Designing wildlife-based tourism programmes for managing species of high conservation value

Wildlife-based tourism is widely heralded as a potential conservation tool yet controversy surrounds its actual contributions to conservation. While negative consequences are typically target technical problems in delivery,... [ view full abstract ]

Wildlife-based tourism is widely heralded as a potential conservation tool yet controversy surrounds its actual contributions to conservation. While negative consequences are typically target technical problems in delivery, procedural or governance malfunctions such as inadequate and ineffective decision making are often overlooked.  Although rarely applied within a tourism context, the policy sciences provide a theory and practical framework to understand the context of and improve the content for designing an effective natural resource management policy process.  We applied a policy sciences approach to describe how an understanding of decision context embedded within the policy process can help lead to common interest solutions that ultimately improve the sustainability of wildlife-based tourism.  We demonstrate its utility by documenting and appraising a real-world rhinoceros-based tourism enterprise prototype in north-west Namibia operating since 2003.  Strengths observed in the decision process were the inclusive nature throughout, the participant’s willingness and ability to reconcile different perspectives and objectives by finding common interest solution based on shared values such as human and rhinoceros well-being.  The policy process could have been improved by mandating top management conduct more site visits and more frequent and independent appraisals are compiled.  Our results suggest a series of prototypic elements that are transferable including the establishment of a shared decision-making arena, adopting a fully inclusive management-oriented research agenda, employing a strategic messaging approach as a means to motivate compliance and possibly increase philanthropic behavior by tourists, and emphasizing a learning approach through role reversal opportunities that harness values for guides and trackers.  In order to facilitate replication, attention should target establishing deeper engagements with conservancy(s) who host emerging rhinoceros tourism enterprises, expanding the research agenda to include tourism’s role towards influencing pro-rhinoceros behavior change in both tourists and local community members.  We suggest that conservation tourism, designed and managed holistically as a complex SES, has the potential to serve as a critical social foundation upon which additional protection measures for high-value, highly-threatened species such as law enforcement can function more effectively.