaceuticals originate from wild plants

Wildlife remains a major concern for the international, regional and local communities. Among the multiple risks that menace wildlife are: diseases, climate change and actions of human nature, such as poaching and illegal trafficking. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List Index:

Amphibians are declining most rapidly in Latin America and the Caribbean, partly due to the chytrid fungal disease,
The greatest extinction risks for birds and mammals are found in South-Eastern Asia, mainly owing to the conversion of lowland forests.
7,000 species of animals and plants have been detected in illegal trade, and the list of species under international protection continues to grow.

Policy measures and higher sensitization of the general public and of specific stakeholders like media professionals appear as needed paths to ensure protection of wildlife and therefore of biodiversity. The engagement of printed, audiovisual and electronic and online media outlets in advocating wildlife as an essential component of biodiversity and as an added potential to tourism development by reporting professionally, accurately and comprehensively on this topic remains a major goal. The increased capacity of the media will enable a framework of action together with governments and civil society to improve wildlife and biodiversity protection.

A WWF report shows that 93% of all natural heritage sites support recreation and tourism and 91% of them provide jobs

Wildlife in the Agenda 2030

Besides been mentioned in the SDGs, wildlife and biodiversity have been placed at the core of most of the discussions of the Agenda 2030. The recent UN Biodiversity Conference (December 2016) was integrated by two Working Groups. Working Group I (WG I) addressed cooperation with other conventions and organizations; a global multilateral benefit-sharing mechanism under the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization; and socioeconomic considerations, liability and redress, risk assessment and risk management, and unintentional transboundary movement of living modified organisms (LMOs) under the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety.

The Working Group II (WG II) approved conference room papers (CRPs) on sustainable wildlife management, recommendations from the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII), and climate-related geo-engineering. WG II further addressed marine debris and underwater noise, marine spatial planning, biodiversity in cold-water areas and pollinators.

Reasons for wildlife protection and conservation

For those still not convinced about the potential of wildlife, lets remind some of the benefits:

Biodiversity: In nature, different species are connected through various food webs. The disappearance of one species could influence several others down the line.
Agriculture: Promoting wildlife conservation could help secure future food supplies.
Research: There may be many undiscovered plants and animals in the wild. 50 percent of the drugs available in the United States were originally developed from microbial organisms, plants, and animals.
Economics of Eco-Services: ecosystem activities have an effect on the quantity and quality of fresh water accessible to humans.
Ecotourism: enjoying African ecosystems has been a tremendous stimulus for economies within Africa.
Environmental Indicators: various animals can serve as indicators for other environmental problems is one of the rarely discussed benefits of wildlife conservation. The loss of peregrine falcons and bald eagles was one of the factors that alerted scientists to the toxicity of DDT, unnoticed for longer in a less diverse ecosystem.
Education: Studying animals and their habitats can be a valuable learning experience for students of all ages.
Psychological Benefits: Ecotourists experience a tremendous sense of wonder, contentment, and fulfillment from their wildlife encounters.

Challenges in the wildlife global cause

Trafficking in wildlife and their parts is a criminal international trade worth an estimated $20 billion a year
Several iconic species —including elephants, rhinos, and tigers, as well as many lesser known species — toward the precipice of extinction
Examples: The loss of African elephants: 100,000 over the past three years (96 elephants a day, with only 400,000 remaining in the wild across all of Africa).
Fewer than 30,000 wild rhinos survive.
A mere 3,200 wild tigers survive in the forests of Asia, including only 1,000 breeding females.

Areas of work , three central goals:

Stopping the killing;
Stopping the trafficking; and
Stopping the demand

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Wildlife Tourism provides the conservation news of wildlife, primates and culture in the world.

World Wildlife Fund and partners secure protection for critical Sumatran rain forest

Washington, DC – Tuesday, Aug 11: One of the last places on Earth Where Sumatran elephants, tigers and orangutans coexist in the wild have received long-term protection.,The Indonesian Ministry of Forestry approved a conservation concession – a lease of the land – covering 100,000 acres of rain forest in Sumatra, Indonesia.

Through an ambitious project combining innovative financing model Approaches With traditional conservation, World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Frankfurt Zoological Society (FZS) and The Orangutan Project (TOP) will join forces to Local Communities With Actively manage the 100,000 acres of former forest logging, Known as Bukit Tigapuluh (Known as Thirty Hills), to protect rather than exploit the land’s native resources.

The joint initiative in Thirty Hills Ensures That some of the last unprotected lowland tropical forest in Central Sumatra is formally zoned for restoration rather than clearing, conservation groups and Provides the 60-year license to manage the area. The project Effectively expands the protected forests of Bukit Tigapuluh National Park by more than 25 percent and encompasses an natural essential habitat for elephants and orangutans

The multi-year effort to protect Thirty Hills’ extraordinary forests and biodiversity Highlights The Importance of partnerships for conservation success and persistence in challenging environments. WWF-Indonesia and Michelin are partnering in Thirty Hills on sustainable rubber production and Reducing human-elephant conflict on Michelin rubber plantation. FZS With Local Communities is working to enlist them as partners, and one of the early champions of the project, the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, you have provided funding and advocacy support to WWF since 2010 and Its partners.

“That I am honored to my Foundation was part of esta effort to protect Thirty Hills for the future. This incredible place-where elephants, tigers and orangutans coexist in the wild-is one of the MOST Also Threatened. Our work to protect esta area is an example of what can be Accomplished When concerned Organizations, Governments and Individuals work together to create a future Where Both nature and people can thrive, “Said actor, environmentalist and WWF board member Leonardo DiCaprio. “To protect esta landscape, WWF and Its partners Had to think big, and think differently. We are working together to Ensure the protection of an extraordinary place and create a better future for the Local Communities of the Bukit Tigapuluh landscape. This project Serves as a model for innovative conservation projects around the globe.”

“We need to Develop solutions at a speed and scale That can make a difference. The Thirty Hills project fits the bill,” Said Carter Roberts, president and CEO of World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in the United States. “This effort leads us and our partners into new territory, testing business-focused solutions to a problem-driven markets. It’s not without Risks, but we need this kind of innovation to save places like Bukit Tigapuluh That Surely we will lose without trying something new.”

Thirty Hills is the site of the only successful program to reintroduce Sumatran orangutans, rescued from the illegal pet trade, back into the wild; FZS, TOP and partners Have released 160 orangutans. Also Thirty Hills is home to around 30 120 Sumatran tigers and Sumatran elephants, Both critically endangered.

To Achieve esta milestone conservation, WWF established a commercial company to oversee the “ecosystem restoration concession” with the partners and will look for ways to support wildlife-generate revenue to support Protecting the forest, Including selling rattan, tapping shade-grown “jungle rubber “and harvesting medicinal plants in the forest.

Sumatra has the highest rate of deforestation on the planet, and has approximately 130,000 square kilometers of remaining habitat for wildlife, only one-third of Which has some form of protection from development and logging. Since 1985, Sumatra has lost At least half of Its forest cover, and species like elephants, tigers and orangutans are getting squeezed into shrinking islands of forests in a sea of palm oil and pulp and paper plantations. For more information visit their “website”

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Animals Around The Globe (US)

Wildlife Conservation Success Stories in North America

Posted: March 6, 2024 | Last updated: March 6, 2024

The 21st century has seen its fair share of challenges and triumphs regarding wildlife conservation efforts in North America . While anyone can quickly feel overwhelmed by the decline of many species or the threat of extinction, North American governments and organizations have worked tirelessly to reverse the decline of endangered creatures on the continent.

With dedicated efforts, cooperation, decisive investments, and innovative conservation practices, North America has successfully brought multiple creatures back from near extinction and restored the balance of ecosystems.

This article is all about wildlife success stories in North America.

In the mid-20th century, the bald eagle range drastically plummeted, with only 500 creatures soaring across North America in the 1960s. The widespread use of dangerous pesticides, chemicals, and DDT contaminated the food chain, thinning the shells of bald eagles’ eggs and killing their young.

The North American government soon recognized the situation’s gravity and took prompt action to protect the bald eagles. In 1967, the government listed the bald eagle as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. Legal protection helped rebound the number of bald eagles to over 14,000 today.

<p>The swift fox in North America was highly susceptible to historic predator protection measures and, thus, nearly extinct by the mid-20th century. </p> <p>The Fish and Wildlife Service in the U.S. determined the need for warranted protection of these creatures in 1994. However, they were listed as a ‘candidate’ species, with other high-priority creatures being on the endangered species list. Therefore, the states within the Swift Fox’s historic range were prompted to join hands and form the Swift Fox Conversation Team.</p> <p>The team launched successful reintroduction campaigns, protected grassland habitats, and researched swift fox ecology and effective management practices. These conservation efforts across the Great Plains have stabilized the swift fox population, so the government no longer needs to enlist them in the Endangered Species Act.</p>

The swift fox in North America was highly susceptible to historic predator protection measures and, thus, nearly extinct by the mid-20th century.

The Fish and Wildlife Service in the U.S. determined the need for warranted protection of these creatures in 1994. However, they were listed as a ‘candidate’ species, with other high-priority creatures being on the endangered species list. Therefore, the states within the Swift Fox’s historic range were prompted to join hands and form the Swift Fox Conversation Team.

The team launched successful reintroduction campaigns, protected grassland habitats, and researched swift fox ecology and effective management practices. These conservation efforts across the Great Plains have stabilized the swift fox population, so the government no longer needs to enlist them in the Endangered Species Act.

<p>Due to poisoning and trapping by government agents, farmers, and ranchers, the number of gray wolves plummeted to a few hundred by the mid-20th century.</p> <p>Because of the protections offered by the Endangered Species Act, over 6,000 gray wolves inhabit the lower 48 North American states. Gray wolf restoration has resulted from habitat restoration, public education, and the introduction of wolves to various regions.</p>

Due to poisoning and trapping by government agents, farmers, and ranchers, the number of gray wolves plummeted to a few hundred by the mid-20th century.

Because of the protections offered by the Endangered Species Act, over 6,000 gray wolves inhabit the lower 48 North American states. Gray wolf restoration has resulted from habitat restoration, public education, and the introduction of wolves to various regions.

<p>This article discusses 20 different endangered species in America. Each species has an important role in the ecosystem and their conservation is of utmost importance to maintain ecological balance. </p> <p>The magnificent California condor has the largest wingspan of any North American Bird, reaching up to 9.8 feet. Unfortunately, this species is critically endangered, and conservation efforts are working hard to bring them back from the brink of extinction. However, they can still be found in parts of California, Arizona, Utah, and Baja California in Mexico. </p>

California Condor

The giant land bird in North America, the California condor, was about to become extinct by the late 20th century because of lead poisoning, poaching, and habitat destruction.

In 1987, the Fish and Wildlife Service in the U.S. made a bold but risky decision to reverse the decline of California condors. All 27 remaining species were captured in the wild, and efforts were focused on breeding the birds at the Los Angeles Zoo and San Diego Wild Animal Park.

Breeding efforts turned out to be successful, and thus, in 1991, the condor recovery program started releasing the creatures back into their natural habitats. Since then, the population of these birds has grown, with the number increasing to 1,000 in 2019.

Grizzly Bear

Within the lower 48 states, the population of grizzly bears reduced to only 2% of their former range because of habitat conversion, excessive hunting, and fragmented habitat. In 1975, these creatures were listed under the Endangered Species Act and, thus, brought under federal management. That year, fewer than 250 bears inhabited the Yellowstone area.

Since then, the combined efforts of conservation organizations, state and federal agencies, and citizens increased the number of animals to over 700. Approximately 1,400 to 1,800 grizzly bears inhabit the lower 48 states.

Peregrine Falcon

A 1964 survey reported that peregrine falcons didn’t inhabit even a single cliff in the east of America. Egg and nestling collection, DDT use, and intentional shooting ensured that around 10% to 20% of the historical population remained alive by 1970.

The protection practices for peregrine falcons under the Endangered Species Act included captive breeding, protection from humans, and enhancing critical breeding and wintering habitat. Thanks to these practices, the number of peregrines increased to about 3,000 in North America.

<p>Historically, the Licking River in Kentucky supported approximately 63 species of freshwater mussels. However, eight of these freshwater mussel species disappeared from the river because of stream degradation by dams and agricultural runoff.</p> <p>Thanks to the conservation efforts, mainly captive breeding and reintroduction, six extirpated mussel species returned to the river, restoring them to 96% of historical mussel diversity in North America.</p>

Licking River Mussels

Historically, the Licking River in Kentucky supported approximately 63 species of freshwater mussels. However, eight of these freshwater mussel species disappeared from the river because of stream degradation by dams and agricultural runoff.

Thanks to the conservation efforts, mainly captive breeding and reintroduction, six extirpated mussel species returned to the river, restoring them to 96% of historical mussel diversity in North America.

The Island Fox

A small mammal, the island fox inhabits the Channel Islands nestled off the coast of Southern California. In the late 1900s, it was reported that the population of the island fox decreased up to 90%. On Santa Catalina, they became victims of a deadly virus spread by an invading raccoon. On the other three islands, golden eagles preyed on them mercilessly. In 2004, the United States government officially declared the island fox endangered.

Various captive breeding programs were organized, and golden eagles were relocated to northern California to restore the island fox population. Their numbers started to increase, and finally, in 2017, the island foxes were removed from the endangered species list.

Trumpeter Swan

The largest native waterfowl species in North America, the trumpeter swan population declined rapidly, with civilization expanding to the west and markets demanding long feathers for manufacturing fashionable hats and writing quills. In addition, these birds are more sensitive to lead poisoning, which is consumed via lead shots.

In the 1930s, less than 100 trumpeter swans were found. The species recovered in the Northwestern parts due to aggressive conservation efforts, such as protection from habitat disturbance and hunting.

New England Cottontail

In the early 1960s, the New England Cottontail was common across New England and New York. However, as young forests with thick undergrowth matured into closed-canopy forests, the population of the New England cottontail shrunk drastically. In 2006, it was reported that the rabbits occupied merely 14% of its historic population. Therefore, these creatures were listed as candidates for protection under the Endangered Species Act.

With the help of funding from the State Wildlife Grants, states took proactive actions to reverse the decline of the cottontail. They restored the second-growth forest habitat that New England cottontails need to thrive. In 2015, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service stated that the New England cottontail was no longer endangered.

<p>While many species are still on the brink of extinction in North America, the successful restoration stories of the above-listed species serve as hopeful reminders that investing in wildlife conservation can lead to triumph. When governments, wildlife organizations, and citizens work together and follow wildlife protection practices, species can be brought back from the verge of extinction, and the plant ecosystems can be successfully restored.</p> <p>You might also enjoy:</p> <p><a href="https://www.animalsaroundtheglobe.com/20-endangered-species-in-america-1-198910/">20 Endangered Species in America</a></p> <p><a href="https://www.animalsaroundtheglobe.com/are-bald-eagles-at-risk-of-becoming-endangered-1-191612/">Are Bald Eagles At Risk Of Becoming Endangered?</a></p> <p><a href="https://www.animalsaroundtheglobe.com/top-21-scariest-animals-of-north-america-1-200554/">Top 21 Scariest Animals Of North America</a></p> <p>The post <a href="https://www.animalsaroundtheglobe.com/wildlife-conservation-success-stories-in-north-america/">Wildlife Conservation Success Stories in North America</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.animalsaroundtheglobe.com">Animals Around The Globe</a>.</p>

All-in-All: Conservation in North America

While many species are still on the brink of extinction in North America, the successful restoration stories of the above-listed species serve as hopeful reminders that investing in wildlife conservation can lead to triumph. When governments, wildlife organizations, and citizens work together and follow wildlife protection practices, species can be brought back from the verge of extinction, and the plant ecosystems can be successfully restored.

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THE 5 BEST Moscow Nature & Wildlife Areas

Nature & wildlife areas in moscow.

Playgrounds
Bodies of Water
Nature & Wildlife Areas
5.0 of 5 bubbles
3.0 of 5 bubbles & up
District Eastern (VAO)
District Southern (YuAO)
District Western (ZAO)
Troparevo-Nikulino
Danilovskiy
Metrogorodok
Good for Kids
Good for Big Groups
Budget-friendly
Good for Couples
Adventurous
Good for a Rainy Day
Hidden Gems
Honeymoon spot
Good for Adrenaline Seekers
Things to do ranked using Tripadvisor data including reviews, ratings, photos, and popularity.

1. Troparevsky Forest Park

2. Losiny Ostrov National Park

3. Husky Park Sokolniki

4. Losinaya Bio Station

5. spring tsarevna-lebed.

6. Park Nagatinskaya Poima

What travelers are saying.

Losiny Ostrov National Park
Troparevsky Forest Park
Losinaya Bio Station
Husky Park Sokolniki
Park Nagatinskaya Poima

Moscow Showcases Tourism Potential at SATTE 2024 International Exhibition in India

22.02.2024, New Delhi: Moscow Tourism is thrilled to participate in the highly anticipated SATTE (South Asia’s Travel & Tourism Exchange) trade fair, held in Greater Noida, NCR, India from February 22-24. The delegation from Moscow is one of the largest at the event, featuring representatives from the Moscow City Tourism Committee, the Made in Moscow project team, and other key figures in the city’s tourism industry.

During the first day of the event, held on February 22, representatives from the Moscow City Tourism Committee took part in various business sessions and introduced the capital’s flagship projects. One of these projects, the Moscow Estates Festival, received significant attention during a discussion on cultural heritage. The festival, which gained popularity among foreign tourists last summer and this winter, offers visitors the opportunity to immerse themselves in the history of Moscow’s historical mansions through theatrical tours, master classes, and other unique events. This interactive approach to studying cultural heritage has proven especially appealing to children and young people, who appreciate the recreated atmosphere and the chance to take stunning photographs.

Another highlight of Moscow’s tourism scene is the Moscow Tea Time project. At the Moscow exhibition stand, guests had the opportunity to taste different tea blends and learn about the city’s tea traditions. Currently taking place in Moscow hotels and restaurants, this project offers visitors the chance to enjoy tea time sets featuring an array of jams and pastries between 16:00 and 19:00 daily.

According to Evgeny Kozlov, First Deputy Head of the Office of the Mayor and the Government of Moscow, as well as Chairman of the Moscow City Tourism Committee, Moscow hosts over 350 cultural and entertainment events each day, catering to all audiences, including families with children. With its extensive range of gastronomic establishments, including restaurants serving Indian cuisine, and hotels developing tailored offers for Indian guests, Moscow ensures a convenient and enjoyable experience for Indian tourists. Additionally, tourist navigation in the city is comprehensively duplicated in foreign languages, further enhancing the comfort of the journey.

As part of the SATTE business program, the “Moscow +” project showcased interregional routes designed to meet the demands of foreign travelers, including those from India, who often seek to combine visits to several cities within one trip. As the country’s main transport hub, Moscow offers ready-made tourist packages that combine experiences in Moscow with other regions such as St. Petersburg, Tyumen, and the Moscow Region. Russian tour operators participating in the project discussed their package offers specifically tailored to the Indian tourist market.

At the exhibition, Moscow also presented a wide range of traditional souvenirs crafted by participants of the “Made in Moscow” project. Sixteen Moscow-based entrepreneurs brought goods in categories including grooming cosmetics, home fragrances, HoReCa (Hotel, Restaurant, Catering/Café) products, children’s items, accessories, as well as vegetarian and vegan products, which captured the interest of Indian consumers.

The partnership between Moscow and India is thriving, encompassing both classic tourist trips and business tourism. Business visits have become increasingly popular among Indian travelers to Moscow. The Moscow City Tourism Committee shared successful experiences in organizing international conferences like the Meet Global MICE Congress, demonstrating Moscow’s potential in the field of business tourism.

The internationally acclaimed Gzhel theatre, known for its unique fusion of folk and ballroom dance, as well as classical ballet, also showcased its talent at the exhibition. The theatre is renowned worldwide and serves as a symbol of Moscow’s rich cultural traditions.

Moscow remains a top tourist destination in Russia, with visitor numbers soaring year after year. In 2023, a record-breaking 24.5 million tourists from various regions and countries visited the capital, marking a 37% increase compared to the previous year.

The city boasts almost 2,000 hotels, ensuring that every tourist finds suitable accommodation options. Cultural enthusiasts will also be delighted, with thousands of cultural sites spread across Moscow, including theaters, museums, and libraries. Iconic historical and cultural sites, such as the renowned VDNKh and the recently reopened Northern and Southern River stations, have undergone renovations and reconstructions, becoming major tourist attractions in their own right.

With over 19,000 food industry establishments, ranging from world-famous restaurants to accessible Moscow gastroclusters, the capital offers a diverse and exciting culinary scene. Visitors can also enjoy breathtaking views of the city from various vantage points, including the Moscow cable car, skyscrapers, observation platforms, and view restaurants.

Moreover, Moscow caters to families and children, providing numerous family-friendly attractions throughout the year. Notable highlights include the Moscow Zoo, one of Europe’s largest oceanariums, and Russia’s first indoor amusement park, Dream Island. The city boasts over 400 museums and over 1,000 excursions, including tailored walk-quests for parents and children. In recognition of its dedication to providing exceptional experiences for young travelers, Moscow was named the Capital of Children’s Tourism in 2023 and the Youth Capital for 2024.

As the SATTE exhibition continues, Moscow Tourism is excited to further engage with Indian visitors and strengthen the already flourishing relationship between the two nations.

Author: Anirban

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a people engaging with animals for tourism

WILDLIFE WATCH

Suffering unseen: The dark truth behind wildlife tourism

Captive wild animal encounters are hugely popular, thanks partly to social media. But our investigation shows many creatures lead dismal lives.

I’ve come back to check on a baby. Just after dusk I’m in a car lumbering down a muddy road in the rain, past rows of shackled elephants, their trunks swaying. I was here five hours before, when the sun was high and hot and tourists were on elephants’ backs.

Walking now, I can barely see the path in the glow of my phone’s flashlight. When the wooden fence post of the stall stops me short, I point my light down and follow a current of rainwater across the concrete floor until it washes up against three large, gray feet. A fourth foot hovers above the surface, tethered tightly by a short chain and choked by a ring of metal spikes. When the elephant tires and puts her foot down, the spikes press deeper into her ankle.

Meena is four years and two months old, still a toddler as elephants go. Khammon Kongkhaw, her mahout, or caretaker, told me earlier that Meena wears the spiked chain because she tends to kick. Kongkhaw has been responsible for Meena here at Maetaman Elephant Adventure, near Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand, since she was 11 months old. He said he keeps her on the spiked shackle only during the day and takes it off at night. But it’s night now.

I ask Jin Laoshen, the Maetaman staffer accompanying me on this nighttime visit, why her chain is still on. He says he doesn’t know.

a girl posing for a photograph on top of an elephant

Maetaman is one of many animal attractions in and around tourist-swarmed Chiang Mai. People spill out of tour buses and clamber onto the trunks of elephants that, at the prodding of their mahouts’ bullhooks (long poles with a sharp metal hook), hoist them in the air while cameras snap. Visitors thrust bananas toward elephants’ trunks. They watch as mahouts goad their elephants—some of the most intelligent animals on the planet—to throw darts or kick oversize soccer balls while music blares.

Meena is one of Maetaman’s 10 show elephants. To be precise, she’s a painter. Twice a day, in front of throngs of chattering tourists, Kongkhaw puts a paintbrush in the tip of her trunk and presses a steel nail to her face to direct her brushstrokes as she drags primary colors across paper. Often he guides her to paint a wild elephant in the savanna. Her paintings are then sold to tourists.

Meena’s life is set to follow the same trajectory as many of the roughly 3,800 captive elephants in Thailand and thousands more throughout Southeast Asia. She’ll perform in shows until she’s about 10. After that, she’ll become a riding elephant. Tourists will sit on a bench strapped to her back, and she’ll give several rides a day. When Meena is too old or sick to give rides—maybe at 55, maybe at 75—she’ll die. If she’s lucky, she’ll get a few years of retirement. She’ll spend most of her life on a chain in a stall.

3 bears chained to a wall backstage with a trainer

Wildlife attractions such as Maetaman lure people from around the world to be with animals like Meena, and they make up a lucrative segment of the booming global travel industry. Twice as many trips are being taken abroad as 15 years ago, a jump driven partly by Chinese tourists, who spend far more on international travel than any other nationality.

Wildlife tourism isn’t new, but social media is setting the industry ablaze, turning encounters with exotic animals into photo-driven bucket-list toppers. Activities once publicized mostly in guidebooks now are shared instantly with multitudes of people by selfie-taking backpackers, tour-bus travelers, and social media “influencers” through a tap on their phone screens. Nearly all millennials (23- to 38-year-olds) use social media while traveling. Their selfies—of swims with dolphins, encounters with tigers, rides on elephants, and more—are viral advertising for attractions that tout up-close experiences with animals.

For all the visibility social media provides, it doesn’t show what happens beyond the view of the camera lens. People who feel joy and exhilaration from getting close to wild animals usually are unaware that many of the animals at such attractions live a lot like Meena, or worse.

Photographer Kirsten Luce and I set out to look behind the curtain of the thriving wildlife tourism industry, to see how animals at various attractions—including some that emphasize their humane care of animals—are treated once the selfie-taking crowds have gone.

After leaving Maetaman, we take a five-minute car ride up a winding hill to a property announced by a wooden plaque as “Elephant EcoValley: where elephants are in good hands.” There are no elephant rides here. No paint shows or other performances. Visitors can stroll through an open-air museum and learn about Thailand’s national animal. They can make herbal treats for the elephants and paper from elephant dung. They can watch elephants in a grassy, tree-ringed field.

EcoValley’s guest book is filled with praise from Australians, Danes, Americans—tourists who often shun elephant camps such as Maetaman because the rides and shows make them uneasy. Here, they can see unchained elephants and leave feeling good about supporting what they believe is an ethical establishment. What many don’t know is that EcoValley’s seemingly carefree elephants are brought here for the day from nearby Maetaman—and that the two attractions are actually a single business.

Meena was brought here once, but she tried to run into the forest. Another young elephant, Mei, comes sometimes, but today she’s at Maetaman, playing the harmonica in the shows. When she’s not doing that, or spending the day at EcoValley, she’s chained near Meena in one of Maetaman’s elephant stalls.

people engaging with animals for tourism

Meena Kalamapijit owns Maetaman as well as EcoValley, which she opened in November 2017 to cater to Westerners. She says her 56 elephants are well cared for and that giving rides and performing allow them to have necessary exercise. And, she says, Meena the elephant’s behavior has gotten better since her mahout started using the spiked chain.

We sit with Kalamapijit on a balcony outside her office, and she explains that when Westerners, especially Americans, stopped coming to Maetaman, she eliminated one of the daily shows to allot time for visitors to watch elephants bathe in the river that runs through the camp.

“Westerners enjoy bathing because it looks happy and natural,” she says. “But a Chinese tour agency called me and said, ‘Why are you cutting the show? Our customers love to see it, and they don’t care about bathing at all.’ ” Providing separate options is good for business, Kalamapijit says.

Around the world Kirsten and I watched tourists watching captive animals. In Thailand we also saw American men bear-hug tigers in Chiang Mai and Chinese brides in wedding gowns ride young elephants in the aqua surf on the island of Phuket. We watched polar bears in wire muzzles ballroom dancing across the ice under a big top in Russia and teenage boys on the Amazon River snapping selfies with baby sloths.

Most tourists who enjoy these encounters don’t know that the adult tigers may be declawed, drugged, or both. Or that there are always cubs for tourists to snuggle with because the cats are speed bred and the cubs are taken from their mothers just days after birth. Or that the elephants give rides and perform tricks without harming people only because they’ve been “broken” as babies and taught to fear the bullhook. Or that the Amazonian sloths taken illegally from the jungle often die within weeks of being put in captivity.

a people engaging with elephants for tourism

A young elephant performs for an audience at Sriracha Tiger Zoo, in Chon Buri, Thailand. Elephants, highly intelligent mammals, are trained through fear with metal bullhooks to catch hoops, hold balloons, and balance on stools.

As we traveled to performance pits and holding pens on three continents and in the Hawaiian Islands, asking questions about how animals are treated and getting answers that didn’t always add up, it became clear how methodically and systematically animal suffering is concealed.

The wildlife tourism industry caters to people’s love of animals but often seeks to maximize profits by exploiting animals from birth to death. The industry’s economy depends largely on people believing that the animals they’re paying to watch or ride or feed are having fun too.

It succeeds partly because tourists—in unfamiliar settings and eager to have a positive experience—typically don’t consider the possibility that they’re helping to hurt animals. Social media adds to the confusion: Oblivious endorsements from friends and trendsetters legitimize attractions before a traveler ever gets near an animal.

There has been some recognition of social media’s role in the problem. In December 2017, after a National Geographic investigative report on harmful wildlife tourism in Amazonian Brazil and Peru, Instagram introduced a feature : Users who click or search one of dozens of hashtags, such as #slothselfie and #tigercubselfie, now get a pop-up warning that the content they’re viewing may be harmful to animals.

Everyone finds Olga Barantseva on Instagram. “Photographer from Russia. Photographing dreams,” her bio reads. She meets clients for woodland photo shoots with captive wild animals just outside Moscow.

For her 18th birthday, Sasha Belova treated herself to a session with Barantseva—and a pack of wolves. “It was my dream,” she says as she fidgets with her hair, which had been styled that morning. “Wolves are wild and dangerous.” The wolves are kept in small cages at a petting zoo when not participating in photo shoots.

The Kravtsov family hired Barantseva to take their first professional family photos—all five family members, shivering and smiling in the birch forest, joined by a bear named Stepan.

Barantseva has been photographing people and wild animals together for six years. She “woke up as a star,” she says, in 2015, when a couple of international media outlets found her online. Her audience has exploded to more than 80,000 followers worldwide. “I want to show harmony between people and animals,” she says.

On a raw fall day, under a crown of golden birch leaves on a hill that overlooks a frigid lake, two-and-a-half-year-old Alexander Levin, dressed in a hooded bumblebee sweater, timidly holds Stepan’s paw.

The bear’s owners, Yury and Svetlana Panteleenko, ply their star with food—tuna fish mixed with oatmeal—to get him to approach the boy. Snap: It looks like a tender friendship. The owners toss grapes to Stepan to get him to open his mouth wide. Snap: The bear looks as if he’s smiling.

The Panteleenkos constantly move Stepan, adjusting his paws, feeding him, and positioning Alexander as Barantseva, pink-haired, bundled in jeans and a parka, captures each moment. Snap: A photo goes to her Instagram feed. A boy and a bear in golden Russian woods—a picture straight out of a fairy tale. It’s a contemporary twist on a long-standing Russian tradition of exploiting bears for entertainment.

Another day in the same forest, Kirsten and I join 12 young women who have nearly identical Instagram accounts replete with dreamy photos of models caressing owls and wolves and foxes. Armed with fancy cameras but as yet modest numbers of followers, they all want the audience Barantseva has. Each has paid the Panteleenkos $760 to take identical shots of models with the ultimate prize: a bear in the woods.

Stepan is 26 years old, elderly for a brown bear, and can hardly walk. The Panteleenkos say they bought him from a small zoo when he was three months old. They say the bear’s work—a constant stream of photo shoots and movies—provides money to keep him fed.

A video on Svetlana Panteleenko’s Instagram account proclaims: “Love along with some great food can make anyone a teddy :-)”

And just like that, social media takes a single instance of local animal tourism and broadcasts it to the world.

When the documentary film Blackfish was released in 2013, it drew a swift and decisive reaction from the American public. Through the story of Tilikum, a distressed killer whale at SeaWorld in Orlando, Florida, the film detailed the miserable life orcas can face in captivity. Hundreds of thousands of outraged viewers signed petitions. Companies with partnership deals, such as Southwest Airlines, severed ties with SeaWorld. Attendance at SeaWorld’s water parks slipped; its stock nose-dived.

James Regan says what he saw in Blackfish upset him. Regan, honeymooning in Hawaii with his wife, Katie, is from England, where the country’s last marine mammal park closed permanently in 1993. I meet him at Dolphin Quest Oahu, an upscale swim-with-dolphins business on the grounds of the beachfront Kahala Hotel & Resort, just east of Honolulu. The Regans paid $225 each to swim for 30 minutes in a small group with a bottlenose dolphin. One of two Dolphin Quest locations in Hawaii, the facility houses six dolphins.

Bottlenose dolphins are the backbone of an industry that spans the globe. Swim-with-dolphins operations rely on captive-bred and wild-caught dolphins that live—and interact with tourists—in pools. The popularity of these photo-friendly attractions reflects the disconnect around dolphin experiences: People in the West increasingly shun shows that feature animals performing tricks, but many see swimming with captive dolphins as a vacation rite of passage.

Katie Regan has wanted to swim with dolphins since she was a child. Her husband laughs and says of Dolphin Quest, “They paint a lovely picture. When you’re in America, everyone is smiling.” But he appreciates that the facility is at their hotel, so they can watch the dolphins being fed and cared for. He brings up Blackfish again.

Katie protests: “Stop making my dream a horrible thing!”

Rae Stone, president of Dolphin Quest and a marine mammal veterinarian, says the company donates money to conservation projects and educates visitors about perils that marine mammals face in the wild. By paying for this entertainment, she says, visitors are helping captive dolphins’ wild cousins.

Stone notes that Dolphin Quest is certified “humane” by American Humane, an animal welfare nonprofit. (The Walt Disney Company, National Geographic’ s majority owner, offers dolphin encounters on some vacation excursions and at an attraction in Epcot, one of its Orlando parks. Disney says it follows the animal welfare standards of the Association of Zoos & Aquariums, a nonprofit that accredits more than 230 facilities worldwide.)

It’s a vigorous debate: whether even places with high standards, veterinarians on staff, and features such as pools filled with filtered ocean water can be truly humane for marine mammals.

Dolphin Quest’s Stone says yes.

Critics, including the Humane Society of the United States, which does not endorse keeping dolphins in captivity, say no. They argue that these animals have evolved to swim great distances and live in complex social groups—conditions that can’t be replicated in the confines of a pool. This helps explain why the National Aquarium, in Baltimore, announced in 2016 that its dolphins will be retired to a seaside sanctuary by 2020.

Some U.S. attractions breed their own dolphins because the nation has restricted dolphin catching in the wild since 1972. But elsewhere, dolphins are still being taken from the wild and turned into performers.

In China, which has no national laws on captive-animal welfare, dolphinariums with wild-caught animals are a booming business: There are now 78 marine mammal parks, and 26 more are under construction.

To have the once-in-a-lifetime chance to see rare Black Sea dolphins, people in the landlocked town of Kaluga, a hundred miles from Moscow, don’t have to leave their city. In the parking lot of the Torgoviy Kvartal shopping mall, next to a hardware store, is a white inflatable pop-up aquarium: the Moscow Traveling Dolphinarium. It looks like a children’s bouncy castle that’s been drained of its color.

Inside the puffy dome, parents buy their kids dolphin-shaped trinkets: fuzzy dolls and Mylar balloons, paper dolphin hats, and drinks in plastic dolphin tumblers. Families take their seats around a small pool. The venue is so intimate that even the cheapest seats, at nine dollars apiece, are within splashing distance.

“My kids are jumping for joy,” says a woman named Anya, motioning toward her two giddy boys, bouncing in their seats.

In the middle of the jubilant atmosphere, in water that seems much too shallow and much too murky, two dolphins swim listlessly in circles.

Russia is one of only a few countries (Indonesia is another) where traveling oceanariums exist. Dolphins and beluga whales, which need to be immersed in water to stay alive, are put in tubs on trucks and carted from city to city in a loop that usually ends when they die. These traveling shows are aboveboard: Russia has no laws that regulate how marine mammals should be treated in captivity.

The shows are the domestic arm of a brisk Russian global trade in dolphins and small whales. Black Sea bottlenose dolphins can’t be caught legally without a permit, but Russian fishermen can catch belugas and orcas under legal quotas in the name of science and education. Some belugas are sold legally to aquariums around the country. Russia now allows only a dozen or so orcas to be caught each year for scientific and educational purposes, and since April 2018, the government has cracked down on exporting them. But government investigators believe that Russian orcas—which can sell for millions—are being caught illegally for export to China.

Captive orcas, which can grow to 20 feet long and more than 10,000 pounds, are too big for the traveling shows that typically feature dolphins and belugas. When I contacted the owners of the Moscow Traveling Dolphinarium and another operation, the White Whale Show, in separate telephone calls to ask where their dolphins and belugas come from, both men, Sergey Kuznetsov and Oleg Belesikov, hung up on me.

Russia’s dozen or so traveling oceanariums are touted as a way to bring native wild animals to people who might never see the ocean.

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“Who else if not us?” says Mikhail Olyoshin, a staffer at one traveling oceanarium. And on this day in Kaluga, as the dolphins perform tricks to American pop songs and lie on platforms for several minutes for photo ops, parents and children express the same sentiment: Imagine, dolphins, up close, in my hometown. The ocean on delivery.

Owners and operators of wildlife tourism attractions, from high-end facilities such as Dolphin Quest in Hawaii to low-end monkey shows in Thailand, say their animals live longer in captivity than wild counterparts because they’re safe from predators and environmental hazards. Show operators proudly emphasize that the animals under their care are with them for life. They’re family.

Alla Azovtseva, a longtime dolphin trainer in Russia, shakes her head.

“I don’t see any sense in this work. My conscience bites me. I look at my animals and want to cry,” says Azovtseva, who drives a red van with dolphins airbrushed on the side. At the moment, she’s training pilot whales to perform tricks at Moscow’s Moskvarium, one of Europe’s largest aquariums (not connected to the traveling dolphin shows). On her day off, we meet at a café near Red Square.

She says she fell in love with dolphins in the late 1980s when she read a book by John Lilly, the American neuroscientist who broke open our understanding of the animals’ intelligence. She has spent 30 years training marine mammals to do tricks. But along the way she’s grown heartsick from forcing highly intelligent, social creatures to live isolated, barren lives in small tanks.

“I would compare the dolphin situation with making a physicist sweep the street,” she says. “When they’re not engaged in performance or training, they just hang in the water facing down. It’s the deepest depression.”

What people don’t know about many aquarium shows in Russia, Azovtseva says, is that the animals often die soon after being put in captivity, especially those in traveling shows. And Azovtseva—making clear she’s referring to the industry at large in Russia and not the Moskvarium—says she knows many aquariums quietly and illegally replace their animals with new ones.

It’s been illegal to catch Black Sea dolphins in the wild for entertainment purposes since 2003, but according to Azovtseva, aquarium owners who want to increase their dolphin numbers quickly and cheaply buy dolphins poached there. Because these dolphins are acquired illegally, they’re missing the microchips that captive cetaceans in Russia are usually tagged with as a form of required identification.

Some aquariums get around that, she says, by cutting out dead dolphins’ microchips and implanting them into replacement dolphins.

“People are people,” Azovtseva says. “Once they see an opportunity, they exploit.” She says she can’t go on doing her work in the industry and that she’s decided to speak out because she wants people to know the truth about the origins and treatment of many of the marine mammals they love watching. We exchange a look—we both know what her words likely mean for her livelihood.

“I don’t care if I’m fired,” she says defiantly. “When a person has nothing to lose, she becomes really brave.”

I'm sitting on the edge of an infinity pool on the hilly Thai side of Thailand’s border with Myanmar, at a resort where rooms average more than a thousand dollars a night.

Out past the pool, elephants roam in a lush valley. Sitting next to me is 20-year-old Stephanie, who asked not to use her last name. She’s Dutch and French, Tokyo born and raised, and a student at the University of Michigan. Her cosmopolitan background and pretty face make for a perfect cocktail of aspiration—she’s exactly the kind of Instagrammer who makes it as an influencer. That is, someone who has a large enough following to attract sponsors to underwrite posts and, in turn, travel, wardrobes, and bank accounts. In 2018, brands—fashion, travel, tech, and more—spent an estimated $1.6 billion on social media advertising by influencers.

Stephanie has been here, at the Anantara Golden Triangle Elephant Camp & Resort, before. This time, in a fairly standard influencer-brand arrangement, she’ll have a picnic with elephants and post about it to her growing legion of more than 25,000 Instagram followers. In exchange, she gets hundreds of dollars off the nightly rate.

At Anantara the fields are green, and during the day at least, many of the resort’s 22 elephants are tethered on ropes more than a hundred feet long so they can move around and socialize. Nevertheless, they’re expected to let guests touch them and do yoga beside them.

After Stephanie's elephant picnic, I watch her edit the day’s hundreds of photos. She selects an image with her favorite elephant, Bo. She likes it, she says, because she felt a connection with Bo and thinks that will come across. She posts it at 9:30 p.m.—the time she estimates the largest number of her followers will be online. She includes a long caption, summing it up as “my love story with this incredible creature,” and the hashtag #stopelephantriding. Immediately, likes from followers stream in—more than a thousand, as well as comments with heart-eyed emoji.

Anantara is out of reach for anyone but the wealthy—or prominent influencers. Anyone else seeking a similar experience might do a Google search for, say, “Thailand elephant sanctuary.”

As tourist demand for ethical experiences with animals has grown, affordable establishments, often calling themselves “sanctuaries,” have cropped up purporting to offer humane, up-close elephant encounters. Bathing with elephants—tourists give them a mud bath, splash them in a river, or both—has become very popular. Many facilities portray baths as a benign alternative to elephant riding and performances. But elephants getting baths, like those that give rides and do tricks, will have been broken to some extent to make them obedient. And as long as bathing remains popular, places that offer it will need obedient elephants to keep their businesses going.  

In Ban Ta Klang, a tiny town in eastern Thailand, modest homes dot the crimson earth. In front of each is a wide, bamboo platform for sitting, sleeping, and watching television.

But the first thing I notice is the elephants. Some homes have one, others as many as five. Elephants stand under tarps or sheet metal roofs or trees. Some are together, mothers and babies, but most are alone. Nearly all the elephants wear ankle chains or hobbles—cuffs binding their front legs together. Dogs and chickens weave among the elephants’ legs, sending up puffs of red dust.

Ban Ta Klang—known as Elephant Village—is ground zero in Thailand for training and trading captive elephants.

“House elephants,” Sri Somboon says, gesturing as he turns down his TV. Next to his outdoor platform, a two-month-old baby elephant runs around his mother. Somboon points across the road to the third elephant in his charge, a three-year-old male tethered to a tree. He’s wrenching his head back and forth and thrashing his trunk around. It looks as if he’s going out of his mind.

He’s in the middle of his training, Somboon says, and is getting good at painting. He’s already been sold, and when his training is finished, he’ll start working at a tourist camp down south.

Ban Ta Klang and the surrounding area, part of Surin Province, claim to be the source of more than half of Thailand’s 3,800 captive elephants. Long before the flood of tourists, it was the center of the elephant trade; the animals were caught in the wild and tamed for use transporting logs. Now, every November, hundreds of elephants from here are displayed, bought, and sold in the province’s main town, Surin.

One evening I sit with Jakkrawan Homhual and Wanchai Sala-ngam. Both 33, they’ve been best friends since childhood. About half the people in Ban Ta Klang who care for elephants, including Homhual, don’t own them. They’re paid a modest salary by a rich owner to breed and train baby elephants for entertainment. As night falls, thousands of termites swarm us, attracted to the single bulb hanging above the bamboo platform. Our conversation turns to elephant training.

