Most people want wild animals to survive and even thrive in wilds on Earth, and some are willing to donate money to make that happen. (Or vote to make others pay.) Some others are willing to pay to watch TV and movies made in such settings. But in Africa, most financial support for wild animals comes from tourists; people are willing to pay to see them up close. I recently spent two weeks “on safari” in Africa doing just that. We mostly visited wildlife parks near the Chobe and Zambezi rivers (in South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Zambia).
The most popular brand of environmentalism seems like this kind of weird new neo-paganist thing that hates that sort of thing, for them, there seems to be this unspoken almost religious reverence for not interacting with the animals.
Maybe a enclosed, carbon fiber exoskeleton? would be marginally cooler than a Jeep I would think. Maybe you could even touch the animals. Not sure whether it could be strong enough to safely handle something like a rhino or elephant attack.
I think drone safaris, where the guest operates a drone with a vr interface, have huge potential. VR interfaces and drones have both advanved very quickly over the last 10 or 20 years and are likely to continue for a while. Drone-mediated interaction that puts no humans at risk of injury and where a supervising employee can stro in andtake control of the drone if a customer endangers an animal, solves or mitigates much of the risks of direct interaction, but with a good enough interface, much of the immediacy of the direct interaction experience could be achieved, as the customer is not restricted to passively observing.
It could easily turn into a disaster if a tourist was killed from getting too close to animals.
The other issue is an adverse incentive on the part of the tour operator. Perhaps there is some level and frequency of approach to animals that is not harmful to them, or for which the harm is outweighed by increased wildlife funding. But who is deciding on what that level and frequency of approach is? Who is policing the tour operator to ensure that this level and frequency of approach is not exceeded? Each operator has a profit incentive to exceed it. If the level of permissible approach is not set properly, or not obeyed, then tourists could cause disruption to wildlife that outweighs the incoming funding.
If a natural resource can be exploited for profit, damaging it in the process, what typically happens is that the profits from exploiting the resource are not sufficiently allocated to protection and management of the natural resource, leading to long-term harm for the resource. We see this with overfishing, logging, pollution. We'd expect to see it also for close-up wildlife tourism.
Trophy hunting tags are an extreme version of this, right? A negligible % of elephants are killed for sport, people pay more for the right to do so, at least if the industry is properly controlled.Found this: https://savesafaris.com/pri...Don't know if the trophy price is on top of the hunting package price, but I presume it is. say roughly 40k per elephant if you take into account failed hunts. I don't know how expensive your safari was but kind of fits the model.
The most popular brand of environmentalism seems like this kind of weird new neo-paganist thing that hates that sort of thing, for them, there seems to be this unspoken almost religious reverence for not interacting with the animals.
This would violate that.
Maybe a enclosed, carbon fiber exoskeleton? would be marginally cooler than a Jeep I would think. Maybe you could even touch the animals. Not sure whether it could be strong enough to safely handle something like a rhino or elephant attack.
Each operator has a profit incentive to exceed it.Yes, but also an incentive to not do that. As you pointed out:
It could easily turn into a disaster if a tourist was killed from getting too close to animals.That would not be a profitable outcome.
I think drone safaris, where the guest operates a drone with a vr interface, have huge potential. VR interfaces and drones have both advanved very quickly over the last 10 or 20 years and are likely to continue for a while. Drone-mediated interaction that puts no humans at risk of injury and where a supervising employee can stro in andtake control of the drone if a customer endangers an animal, solves or mitigates much of the risks of direct interaction, but with a good enough interface, much of the immediacy of the direct interaction experience could be achieved, as the customer is not restricted to passively observing.
It could easily turn into a disaster if a tourist was killed from getting too close to animals.
The other issue is an adverse incentive on the part of the tour operator. Perhaps there is some level and frequency of approach to animals that is not harmful to them, or for which the harm is outweighed by increased wildlife funding. But who is deciding on what that level and frequency of approach is? Who is policing the tour operator to ensure that this level and frequency of approach is not exceeded? Each operator has a profit incentive to exceed it. If the level of permissible approach is not set properly, or not obeyed, then tourists could cause disruption to wildlife that outweighs the incoming funding.
If a natural resource can be exploited for profit, damaging it in the process, what typically happens is that the profits from exploiting the resource are not sufficiently allocated to protection and management of the natural resource, leading to long-term harm for the resource. We see this with overfishing, logging, pollution. We'd expect to see it also for close-up wildlife tourism.
Trophy hunting tags are an extreme version of this, right? A negligible % of elephants are killed for sport, people pay more for the right to do so, at least if the industry is properly controlled.Found this: https://savesafaris.com/pri...Don't know if the trophy price is on top of the hunting package price, but I presume it is. say roughly 40k per elephant if you take into account failed hunts. I don't know how expensive your safari was but kind of fits the model.