How to be an Animal Friendly Traveller Ep 5, S6
As travel borders begin to open post pandemic, some of us might be planning our first holiday in quite a while. On that itinerary might be a wild animal attraction and today we discuss how to ensure we are travelling responsibly when it comes to animal livelihood.
Animals globally are suffering at the hand of the tourism industry through degrading entertaining, living conditions, cruel training methods and trauma from their captivity. It’s important to remember that not all wild animal attractions are as pleasant as they may seem and to help me explore this topic today is World Animal Protection’s season campaigner and spokesperson, Ben Pearson.
Ben has more than 24 years of experience advocating for their environment and one of his key campaigns is exposing the hidden cruelties of wildlife tourism, educating Australia and Kiwi travellers and working with tour operators to reduce captive wildlife encounters with the goal of ensuring that wild animals aren’t exploited for entertainment.
Today’s conversation discusses some really encouraging advocacy, but also covers details on animal cruelty that some listeners may find distressing. But I hope you’ll still be able to listen and be part of this critical conversation.
Ben and I will explore some of the animals that are at the hand of abuse and cruelty in the travel space and how they find themselves there. We then learn how we can avoid contributing to this industry, and be part of the global goal of only encountering animals in the wild living the lives that they were meant to.
I hope you enjoy the episode.
You can visit World Animal Protection and learn about their work, donate or find out more on being an animal friendly traveller.
You can also connect with them on the below social channels: