engleski

Exploring the Role of Wildlife Tourism: An Integrative Approach to Wildlife Management

Wildlife tourism becomes one of the growing tourism sectors. The numbers of tourists that are seeking for close interaction with wildlife in their natural environment is continuously growing. Understanding the interplay between economic benefits on one, and wildlife (environmental) on the other hand is becoming critical for sustainability. The paper contributes to the assessment and discussion of wildlife tourism management policy specific to the Croatian context. Stakeholders’ attitudes on these issues are analyzed using unique national survey data on different stakeholders and their attitudes. Questionnaires were sent to (1) tourist boards, (2) local and regional governments, and (3) animal protection associations, seeking information about potential development, habitat hazards, inquires and interest, and general environmental responsibility. The results illustrate several similarities between tourist board and animal protection associations in regard to the sensitivity of habitats, suggesting education as antecedent of wildlife tourism. The results also show a clear ambivalence to wildlife tourism among stakeholders. For animal protection associations, wildlife tourism will help or hinder the animals and habitat to the extent of knowledge about wildlife and managerial capabilities, making imperative to better define concrete moves to preserve species (not exert pro forma protection) which depends exclusively on the management of the area. In contrast, tourism boards identify economic benefit to be more important predictor for wildlife tourism, while the environmental issues have a much weaker impact. Lastly, this research showed an insignificant response from the local and regional government. The ambiguities revealed could pose major problems for wildlife tourism management and development. Given the different economic and environmental foundations of wildlife tourism, together with emerging understanding of their effects on habitat, analyzing the effects of both stakeholders simultaneously is essential to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the underlying relationships among wildlife and tourism.

Tourism management; Wildlife tourism; Stakeholders

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