Wildlife Tourism Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Wildlife Tourism - Essay Example The industry is also a good employer giving almost 9% of total employment for 2011 and is expected to provide 10% of total employment come 2021 (World Travel & Tourism Council 2011). Tourism is indeed a lucrative business and one of its major attractions is the opportunity for people to see and enjoy nature. Aside from the scenery, tourists are enjoined to experience a closer encounter with wildlife. Hence, wildlife tourism has come to fore as one of the most sought after experience of tourists all over the world. It is quite understandable since the progress of man has been counterproductive to animals. About a century ago, the human population is still small estimated at only 25% of the current headcount. As such, there were bigger lands for animals to roam free. The sea is also teeming with marine life. Thus, stories from grandparents would be filled by the fascinating ways on how these creatures lived and such entertainment always took the fancy of many listeners. Today, most of these stories are shown live on television offering both learning and excitement to the viewer. However, although such a technology had been able to bring in wild animals closer to home, the actual experience is naturally absent. Still, it cannot be denied that because of technology, people today are more informed regarding these creatures (Higginbottom 2004). Thus, with increasing fascination fuelled by the images seen on television, people are driven from their comfortable homes to chase the thrill of experiencing the wild. And, with the economic contribution being provided by tourism, business and governments alike have been more than willing to cater to this demand. Wildlife tourism is not as simple as many would conceive it to be. This activity offers more than just bird watching as the activities may depend on whether the tour is dependent or independent of wild life. Thus, an activity is said to be wildlife dependent if the tour is focused on having actual encounter with wild life. Hence, the main reason for the tour is the opportunity for the tourist to be able to have some form of interacting with animals by being able to take pictures or videos, tracking the animals or even through hunting and fishing. On the other hand, wildlife independent tourism does not have the actual animal experience as the focus of the activity. Incidental encounters like unplanned sightings and even just by hearing the wild animals satisfies the tour objective (Sinha 2001). Both involve certain disruption to nature but naturally the wildlife dependent activities provide more disruption especially when people hunt wildlife. However, this should not always have to be the case since wildlife is important for this aspect of tourism. And with the money being brought in by the industry then perhaps there can be ways in which the wildlife tourism can help preserve these animals. Main body The wildlife The animals play a key role in wildlife tourism as they are basically the main at tractions for wildlife dependent tourism. These animals are gaining attention as evidenced by the increasing number of publications that focuses on wildlife. Likewise, these topics are being more and more integrated to tourism and leisure (Lovelock 2008, Newsome et al 2005 and Topelko and Dearden, 2005). These publications generated additional media mileage for wildlife that have helped integrate activities such as hunting to tourism. Basically, animals are either those in the wild, animals working in farms, pets, animals used as companions and animals that provide assistance. These creatures each have they