How to be an Animal Friendly Traveller
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\xa0entertaining, living conditions, cruel training methods and trauma from their captivity. It\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\xa0World Animal Protection\xa0and learn about their work,\xa0donate\xa0or find out more on being an\xa0animal friendly traveller.
You can also connect with them on the below social channels: