The number one way you can protect animals is by harnessing the power of your pocketbook. When you support animal-friendly services and avoid those that exploit animals, you use economics to your advantage. As a compassionate traveler, you'll want to be aware of the following ways in which you can keep your travel dollars from harming animals.
Avoid Certain Tours and Rides
Donkeys and horses are often used as a way to earn income from tourists through pony rides and donkey safaris. The animals are often malnourished, physically abused, and may even walk about with open wounds. These animals are expected to carry very heavy loads for extended periods of time. All too often, old, ill or pregnant animals who should not be ridden are offered for hire. Please do not support these enterprises. Let your tour guide and the manager in your hotel know that you are disturbed by such cruelty.
Don't Swim with the Dolphins
Humans are fascinated by the intelligent and gregarious nature of dolphins. As a result, dolphins are commercially exploited in marine parks, aquaria, and "swim with the dolphin" (SWTD) programs worldwide.
In the wild, dolphins live in large groups (called pods), often in tight family units. Social bonds may last a lifetime. They travel long distances each day, diving up to several hundred feet and staying underwater for up to half an hour. The sea is to dolphins as the air is to birds—a three-dimensional environment, where they can move up and down and side to side. Understanding this, it becomes clear to anyone that a life in captivity is tragic for these ocean creatures, even under the best possible conditions.
In addition, there are safety concerns associated with SWTD programs—particularly overseas, where regulation is often absent. Please do not participate in such programs and consider avoiding marine parks and aquaria that exhibit dolphins, manatees, and sharks. Make your concerns known to hotel and resort managers.
Help Stray Dogs and Cats
Stray dogs and cats are a common sight in many countries, and in the spring breeding season the problem is exacerbated. Feeding street animals does little to overcome the long-term problem of animal overpopulation. You can make a difference by encouraging restaurant and hotel management to work with local animal protection organizations to deal in a humane fashion with stray animals near these establishments, pointing out that doing so would make the area more appealing to visitors and safer for both animals and humans. You may also wish to make a contribution to a local animal welfare society to support spay/neuter programs.
Choose Souvenirs Carefully
Almost everyone wants to bring home a souvenir from their vacation. But before you purchase that souvenir, stop to consider its composition and origin. Was it made from an animal product such as ivory, bone, shell, or fur? If so, an animal died—probably many animals—to make the many copies of that souvenir to be sold to tourists like you. Consider also that trade in products such as coral or wood may involve destruction of habitat and threaten ecosystems. These products are natural resources whose removal is harmful to wilderness areas that provide homes to wildlife. Both animals and the environment will benefit if travelers refuse to purchase such items.
Avoid Cruel Photo-ops
Tourists generally love a good photo-op. Pictures of interesting or exotic spots capture happy memories of good times. They can also, however, serve as records of man's inhumanity towards the animal kingdom.
Cute monkeys, young lions, colorful parrots, and other animals and birds taken from the wild are sometimes posed outside restaurants or busy tourist attractions. For a nominal fee, needy local entrepreneurs will take the visitor's picture with these creatures. Tempting as it may be to want to support the local economy in this modest way, stop for a moment to consider the animals. Taken from the wild, usually as babies and often at the expense of killing their parents, these creatures are over handled and kept for long periods without food, water, and shelter. The larger and more dangerous animals may be drugged. When out of the public eye, they generally live in tiny cages, are fed inadequate and inappropriate diets, and denied veterinary care. And when they are old, sick or simply not cute any longer, they are abandoned.
Please help put a stop to such cruelty. Don't have your picture taken with animals that have been captured from the wild. Make your objection to such practices known to restaurant owners, your tour guide or another appropriate official. Remember that the best photo-op for animals is in their undisturbed natural habitat.
Study the Menu Carefully
You may have traveled only as far as your corner restaurant, or you may be dining in an eatery halfway around the world. However far you have roamed for your meal, you can make choices that affect animals.
There is a growing trend in fashionable restaurants: exotic fare. Lion, monkey, turtle, shark, and snake are only a few of the species that may appear on menus around the world. In some cases, restaurants are offering as meals species on the brink of extinction because of overhunting or overfishing. Even if the animals are not from jeopardized species, their capture may have caused habitat damage. And in many cases, individual animals have suffered in captivity prior to being killed for food.
Commonly served delicacies, such as milk-fed veal and paté de fois gras, may be made from animals who have endured abnormal conditions and force-feeding prior to slaughter.
You can help animals by avoiding such menu items. Better still, avoid frequenting establishments that advertise and serve these dishes. Be sure to let these restaurants know why you have chosen not to be a patron.
Entertainment or Cruelty?
Both in this country and abroad, animals are widely used for entertainment. They are made to participate in rodeos, bullfights, and circuses, are displayed in zoos and aquaria, and are sometimes even exhibited in hotels and restaurants. Many of these captive animals have been taken from their habitats and trained to perform unnatural tricks for tourists. The dancing bears in Eastern Europe are one example.
These animals often are subjected to improper housing and care. Many receive little, if any, veterinary attention. Everything about their lives—from diet to exercise (or lack thereof)—may be inappropriate and inadequate to their needs.
You can help reduce the proliferation of animal entertainments and displays by refusing to attend events involving animals or to visit animal displays. When a hotel, restaurant, or other tourist attraction features animals or birds, let your objections be known. Speak to the manager and to your tour operator and encourage your travel companions to do so as well.