Phajaan is the traditional—and brutal—days- or weeks-long process of breaking a young elephant’s spirit. It has long been used in Thailand and throughout Southeast Asia to tame wild elephants, which still account for many of the country’s captives. Under phajaan, elephants are bound with ropes, confined in tight wooden structures, starved, and beaten repeatedly with bullhooks, nails, and hammers until their will is crushed. The extent to which phajaan persists in its harshest form is unclear. Since 2012, the government has been cracking down on the illegal import of elephants taken from the forests of neighboring Myanmar, Thailand’s main source of wild-caught animals.

I ask the men how baby elephants born in captivity are broken and trained.

When a baby is about two years old, they say, mahouts tie its mother to a tree and slowly drag the baby away. Once separated, the baby is confined. Using a bullhook on its ear, they teach the baby to move: left, right, turn, stop. To teach an elephant to sit, Sala-ngam says, “we tie up the front legs. One mahout will use a bullhook at the back. The other will pull a rope on the front legs.” He adds: “To train the elephant, you need to use the bullhook so the elephant will know.”

Humans identify suffering in other humans by universal signs: People sob, wince, cry out, put voice to their hurt. Animals have no universal language for pain. Many animals don’t have tear ducts. More creatures still—prey animals, for example—instinctively mask symptoms of pain, lest they appear weak to predators. Recognizing that a nonhuman animal is in pain is difficult, often impossible.

But we know that animals feel pain. All mammals have a similar neuroanatomy. Birds, reptiles, and amphibians all have pain receptors. As recently as a decade ago, scientists had collected more evidence that fish feel pain than they had for neonatal infants. A four-year-old human child with spikes pressing into his flesh would express pain by screaming. A four-year-old elephant just stands there in the rain, her leg jerking in the air.

Of all the silently suffering animals I saw in pools and pens around the world, two in particular haunt me: an elephant and a tiger.

They lived in the same facility, Samut Prakan Crocodile Farm and Zoo, about 15 miles south of Bangkok. The elephant, Gluay Hom, four years old, was kept under a stadium. The aging tiger, Khai Khem, 22, spent his days on a short chain in a photo studio. Both had irrefutable signs of suffering: The emaciated elephant had a bent, swollen leg hanging in the air and a large, bleeding sore at his temple. His eyes were rolled back in his head. The tiger had a dental abscess so severe that the infection was eating through the bottom of his jaw.

When I contacted the owner of the facility, Uthen Youngprapakorn, to ask about these animals, he said the fact that they hadn’t died proved that the facility was caring for them properly. He then threatened a lawsuit.

Six months after Kirsten and I returned from Thailand, we asked Ryn Jirenuwat, our Bangkok-based Thai interpreter, to check on Gluay Hom and Khai Khem. She went to Samut Prakan and watched them for hours, sending photos and video. Gluay Hom was still alive, still standing in the same stall, leg still bent at an unnatural angle. The elephants next to him were skin and bones. Khai Khem was still chained by his neck to a hook in the floor. He just stays in his dark corner, Jirenuwat texted, and when he hears people coming, he twists on his chain and turns his back to them.

“Like he just wants to be swallowed by the wall.”

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Moscow Travel Guide: Best Things to Do + More [2023]

· everything to know about visiting moscow, including the best things to do and how to get around. ·.

the red st basils church in moscow on a white winters day

Moscow is Russia’s vibrant capital city, and it also happens to be the largest city in all of Europe. The city’s long and infamous history makes it one of the most unique places we have ever visited.

The architecture ranges from centuries-old palaces to uniform, gray concrete buildings. The people range from cold and private to warm and welcoming. Moscow is a city is strong juxtapositions, and we learned a lot during our time there.

This post will break down all you need to know about visiting Moscow, including the best things to do, how to get there, how to get around, and more.

man and woman standing in front of main church in moscow

The Best Things to Do in Moscow

1. explore the red square.

The Red Square is the heart of Moscow. Most of the city’s top attractions can be found here, including just about everything on this list. The Kremlin, St. Basil’s Cathedral, and Lenin’s Mausoleum are all located here, and the State Historical Museum and GUM are not far from here, either.

The Red Square is a common home for parades, protests, and seasonal celebrations. There are massive Christmas celebrations here, with food vendors and carnival rides set up in numbers.

red orthodox church in moscow russia red square on a winter day

2. Check Out the Ziferblat

The Ziferblat is a café in Moscow that is unlike any café we have ever been to. While most cafes charge you for your drinks and food, the Ziferblat charges you for your time.

Upon arrival, you are given a clock. When you leave, the barista calculates how much time you spent in the café and charges you accordingly. This concept was created to help visitors to be more intentional with their time, and the cafe itself is incredibly charming.

For a detailed look at everything you need to know before you visit, make sure you read my post about visiting the Ziferblat Cafe in Moscow .

3. Marvel at St. Basil’s Cathedral

St. Basil’s Cathedral is one of the most iconic churches in the world, and it was the single thing we were most excited to see while in Moscow. Built almost 500 years ago, St. Basil’s Cathedral is recognized by its colorful domes and whimsical style. The church is of the Russian Orthodox faith, and the inside is just as wondrous as the outside.

St. Basil’s Cathedral is located on the edge of the Red Square, making it incredibly convenient to visit. Entrance for non-worshippers costs 800 rubles, and tickets can be bought at the church

woman in winter jacket standing in front of St Basils Russian Orthodox in moscow on a winter day

4. Explore the Kremlin

The Kremlin is the largest active fortress in Europe, and it is the site of most of Russia’s government affairs. In addition to government buildings, the Kremlin Complex is filled with courtyards, towers, and museums that are open to the public. If you have the time, you could spend a couple of days fully exploring all that there is to see in the Kremlin.

selfie of man and woman pointing to the Kremlin in Moscow

5. Walk Through Lenin’s Mausoleum

Vladimir Lenin is one of the most important figures in Russian history, and his body is located perfectly embalmed in a mausoleum in the Red Square. The Mausoleum is open to the public to visit, and as long as you are willing to go through a few security checks, it is easily one of the best things to do in Moscow. Its convenient location in the Red Square makes it a can’t miss attraction.

There is absolutely no photography allowed inside the Mausoleum. Do not test this rule.

red exterior of lenins mausoleum in moscow russia

6. Wander Along Arbat Street

The Arbat is a very popular street in Moscow that is lined with stores, cafes, and other touristy attractions. It is one of the oldest streets in the city, dating back to the 1400s. This street is both quaint and trendy, and there are many walking tours that introduce tourists to the neighborhood’s wonders and highlights.

man in sinter jacket standing in arbat street moscow at night with glistening white lights strung from the buildings

7. Catch a Show at the Bolshoi Theatre

As a lover of the arts, it is hard to think of Moscow and not think of ballet. Russia has always been a top dog in the world of fine arts, and Bolshoi Theater is one of the best places to catch a performance. We were lucky enough to attend an Opera here, and it is a venue that you don’t want to miss out on if you enjoy opera, ballet, or orchestral performances.

8. Visit the State Historical Museum

The State Historical Museum is one of the most respected museums in Moscow. Despite its name, it is not really focused on the history of Russia as a nation. Rather, it contains a collection of artifacts from all throughout Russia’s history.

The museum’s collection is very broad in nature. It houses some items from indigenous tribes that used to occupy the region, pieces collected by the Romanov family, and more.

9. Wander Around GUM

GUM is an absolutely massive mall within walking distance of the Red Square. It isn’t just the size that draws visitors here; it’s the sense of luxury. The mall is so beautiful inside, much like the metro stations.

