The tourism industry plays a major role in the welfare of wildlife worldwide. We all want to see and be close to wildlife, but to what end? If you want to ensure that you’re always participating in ethical activities, the first step is to know what is unethical and why. Only once more people are aware of what kinds of activities are exploitative will there be a massive shift towards ethics.

This article will walk you through 15 examples of unethical wildlife tourism. When reading through these, remembering the key takeaway as the “rule” will help you determine if future activities you come across are ethical or unethical. Many of these themes repeat, so you’ll begin to see a pattern in these activities and understand why other activities that aren’t featured here are unethical.

1. Bathing Elephants

   The most apparent unethical elephant activity is participating in rides, to which the bath is considered an ethical alternative. Contrary to popular belief, it is NOT a more ethical alternative. One reason why is the amount of control one must have over the elephant to offer bathing activities safely.

   These elephants endure the same training methods as elephants that are giving rides to tourists because without such harsh training, there’s no way to ensure tourist safety in such a close contact situation. While participating in a bathing activity, the elephant is given commands to stay still, to blow water at certain times, told when to move, etc., which ultimately hinders their natural behaviors.

   Not to mention, elephants know how to bathe themselves. This natural behavior is something they do all on their own to keep their skin healthy and protected from the sun. But by humans forcing it upon them, we take away their natural ability to care for their bodies.

   Key takeaway: bathing elephants hinders natural behaviors, takes away their autonomy, and requires dominance training.

2. Cub Petting

   Cub petting is the practice of young carnivores (like tigers, lions, and cheetahs) being used for humans petting and cuddling with them. These young cubs should be with their mothers rather than being passed around from tourist to tourist just so people can pet them; however, this is not evident to everyone, proven by the fact that this is a major attraction worldwide.

   These cubs have elevated stress levels from constant human interaction and often have impacted health because they’re away from their mom most of the day or all the time. Even more problematic is that these animals are often later used for canned hunting.

   A canned hunt is a trophy hunt which is not a "fair chase" typically by having game animals kept in a confined area such as in a fenced ranch to prevent the animals' escape and make tracking easier for the hunter, to increase the likelihood of the hunter obtaining a kill (definition taken from Wikipedia).

   Tourists are often misled into thinking that cub petting is helpful to conservation efforts in some way because the animals are being bred for release. Unfortunately, animals that have such close contact with humans in this way at a young age are unfit for release and therefore, is actively opposing conservation efforts rather than supporting them.

   Key takeaway: cub petting causes poor welfare of the exploited animals and hinders conservation efforts of the species.

3. Visiting a Tiger Temple

   Tiger facilities that allow photo opportunities with fully grown tigers are a huge red flag, especially for anyone who has seen the behavior of wild tigers. The tigers are chained and often drugged to stay docile and allow close contact with humans. These tigers are often later killed for their parts and sold on the black market. Not to mention, they are often victims of the illegal wildlife trade.

   The photos obtained at these kinds of venues further promote the illegal wildlife trade because people who see them are influenced to believe that tigers make good pets. This is majorly contributing to tiger cruelty worldwide and has played a considerable role in the endangered status of wild tigers.

   Key takeaway: visiting sites that allow close contact with tigers encourages the illegal wildlife trade, black market sale of tiger parts, and animal cruelty.

4. Supporting Dancing Bears

   Dancing bears are most commonly seen in India, with sloth bears usually taken from the wild and brutally trained to dance like puppets on the streets for money. These bears are kept on ropes that go through their noses so the trainer can pull at it, inflicting pain, and get the bear to “dance.”

   This is done to get money from those who are walking down the street seeing the bears; however, by supporting this, we continue to encourage people to put more bears into this awful reality. This affects the conservation status of the bears as they’re being taken from the wild into captivity and subjects them to a life of suffering.

   Key takeaway: supporting dancing bears hinders conservation efforts and causes suffering to each bear.

