Thanks for bringing up my 'curated Safari directory' idea - Fair Game - which is still live, but without anything having happened on it for a fair while for a host of reasons that I won't go into here.
One challenge I came across when working on Fair Game, and which I have seen time and time again when it comes to animal issues, is that because people have such strong opinions (and they are deep, emotionally driven, heartfelt opinions - the sort that rarely shift or accept difference) - once one burrows down into an issue that we all feel strongly about, we quickly find a lot of differences that become hard to reconcile. Take safari for example and efforts to agree what might be the terms by which we created a 'curated list'...
1 - Many good people working in the safari industry think the idea of legalising the rhino horn trade / ivory trade would be a total disaster and are fervently against it. They will tell you and every other tourist so while driving you around or at camp.
2 - Many good people working in the safari industry think the idea of NOT legalising the rhino horn / ivory trade is a total disaster and are fervently against it. Again, they will tell you so.
3 - Some people working in the safari industry are undoubtedly facilitating the rhino horn / ivory trade. They won't tell you.
4 - Some people working in safari industry think the solution is to cut off rhino horns. And then sell them. Others would cut them off and stockpile them. Others would cut them off and burn them. Others would cut them off and replace with fake ones. Others would dye them pink. Or put radio transmitters in them. Some would poison them. Some would create fake rhino horn and flood the market. Etc etc.
If 'we' were to put together a curated list of 'acceptable' safari lodges and operators, which of the above options would be 'acceptable'? Does everyone here agree on the legalisation / not legalisation of trade debate? Would it matter to us what a safari company or its boss thought considering that by encouraging people to spend sometimes thousands of pounds each at their businesses we are in essence supporting their position.
Would we put a safari company's attitude to animal preservation before or after its attitude to the local community? Does it matter if they are running a lodge on good eco principles (electricity, waste, products etc), or are these issues to be ignored because we are focussing on animal welfare?
Now add in:
the safari models in Kenya and South Africa are totally different. So we would need a different set of rules for each country. Some countries have banned trophy hunting. Others haven't. Namibia is generally held up as a beacon of responsible tourism, except when it funds its much heralded community work through selling of rhino hunting permits. Or runs its annual seal clubbing. Botswana banned hunting on public land and got campaigned against by Survival International because it was victimising the San Bushmen who have been hunting sustainably for thousands of years (Botswana has form on this). There are more tigers in captivity in Texas than in the wild in the rest of the world.
When i started building Fair Game, my method for inclusion was that I sent a series of lodges and camps that i was pretty confident were the good ones a questionnaire, and so long as they were willing to publicly answer and be held to account (ie people could challenge them on social Media for what they had said etc), then that was enough for me. At the time I felt that the key thing was to bring the issues as far out into the open as possible. The questions I asked were:
1) Do you fund anti-poaching efforts? Please give info.
2) Do you make your own efforts to fight poaching? How?
3) Do you inform guests about poaching issues either verbally or using written / visual materials? How?
4) Do you provide guests with an opportunity to donate towards anti-poaching?
5) Do you employ many people from local communities? In what capacity?
6) Do you provide the local community with more than just employment – education opportunities, infrastructure development etc? In what way?
7) Do you communicate with local communities about the impacts of poaching?
8) What other conservation initiatives and work do you support / undertake?
It started well and grew quickly. But then people who I knew were incredibly involved in good safari practices, admirable people who were just the sort I wanted to support said they did not want to answer the questions because they did not want to make their efforts publicly known for fear of a) putting their rangers etc at risk and b) endangering the animals they protected. We have seen similar circumstances with tourists increasingly being asked not to post photographs of rhinos on social media because they help poachers locate good specimens, and of rangers no longer calling in on radio to one another when they spot a rhino in case poachers are listening in.
So the trouble is (although of course this is what a forum like this hopefully works out) while I think the idea of a curated list of Good Organisations seems a great idea, on whose terms? Who decides the rules? And what if we end up inadvertently doing some harm?
PS - For example, just seen this story on EGlobalTravelMedia
"The recent decision by several international airlines to ban the transport of animal trophies will damage South Africa’s economy and do more harm than good, the country’s government has said. The statement follows a wave of bad publicity arising from the slaughter of Cecil, a much-loved lion, by an American dentist turned big-game hunter in Zimbabwe. The furore has rebounded on South African Airways (SAA), with a Cape Town-based wildlife photographer circulating an international petition to stop SAA transporting wildlife trophies. The petition wants SAA to join carriers like Delta, United, Virgin, British Airways and Emirates, and refuse to transport such trophies. Over 550,000 people have signed the petition.
Now, however, South Africa’s Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA) says many South Africans living in rural areas rely on hunting, which takes place under “regulated and coordinated conditions”. The department has called for the international airlines to revoke their decision. Brent Stapelkamp, the Zimbabwean researcher who followed Cecil the lion for nine years before discovering he had been killed, says he opposes a ban on hunting. Although devoted to his lions, he told the BBC that the large sums paid by big game trophy hunters helped pay for rangers who battled wildlife poachers.
It is the poachers, who shoot animals illegally and poison waterholes, who pose the main threat to wildlife – not the big game hunters.The South African government maintains that the decision to enforce a blanket ban fails to distinguish between legal and illegal transport of wildlife specimens and trophies.
Pohamba Shifeta, Environment and Tourism Minister in neighbouring Namibia, has said a ban by airlines could spell “the end of conservation in Namibia”. “If conservancy members have no income, they will abandon their role in protecting the country’’s natural resources,” Shifeta told Al Jazeera."
