Being Helpful? (or not): Backpacker travel and wild animal tourism

To do the trip that we are doing (56 days on an overland truck), it is difficult, but not impossible, to have a steady job. Thus, the majority of the folks have either quit their professional jobs and are traveling full time for a year or so or they have made traveling a way of life in between various seasonal jobs at ski resorts, restaurants, or house cleaning. Both types of folks are in what I would call the full-time backpacker travel scene where many of us have gone to the same destinations, had or seek many of the same adrenaline-inducing "adventures" , and have been very culturally and environmentally insensitive, and sensitive, at various moments. The full-time travel scene makes it feel like there is almost a circuit of well-worn paths through Southeast Asia, India, South America, Northern Africa, etc. to seek the same "different" adventures.


Antelope Park in Central Zim, our latest stop on the tour, offered the opportunity for both adventure and, arguably, environmental insensitivity. Antelope Park is a for-profit game park, which offers various opportunities to interact with some of Africa's charismatic mega-fauna: lions and elephants; and view giraffes, wildebeest, impala, zebra etc. from the back of it horses and elephants. Antelope Park also houses a non-profit organization "ALERT" dedicated to reintroducing captive lions into the wild.

The One-Armed Man

The owner of Antelope Park is an interesting one-armed man. I over-heard him in a heated discussion with some of his employees talking about how someone had written unflattering information about Antelope Park and he kept talking about how the "lions are happy." I can't verify with any certainity the authenticity of that statement about the lions. But we were told that the owner had spent decades working in the lion industry even though he lost his arm while stroking a lion through a cage. He allegedly had raised the lion that he was stroking when another lion (who he allegedly had not raised) came and grabbed his hand/arm and tried to pull him through the cage. The lion tore the flesh off his arm and he lost his arm from below the elbow. Even after that trauma, his life and livelihood revolves around lions.

Adrenaline Activities

The activities that Antelope Park (including ALERT) offer include: walking with lions, watching male lions fight over a feed, touring the lion breeding facility, viewing lion cubs, horse-back riding, elephant riding, elephant "training", and sitting in on a 2.5 hour research experience with the lions.




Except canoeing, Wilson chose to sit out the activities offered by Antelope Park. As he put it in an email to a friend, "I am the only person in the group who has opted out of the entire apparatus, it strikes me wrong that there is a business based around the subjection of, and access to, animals that should be as wild as possible." I, on the other hand, opted to do a package deal: canoe, bird watch, horse ride into their game park, elephant ride, walk with lions, and watch the lion feed.

Elephant Tourism

Even though I have an undergraduate degree in Zoology, I do not have a strong, fully-held opinion about when keeping wild animals in captivity is immoral. I appreciate zoos and feel that they fulfill important conservation purposes. And now, after riding an elephant and watching the elephant "training", to my shame, I admit that I have never thought carefully through the idea of riding an elephant. Instead, I have simply wanted to have that interactive experience with the majestic creature. The elephant experiences left me sorry that I had participated in them.




If you look closely at the above picture, the elephant is chained to the spot where she is being "trained." Her elephant trainer is giving her a treat for sucessfully completing the task of lifting him up while he is standing on her back. We were told that Antelope Park obtained their 4 elephants from another private game park after the elephants had been orphaned during a drought in the nineties. We were also told that the way they trained the elephants was not through giving corporal punishment but through giving treats.

In the picture above, while you can see the trainer giving the elephant treats, you can also see in the trainer's hand a metal stick with sharp points on the end. I saw him hit the elephant several times with the sharp points during the "training" and my touristic elephant ride. The elephant ride felt grotesque as I sat on a big pillow saddle with the trainer on top of the elephant's back and the trainer had to hit the elephant's neck with the sharp point to get the elephant to slow down when the elephant started to gallop.




Most of our fellow travellers were not interested in the elephants because they had had other elephant "experiences" in Asia where they had ridden elephants, or even watched the unnatural spectacle of elephants dancing or playing harmonica. I talked about my discomfort to others on the trip and some postulated that the hook might not really hurt the elephant because of its tough skin. But during the training, the trainer had told me that the elephants liked to be stroked because they had sensitive skin. One of our co-travelers had voluteered in an elephant shelter/conservation center in Laos and she told some horrific stories about the abuse of elephants. In particular, she said that trainers might often hit elephants in the same spot over and over again. Other people talked about riding on elephants in Asia with bloody foreheads. Finally, our co-traveller told us that for the Asian elephant, their spines are frequently damaged because they can't support the weight of the big boxes that you sometimes see on the backs of elephants. It wrenched my gut to see the elephants chained and hooked.

The several days at Antelope Park were a roller coaster of emotions, and I wish that I would have thought more deeply about the issues that are in play at this game park, and the multitude of others around the backpacker circuit, before I arrived.