5. Supporting Snake Charmers

   This is another practice that’s primarily common in Asian countries, like India, that are home to cobras. The reason for this being that most of the snakes are captured from the wild. I recently learned more about this unethical practice and for so long had no idea just how inhumane it was! In order to maintain safety while working with these snakes, the snakes often have their teeth pulled, their glands burned (as to not release venom), and their mouths sewn most of the way shut.

   This causes premature death from malnourishment and contributes to a great deal of suffering! If you see this practice, avoid giving any attention to it through photos or payment. Snake charming is beginning to decrease around the world as the demand falls but that can only continue as long as there aren’t tourists willing to entertain the practice.

   Key takeaway: this hinders conservation efforts of snakes and causes unbelievable suffering in each animal.

Now that we’ve gone in depth on some of the unethical wildlife practices out there, let’s take a look at ten more and just hit the key takeaways, as many are in a similar theme to the above five.

Additional Unethical Wildlife Activities

1. Holding Sea Turtles

   Holding sea turtles causes stress in the animal and can result in severe injuries from being dropped. This hinders conservation efforts to save sea turtles from extinction.

2. Circuses & Performing Animals

   Any animal performances prioritize human entertainment over animal welfare. These animals are trained using harsh methods and live in suboptimal conditions, often resulting in injuries.

3. Swimming with Dolphins

   Swimming with dolphins forces close contact between humans and dolphins, resulting in elevated stress levels. Many of these dolphins live in smaller-than-ideal, captive environments that do not meet their physical need for exercise and enrichment. It’s very common for these dolphins to get severe infections from living in unclean small tanks.

4. Baited Cage Diving

   Whenever an animal is being baited, it causes problems. Not only does this make the activity more dangerous for humans, but it also changes the predators’ behavior and causes them to connect humans with food. This can lead to potentially deadly accidents in the future with the very same sharks. Any time there is human-shark conflict it ends with a massive hunt of sharks in that region, which is detrimental for conservation efforts.

5. Wildlife Markets and Cafes

   Giving money to any market or cafe that owns or sells wildlife supports the illegal trade and unethical living standards for those animals. These places generally take the animals from the wild, which undermines conservation efforts.

6. Riding an Ostrich

   Not to even be specific to ostriches, riding animals, in general, is the result of a breaking process. Whenever a wild animal is being ridden, that means the animal was broken with dominance-based training for practically no reason besides entertainment.

7. Animal Poop Coffee Plantations

   Plantations such as the Luwak coffee farms in Bali force animals to eat coffee beans rather than their usual diet. This leads to health problems, malnourishment and captures animals often from the wild to live in cages. Why not just opt for a normal cup of coffee instead?

8. Whale & Dolphin Performances

   Whale and dolphin performances get a lot of media attention due to actions from organizations like Sea World. Whales and dolphins are incredibly difficult to keep in captivity because they require such expansive habitats to thrive. We simply cannot provide them the space they need in order to stay psychologically and physically health in captivity.

9. Holding Sloths and Primates

   The trend of taking selfies with sloths has become incredibly harmful to the greater population. In order to meet demand these animals are often taken from the wild, dressed up, and paraded around for money from tourists. Because these sloths’ basic needs aren’t met and they’re held right side up all day everyday for photos, they often struggle from health issues and die very young. This is both cruel and harmful to conservation efforts.

10. Elephants Painting

    Paying to get art created by an elephant further supports cruel training methods and unnatural behavior. Elephants are forced to paint by applying strong pressure to parts of their ears and neck that are particularly sensitive, making it a stressful experience for them.

Of course, there are so many more examples of unethical wildlife tourism that we could get into; however, by remembering some of the common themes we’ve established, you will be better equipped to decide for yourself when faced with something potentially harmful to wildlife. It’s vital to ask yourself if there is any conservation value in the activity. Even if a certain attraction states they contribute to conservation, think critically about how that activity could benefit the greater good of the species.

Question if the activity is primarily profit-based or if your funds are going back into an ethical project. Anything primarily based on human entertainment is unlikely to have much conservation value and will likely be exploitative for the animal. Remember to do your research before engaging in animal activities because it truly does impact the future of conservation.