On the other hand... from Africa Geographic: "In this regard, it is worth highlighting two recent scientific reports that clearly conclude that trophy hunting makes an insubstantial contribution to GDP, job creation and local economies. The first, Big Game Hunting in Africa is Economically Useless appeared about two years ago as an IUCN report and was initially only published in French. Since translated into English, it concludes that ‘hunting does not however play a significant economic or social role and does not contribute at all to good governance’. One of many notable economic indicators is that while 16.5% of Africa’s land is in some way connected to trophy hunting, this activity is creating jobs for only 0.0001% of the workforce.
The more recent report, How much does trophy hunting really contribute to African communities? compiled by Economists at Large, draws a similar conclusion. ‘The suggestion that trophy hunting plays a significant role in African economic development is misguided,’ said economist Rod Campbell, lead author of the study. And in a complete dismissal of a typical overstatement made by the trophy hunting lobby, the report has the following to say about revenues in particular: ‘Trophy hunting advocates present the industry as large, citing figures such as US$200-milllion in annual revenue. But in the context of national economies, the industry is tiny, contributing at best a fraction of a per cent of GDP. Nature-based tourism does play a significant role in national development, but trophy hunting is insignificant. Across the investigated countries, trophy hunting revenue was only 1.8% of tourism revenues.’
@thetravelword re media - Mainstream Travel Media is framed /designed in such a way that this is simply not going to happen. more than just about any other section (other than perhaps motoring), it is utterly reliant on advertising by the same people who are the subjects of the editorial. Which simply means issues get sidelined or ignored.
Tourism issues don't get into the travel pages - they get covered in other sections of the publication when they become so big that they are no longer seen as niche issues, but generalist.
The lead story on Travel Weekly right now has the headline "Mama Shelter goes to Hollywood in U.S. debut" as if that is somehow the largest story in global tourism today. The strapline is 'The concept mixes a relatively no-frills ethos with a high-concept look in an effort to provide a unique design at a price point lower than typical lifestyle hotels"
Can you imagine if the front page of the Guardian ran with the headline "bar opens in London". Cos that's the lead story today in the best known tourism news website.
There's thousands of migrants on the Greek tourist island of island of Kos, struggling to survive, queuing in a deserted football stadium for visas, and meanwhile destroying the tourism industry that is the island's main source of income. Nahendra Modi has cut funding for tiger preservation in India by 15%. Palau Is burning illegal fishing boats to protect its diving ecotourism. The deputy Mayor of Barcelona has announced that anyone caught renting out unlicensed accommodation through airbnb in Barcelona will have to pay a fine reaching 10s of thousands of euros or allow their dwelling to be used for social housing for three years. etc etc.
This is news. About tourism and society. But you wouldn't see it on a mainstream tourism publication, because they are not really about tourism as an issue. They are about tourism as a product. Selling holiday experiences.
We live in this strange world where tourism is the largest service industry on the planet, responsible for vast levels of employment, and has enormous potential for harm and good, but it is generally treated as if it didn't exist by the media in terms of impact on society and the environment.
Even Cecil is not actually a news story. It's been happening every day for decades. And will have happened every day since the poor lion died. It's a social media storm. Imagine trying to pitch the story to the travel media if there hadn't been the social media furore. "Hi, I've got a story about an american dentist who went to zimbabwe and shot a lion.'
In fact, a couple of other headlines from travel weekly make the disconnect of tourism from issues (or rather how tourism media sees its position re real issues) even clearer:
"No cruise impact seen from Tianjin explosions"
"Myanmar floods occur during low season for river cruising"
i find these headlines really quite disturbing.
So... don't pitch issue stories to travel publications/editors. Pitch them to news publications/editors.
(ps, by way of enormous personal plug which i feel is relevant in this context, this is why Anula and I launched Travindy earlier this year. So that there is a tourism publication that focusses on news and features about issues. We'd love to hear from all of you with your stories. We'll publish them.)
@hitriddle Whichever animal is involved in tourism, there is always a potential issue. That's the simple, yet reliable thing to be aware of. We have to start from that point. Be cynical. Assume the worst. Ignore the fluff. It could be Dolphins. Whales. Sharks. Elephants. Rhinos. Huskies. Lions. Donkeys. Bears. Tigers. For each one of the animals listed, and many more besides, there are big issues.
However, there are also tour operators out there who are doing the right thing.
Too often though, because these people are committed to going the extra mile, and because they put wellbeing and the environment over short term profit, they often aren't the ones with the glossy websites, PR budgets, marketing savvy (Of course this is not always true). But my experience has been time and time again that they put every spare minute into making a difference, and not into marketing.
And this means that there are amazing safari lodges doing wonderful conservation work, but struggling along at 10% occupancy. While the guys revving their engines at the elephants are raking it in. Or whale watching outfits committed to best practices, seeing the operator next down the bay whizz past them and bring the tourists in too close.
Yet the conservation minded safari operator will actually give you a far better holiday experience as they spend their lives studying animal behaviour with love and curiosity. Whales have been shown to recognise different boat engine sounds, know which are the more groovy operators, and thus be more relaxed and hang around longer with them. Anyone who has ever ridden an elephant and also spent time at a well managed sanctuary not riding but walking with and observing knows which is more rewarding. In other words - the better the conservation / animal welfare, the better the tourism experience.
Most people respond better to carrots than sticks. Editors will be more excited by stories about great experiences than lectures on cruelty. Tourists are more likely to choose a better alternative for the animals if it is presented to them as a better experience for them too. As writers we are in an incredibly significant position to tell the right stories, to excite people to go on better holidays, and to support the people making a difference as a result.
We can still frame the stories such that the issues get in wherever possible - not always as much as we would like, but we can try, and if someone goes on a holiday we have written about, chances are they will now find themselves engaging with the operator about the issues on a far deeper level than they would when reading another blog.
Apparently I have law on my side... well something called Betteridge's Law anyway...
"Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states: "Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines