Ecotourism & wildlife: To feed or not to feed?

Whit­ney and his part­ner were them­selves charged by the New Hamp­shire Depart­ment of Fish & Game with allegedly feed­ing bears on their prop­erty. Fish & Game said they had received mul­tiple com­plaints about an increased bear pres­ence in neigh­bour­hoods near the couple’s home.

The Whit­neys have since stopped feed­ing bears on their prop­erty but their idea to do it out in the woods as a tour­ism attrac­tion has attrac­ted some polit­ic­al and sci­entif­ic support.

The ques­tion of wheth­er wild black bears should be fed by humans or left to their own devices has divided bear bio­lo­gists. Accord­ing to the Sen­tin­al Source, fish & game depart­ments across the USA reck­on res­id­ents should remove all incent­ives for bears to enter pop­u­lated areas, includ­ing food, while some research­ers argue that con­trolled feed­ing can some­times be to the bears’ benefit.

Oppon­ents of feed­ing say that it accli­mates bears to humans, elim­in­ates fear, and induces unpre­dict­able and dan­ger­ous beha­viour from bears look­ing for more food. Sup­port­ers of con­trolled feed­ing say that, if done stra­tegic­ally, the prac­tice can divert bears away from pop­u­lated areas and sus­tain healthy growth, an approach known as “diver­sion­ary feeding.”

Lynn Rogers, a bear bio­lo­gist based in Min­nesota, is the primary pro­ponent of diver­sion­ary feed­ing. Rogers told the Sen­tin­al Source that most of the argu­ments used by fish & game depart­ments against feed­ing are rooted in mis­con­cep­tion. Bears don’t leave the woods because they’re acclimated to humans. They leave the woods due to a scarcity of food. Feed­ing bears nat­ur­al foods like seeds and nuts in situ sus­tains them through tough periods.

Andrew Tim­mins, a bear bio­lo­gist for New Hamp­shire Fish & Game, argues that while diver­sion­ary feed­ing is use­ful in lim­ited scen­ari­os – where food is scarce and bears are run­ning rampant – con­tinu­al feed­ing adds to the like­li­hood of dan­ger­ous situ­ations and may lead to over­pop­u­la­tion and long-term prob­lems for the ecosystem.

New Jer­sey school­teach­er Aman­da Brew­er took this photo while cage diving off Seal Island in Mos­sel Bay, South Africa. The photo went vir­al and stirred up a debate about cage diving. Source: Nation­al Geo­graph­ic Your Shot

Sim­il­ar pro and con argu­ments have been raised around white shark cage diving. It is claimed by some that the sharks asso­ci­ate a food source – the chum, bur­ley, and bait used to attract them – with boats and humans. Thus the prac­tice leads to more shark attacks. Oth­ers point to research indic­at­ing that cage diving does not increase the risk.

Who is to be believed?

What we do know is that there are very few oppor­tun­it­ies for the major­ity of people to get close to awe-inspir­ing spe­cies in their wild, nat­ur­al hab­it­ats. View­ing plat­forms, shark cages, and sim­il­ar products that rely on lur­ing wild anim­als with food are by far the most afford­able and accessible.

So rather than the out­right ban­ning of such products, why not closely reg­u­late and mon­it­or them accord­ing to the evolving sci­entif­ic evid­ence for the spe­cies and hab­it­at in ques­tion? What if “fish & game”, “parks & wild­life”, and equi­val­ent gov­ern­ment depart­ments were the pub­lic-sec­tor part­ners in such ven­tures, if not the oper­at­ors themselves?

By tak­ing a prag­mat­ic and adapt­able sci­entif­ic approach the pos­it­ives of such products may well out­num­ber the neg­at­ives; and the eco-inspir­a­tion­al and enviro-edu­ca­tion­al poten­tial of such exper­i­ences will be a bet­ter match for the creature-fea­ture sensational.

What do you think?

Source: This post is based on a brief sum­mary of a news art­icle in the Sen­tin­al Source. Please read the full art­icle for more detail and quotes. Fea­tured image: Black bear with sal­mon by unknown via Wiki­me­dia.