GIANT OTTERS AND ECOTOURISM
As the most easily managed and viewed large, predatory mammal in Latin American rainforests, the Giant Otter can and should become a key ecotourism icon, akin to the Lion of east and southern Africa. Surely Giant Otters can be tourism stars while benefiting wildlife and the local economy. Researchers should test and refine new models of otter tourism in scores of locations less than three hours' travel from jetports in the Amazon, Pantanal, and Orinoco. Sensitively designed tourism projects could create thousands of jobs and thus generate economic and political support for the long term protection of increasingly-threatened South American rainforests.
The question, then, is what methods of tourism both protect the otters and please jaded, globetrotting tourists? If you are not close enough to the otters to realize how powerful and terrifying they can be, or if the otters are not predictable enough to be shown on schedule and at an affordable price, then they will never be ecotourism stars. Research to date suggests that certain otter groups (perhaps one out of every 100 or 200 wild families) are geographically and biologically suited to serve as toursim ambassadors for the entire species. Such families are unusually accessible, predictable, and accustomed to being watched by humans at close range. Probably most applied research on how to showcase otters responsibly and effectively should take place with these few, particularly accessible and promising families.
At least two interesting models of Giant Otter tourism have been developed in Peru and Brazil since 1985. The Peruvian model was developed by Munn and his WCS team of otter researchers in Manu National Park, while the even more exciting, but potentially problematical Brazilian model was developed by local tour guides since 1995 in the Pixaim River 65 kilometres down the Transpantaneira Road from the town of Pocone. This latter site is only a 2.5-hour, year-round drive from the excellent jetport at Cuiaba.
THE AMAZING BRAZILIAN MODEL FROM THE PIXAIM RIVER, NORTH PANTANAL.
Since 1995, 50,000 tourists have marvelled at the boat drivers and local tour guides as they hand feed an incredibly-habituated wild family of Giant Otters on the 70-m-wide Pixaim River, which crosses under the raised Tranpantaneira dirt road 65 km south of the town of Poconé in the northern Pantanal of Brazil. A full treatment of this phenomenon appears in a six-page article by Charles Munn in the June 2005 issue of BBC Wildlife Magazine. This hand feeding does not appear to be harming the otters, but Munn suggests that Brazilians modify this spectacle to prevent an over-eager otter from accidentally nipping a boatman or tourist. Furthermore, this model is not ideal in that it casts the otters as Labrador retrievers instead of showcasing their unique biology and behaviour. For further details, see the magazine, which features photos of these tame otters interacting with admiring tourists and boat drivers.
TOURISM MANAGEMENT OF GIANT OTTERS IN MANU
By 1990, Munn’s WCS team had worked out the perfect method of Giant Otter tourism----modeled on the one-tour-group-at-a-time WCS method of observing Mountain Gorillas at close range in the national parks in Rwanda. The otter researchers used walkie-talkies to call one tourist canoe at a time to observe the otter group from close range. Each tourist canoe had no degrees of freedom, but rather watched the otters from the least obtrusive, but close spot, which was chosen not by the guide of the tourist canoe, but rather by the otter researcher. Until Brazilians developed the Pixaim model described above, the Manu method offered the world’s only close range, extended viewing of giant otters.
From 1983 to 1988, the relatively pricey tours to Manu grew from 20 to 700 tourists per year, largely based on the fulfilled promise of excellent otter viewing. In the early 1990s, however, this close-range otter tourism drew concern from a new team of otter researchers supported by the Frankfurt Zoological Society (FZS), Christof Schenck and Elke Staib, who feared that even well-executed, close range viewing might disrupt otter reproduction. Their worries were largely based on their having witnessed tragic failures in Giant Otter reproduction on public exhibit in a German zoo. They did not want the same fate to befall the otters of Manu. Despite the unproven nature of these concerns, authorities responded to the concerns of the FZS researchers by closing many of the best otter viewing lakes. These closures made it much harder for tourists to view the Manu otters predictably and at close range. While these restrictions were based on valid conservation concerns, the WCS team led by Munn argued that, paradoxically, these precautionary efforts were in fact counterproductive to long-term conservation of the otters and their rainforest habitat.
Tourist numbers to Manu have remained at about 2,400 to 2,800 visitors per year since 2000. By contrast, tourism to less restricted otter viewing areas in lakes in nearby Tambopata, Peru, has skyrocketed from less than 500 in 1996 to over 11,000 in 2005. The relative stagnation of the nascent tourism industry in Manu has resulted in the government being uninterested in protecting the region’s biodiversity from the region’s economically-important, legal and illegal loggers and gold miners. Loggers and miners are major threats to the otters, with loggers shooting otters and other sensitive wildlife and miners spilling mercury into rivers, leading to highly toxic fish eaten by SE Peru’s 200 giant otters and 80,000 people.