While visiting a mall might not sound like it belongs on a bucket list, this mall does. You will not want to miss out on visiting GUM while in Moscow.

people walking inside GUM mall in russia with christmas lights

10. Admire the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour

While St. Basil’s Cathedral is the most iconic church in Moscow, it isn’t the only one. The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour is absolutely stunning, with massive golden domes. It is the tallest Orthodox church in the world, and it is the seat of the Orthodox Patriarch of Moscow.

It is located just about a mile from the Red Square, just south of the Kremlin Complex. You can walk to it from the Red Square in about 20 minutes.

How to Get to Moscow

Flying to moscow.

Moscow has three major international airports: Sheremetyevo (SVO) , Domodedovo (DMO) , and Vnukovo (VKO) . All three of them are directly connected to downtown Moscow by the Aeroexpress trains, which leave every 30 minutes throughout the day. By Aeroexpress train, you can expect to get to the city center in 25-45 minutes depending on the airport that you fly into.

Sheremetyevo is the biggest and busiest of the three airports, and it is the one you are most likely to fly into – especially if you are coming from outside of Europe or the Caucus region. We flew into Sheremetyevo on a direct flight from New York City.

I usually provide backup airport options, because flying right into the city isn’t always the cheapest way to get where you’re going. Unfortunately, when it comes to Moscow, don’t really have a choice other than to fly right into Moscow. It is a very remote city, and it is usually the cheapest place to fly into in Russia as a whole.

Since Sheremetyevo is so busy, you will probably find a great flight option anyway. I wrote in my post about finding cheap flights that using hub airports will lead to more affordable airfare, and the same logic applies here. Even though Russia’s national airline, Aeroflot, is no longer a member of the SkyTeam Alliance, Moscow is still a major hub connecting passengers from all over the world.

READ OUR CHEAT SHEET

Train or Bus to Moscow

Trains and buses are one of the most popular ways to get around Europe. However, they’re of very little use when you’re trying to get to Moscow.

Moscow is hundreds of miles from the nearest major cities. The only major European city that can even be reached within 8 hours on the ground is St. Petersburg, and even the Baltic capitals of Riga, Vilnius, and Tallinn are over 12 hours away.

If you want to get to Moscow, the best option is almost always to fly. While the train routes to Moscow are scenic, they simply take forever.

How to Get Around Moscow

METRO | TROLLEYS | TRAMS | BUSES

Moscow has one of the most memorable metro systems in the world. Its metro lines are very deep underground, and the stations are absolutely stunning. Each station has its own unique style, but all of them contain escalators that seem to go on forever.

turned-on chandelier on ceiling of moscow metro

The system was built in an effort to showcase the power of the Soviet Union and its bright future. The plans were a form of propaganda, but they resulted in what is still one of the most visually appealing subway systems on earth.

Moscow’s metro system isn’t just pretty. It is also very useful and accessible. The system has 17 lines that connect the city and its surrounding area.

But wait; there’s more!

The Moscow metro system is also incredibly affordable, with each ride costing less than a dollar. The metro is by far the best way to get around Moscow, as it is almost impossible to beat the connection times and the low cost to ride.

Tickets can be bought at electronic, English-speaking kiosks in stations, or directly from ticket counters at certain larger stations. There are also day passes available, which are a very solid option if you plan on riding the metro several times per day.

The metro is by far the best way to get around Moscow.

In addition to the metro system, Moscow also has a network of buses, trams, and trolleys. This system is nowhere near as convenient or well-connected as the metro, though, and is likely of little use to you during your trip. There is no Uber in Moscow, but a similar app named Yandex is available if you need a ride in a pinch.

How Many Days Do You Need in Moscow?

Moscow is the biggest city in all of Europe, and it is absolutely loaded with things to do. You could spend weeks in Moscow and still find new things to do. Of course, most travelers don’t have that kind of time to spend in one place!

I recommend spending no less than three full days in Moscow, and ideally closer to five or seven.

Moscow is very spread out, and it can take some time to get from one major point to another. There are also so many places that are nice to just sit back and relax, which is hard to do when you’re in a hurry trying to cram activities into just a few days.

If you only have a week to visit Russia, I’d advise spending all of the time in one city. If you decide to split your time between Moscow and St. Petersburg, I recommend not trying to squeeze in any day trips beyond those two cities.

When Is the Best Time of the Year to Visit Moscow?

There are two different ways to approach this question. Personally, I think the best time to visit Moscow is around Christmas and New Year’s Day. While the weather will be absolutely freezing, Moscow is a surreal winter wonderland in December and January.

We were in Moscow right before Christmas. While it was very cold, you can always bundle up. Exploring the Christmas markets and pop-up ice skating rinks throughout Moscow is one of my favorite memories from anywhere I’ve traveled, and I dream of going back to do it again.

If you aren’t fond of the cold, Moscow is beautiful in the summer. It tends to get pretty cold in the shoulder seasons, so if you want warm weather, you should plan to visit in the summer. Moscow actually gets pretty warm in July and August, and there are a bunch of fantastic places to soak up the sun within the city.

The best time to visit Moscow is either around Christmas or from late May to August.

group of people walking in moscow red square at night with christmas lights everywhere

Is Moscow Safe to Visit?

While Moscow is a truly wonderful city, there’s no denying that visiting Russia comes with risks. As the country is run by an infamous communist dictator, concerns about visiting are valid. While we didn’t experience any sort of threat or negative treatment during our time in Moscow, we visited in a peaceful time.

In our experience, Russia doesn’t seem to detain normal Americans or Westerners to use as pawns. As a regular person, as long as you don’t commit any crimes, there is a slim chance you will run into any issues. However, Russia will not hesitate to enforce its laws against foreigners, and illegal behaviors will likely land you in a very compromising position.

Russia will not hesitate to enforce its laws against foreigners, and illegal behaviors will likely land you in a very compromising position.

To make matters worse, Russia has a bad reputation for gang violence. While the Russian mafia has very little interest in normal Western tourists, they won’t hesitate to pick a fight with anyone who ventures into their sphere of influence. If you seek out illegal substances or activities, you could be a target of the mafia.

If you seek out illegal substances or activities, you could be a target of the mafia.

Finally, since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, things are all very different. Russia is currently at war, and there are battles raging within 8 hours of Moscow. While it is still relatively safe to visit, that could change at any time as the war with Ukraine continues.

Is Moscow Worth Visiting?

Without a doubt, Moscow is worth visiting. It is one of the most unique major cities we have ever visited, and we hope to make it back one day. The Russian Orthodox churches are stunning, the city’s history is unlike any other, and the food is to die for.

While many visitors prefer St. Petersburg to Moscow, I think Moscow deserves a lot of hype of its own. Moscow is the beating heart of Russian culture and history, and it’s a place I highly recommend checking out if you have the chance.

woman in head scarf hugging bronze statue of angry bear

That’s all we have for you about Moscow! I hope this post was helpful as you plan your trip to Russia’s capital.

Have you been to Moscow? Or is this your first time visiting? Comment below if you have anything to add to our travel guide!

Hi, I'm Greg. I'm an avid traveler who has traveled to over 50 countries all around the world with my wife and kids. I've lived in Italy, Mexico, China, and the United States, and I dream of moving abroad again in the future. With this blog, I provide my audience with detailed destination guides to my favorite places and pro-tips to make travel as stress-free as possible.