Travel organizations ignore animal-cruelty
World Animal Protection urges travel associations to set stronger animal welfare guidelines for their members and to promote animal friendly tourism.
The World Animal Protection implies that over 550,000 wild animals are suffering in the tourism industry and urges travel associations to take their responsibility to protect these animals.
A research, done by the University of Surrey in the UK, showed that only 21 of the 62 researched travel associations had a page on their website regarding sustainable tourism. Many of these organizations had promotional pictures of wild animals interacting with tourists. Only two of the researched organizations had what the researchers defined as “appropriate animal welfare programmes”.
There are also risks to tourists involved when interacting with wild animals. In Thailand, 17 fatal accidents and 21 serious injuries have been reported between 2010 and 2016 from activities with captive elephants.
The World Animal Protection has so far gathered signatures from over 1.6 million people and 200 tour operators for their animal-friendly travel pledge, with the purpose of phasing out cruel wild life activities such as elephant riding and tiger selfies.