Khaki Clare
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Insta Egos & Travel Ethics

The travel stuff that may not be fun or sexy, but is definitely good for you.

Some call it ‘responsible’ or ‘sustainable’ travel, but like a lot of processed junk, there’s often a lot behind the label.

Let’s remove the additives and get back to basics - this is about tossing out all the white noise, and helping you figure out what’s good for you.

To Interact or Not to Interact - Up Close and Personal with Wildlife

 
Hanging out with Jabu at Stanley’s Camp in the Okavango Delta. Jabu was considered a ‘problem animal’ and would have been put down, until Doug & Sandy Groves adopted him and gave him the closest life to a truly wild one as possible.

Hanging out with Jabu at Stanley’s Camp in the Okavango Delta. Jabu was considered a ‘problem animal’ and would have been put down, until Doug & Sandy Groves adopted him and gave him the closest life to a truly wild one as possible.

To interact, or not to interact?

There’s a lot of debate around the moral obligation to “pick a side” when it comes to wildlife interactions.

Given how emotional the issue is, and how many purely profit-driven operations carry cereal-box “conservation credentials’, it’s harder and harder for the average person to sort the wheat from the chaff.


While it may be tempting to tar all operations with the same brush & flat-out abstain, doing this can starve genuine conservation projects of an income much-needed to provide the “next best” existence to a life in the wild for genuine wildlife refugees. 
I’m not a card-carrying wildlife biologist, or an experienced enough conservationist to tell anyone to listen to my opinion alone, however for a quick way of pulling out the most obvious weeds, I like to ask these questions:

1. Where did these animals come from? Are they genuine rescues, or were they “bred to be there”? -

2. Can they live a wild existence? Is their presence at the project necessary, or optional?

3. Can these animals be re-wilded? And is this project interested in, or currently exploring those options?

4. Does this project REQUIRE the sourcing of a future captive population in order to exist? Or does it exist REGARDLESS of the individuals in its care?

5. Does this project collaborate with recognized wildlife research projects and/or universities and is it sharing its data? Have any of its staff obtained PhDs in a relevant field of study or published papers in recognized scientific journals that show an intelligent working through of the data collected which could benefit future research?

6. What’s happened to previous individuals no longer in their care? If they’ve been released, are they being actively tracked and monitored to measure their success in the wild?

If you get good answers to the above, then congratulations, you may be looking at a genuine conservation project. If there’s doubt, drill deeper. It often doesn’t take much for phony projects to come unstuck.

Some serious sweeties in residence at Elephants Without Borders’ elephant orphanage in Kasane, Botswana

Some serious sweeties in residence at Elephants Without Borders’ elephant orphanage in Kasane, Botswana

 
safari, wildlife interactionsClare Doolanwildlife interactions, conservation, sustainable travel, animal interactionsComment