Primate Tourism: A Tool for Conservation?

Description

Primate tourism is a growing phenomenon, with increasing pressure coming from several directions: the private sector, governments, and conservation agencies. At the same time, some primate sites are working to exclude or severely restrict tourism because of problems that have developed as a result. Indeed, tourism has proven costly to primates due to factors such as disease, stress, social disruption, vulnerability to poachers, and interference with rehabilitation and reintroduction. Bringing together interdisciplinary expertise in wildlife/nature tourism and primatology, experts present and discuss their accumulated experience from individual primate sites open to tourists, formal studies of primate-focused tourism, and trends in nature and wildlife tourism. Chapters offer species- and site-specific assessments, weighing conservation benefits against costs, and suggesting strategies for the development of informed guidelines for ongoing and future primate tourism ventures. Primate Tourism has been written for primatologists, conservationists and other scientists. It is also relevant to tourists and tourism professionals.

Anne E. Russon is a Professor of Psychology at Glendon College, York University, Toronto, Canada, whose research focuses on learning and intelligence in ex-captive Bornean orangutans. She is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board to the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation, Indonesia, and several orang-utan conservation agencies. She has edited two volumes for Cambridge University Press: The Evolution of Thought: Evolution of Great Ape Intelligence (with D. R. Begun, 2004) and Reaching into Thought: The Minds of the Great Apes (with K. Bard and S. Parker, 1996). Janette Wallis has published extensively on a wide range of issues in primatology, including conservation. Currently, she is the Editor of the African Conservation Telegraph, the newsletter of the Society for Conservation Biology-Africa Section and the Budongo Forest Research Station's newsletter. She is on the Board of Directors for the Society for Conservation Biology-Africa Section, and Vice President for Conservation for the International Primatological Society. Previously, she has served as the Series Editor of the American Society of Primatologists' Book Series.

'Primate Tourism gives an excellent overview of the experiences with primate tourism, the positive and negative effects, and it provides recommendations for the solution of the problems.' Gorilla Journal '... this volume stands out in the breadth and depth of its studies and recommendations while providing much-needed perspective on the scope of the challenges facing primate tourism.' Primates 'The book illustrates well the complexity and diversity of primate tourism and its effects on primates, showing the difference in tourist settings, the variation across primate species in how they respond to tourism, as well as the difficulty more generally in assessing the impacts of primate tourism because of the different time scales over which these might occur ... currently the most comprehensive book about primate tourism, which excellently presents the current state of knowledge of this poorly studied field ... this book will be of great use for anyone interested in primate tourism, from researchers to students to tourism professionals. It is a must-have in your library.' Laetitia Marechal, Primate Eye