Leave the Lion Alone!!! : Reflection of Ecotourism
I can recall the scenario as if it happened yesterday. It was a marvelous evening in the Limpopo region of South Africa (close to the border of Mozambique on the northeastern side), the blood red sun was just starting to kiss the African horizon. Illuminating the sky with wonderful hues of peach and sapphire. Amongst the reeds of a dry river bed about 100 meters to our left, a majestic male lion was taking a siesta on the cool ochre sand. As I sat in the back row of the safari vehicle, I reminisced on my experience in Africa. I had been in a volunteering program centered on wildlife biology and conservation that highlighted the big five species: that would be the cape buffalo, rhinoceros, leopard, elephant and of course the mighty lion. That moment, as the African sun made a slow and dramatic exit from the sky and the evening chorus of birds and insects droned on, I felt at peace and embraced the overwhelming serenity and power of the wilderness.
Then the moment is abruptly ruined, as another vehicle approached with a group of smiling tourists in its seats being driver by an obnoxious Afrikaner tour guide. Not only is speaking loudly, which scares away the birds, he drives directly to the resting lion only to stop just feet away from the annoyed predator. In one fell swoop, reality had just charged in and punched me in the face. This wasn’t a true wilderness, it was a private game reserve. Not even the animals were wild, they’d been made into commercial livestock. Mere curiosities to be bombarded by gawking tourists who disrespect not only them, but the rules that kept man and animal safe.
This is the memory that replays in the back of my mind as I read the chapter of tourism in the book Communicating Nature by Julia Corbett. In this chapter, she illustrates the flaws of eco-tourism that go beyond the simple irritation of litter. Corbett highlights the commodification of many of the “wild” places of earth at the detriment of fauna, the landscape, locals and the very essence of nature itself. The part that strikes a chord with me would have to be her description of the treatment of the individuals that call these lands home and the overall summarization of the chapter.
About the treatment of people that live around or even in these eco-tourism zones, Julia Corbett illustrates how natives can be sidelined in the effort to make a profit from natural areas. The example she provides in her book is the treatment of the Native Americans of the Blackfoot tribe native to the region surrounding Yellowstone. In this scenario, the natives are dehumanized and made to “post up” on the sides of roads and forced to sell the National Park to passersby. I myself can recall articles of the treatment of the San people of the Kalahari in southwest Africa. The San people are among the oldest cultures on earth and the last to practice what is known as the “persistence hunt” where they run their quarry to exhaustion wearing nothing save for a loincloth and a headband and armed with a spear. In the early 2000s, several parks in Namibia and South Africa did not take kindly to the idea of tourists witnessing naked bush men chasing down seemingly helpless antelopes across the dry landscape. And so, the San were forcibly removed by the government from land they have hunted and lived on for nearly 100,000 years! There are numerous examples of indigenous peoples being displaced to uphold the false image of a landscape portrayed by some tourist company or organization that should serve as a warning to would be tourists that they may be purchasing the persecution of people when they buy their tickets to eco-tourism destinations.
The treatment of individuals that call places of natural beauty home is enough to make me question my next ventures to what is advertised as “the wild”. Even so, Corbett adds the icing to the morbid tale of ecotourism in her summary of the chapter:
“ Much of outdoor leisure seems swallowed by the marketplace and or altered by the shovel and bulldozer, which repositions our perception and relationship to nature. The messages in many leisure realms: products are needed to enjoy leisure, artifice is preferable, and humans are in control of nature. We don’t need to cite Disney or the World Project in Dubai as examples of the intentional creation of an artifice for our leisure enjoyment, for plenty of examples exist in our daily environs.”(Corbett, 146)
This harkens back that experience on the private reserve in Africa. There, not even some of the research was real. Part of our “research” was to record the locations of the key species( not only the big five on the reserve, but also a coalition of cheetah that were part of a conservation effort) so that the safari drivers could move their tourist laden vehicles to position and harass the wildlife. This was a cheap trick to make the tourist believe that the park was thick with exciting big game and that the safari guides were such experts in their fields that they could locate the animals as if by some mysterious tracking mojo. In truth, the volunteers that were in the actual study program, me included, could drive around the park for an entire morning or evening and not see so much as a single impala as many of the animals would simply hide away at the sound of an approaching engine. A far cry from the advertised image of an unspoiled African wilderness teaming with life. There was an abundance of fauna of course, but if you drove outside the park gate and proceeded for 25–40 minutes down the highway in either direction you’d run into a slum in one direction and the wealthier “white” town in the other. And as I watch this idiot harass this lion with a rifle surely stashed away in the vehicle somewhere just in case the big cat decided he’d had enough, I ask myself: Why don’t we all just leave him the hell alone for just one day? I’m certain the lion would agree.
Book Source:
Corbett, Julia B. Communicating Nature: How We Create and Understand Environmental Messages. Island Press, 2006.