2001 Sustainable Wildlife Tourism Convention

The Sustainable Wildlife Tourism Convention was held at the Wrest Point Convention Centre in Hobart, Tasmania.

A reception on Sunday 28th October 2001 welcomed all delegates, followed by concurrent presentations on Monday 29th and workshops and a closing session on Tuesday 30th October.

Overview
Program
Presentations
Summary of Proceedings
Outcomes
Future Conference

Overview

Australia’s first national convention to explore the future of wildlife tourism was held in Hobart, Tasmania on 28-30 October 2001, jointly hosted by the CRC for Sustainable Tourism and Tourism Tasmania. The conference brought together a wide range of stakeholders including operators, government and academics, and led to recommendations towards a sustainable future for Australian wildlife tourism.

A total of 141 delegates were officially registered, in addition to a number of guests. The delegates consisted of tourism operators (22%), government conservation agency staff (22%), government tourism agency staff (6%), academics and students (39%) and representatives of a variety of other conservation and tourism-related groups.

There was strong media interest in the conference, with 13 news items appearing in newspapers, radio and TV around Australia.

Program of Events

The formal proceedings consisted of 5 keynote presentations (including 3 international speakers), 58 concurrent presentations, and a set of workshops and a plenary session designed to generate recommendations and initiate further action. In addition there were a series of field trips showcasing Tasmanian wildlife tourism, and a conference dinner held at Mt Field National Park.

An optional workshop on the development of a Wildlife Tourism Website was held on the Tuesday afternoon at the University of Tasmania.

Presentations

The presentations were arranged under four themes:

Industry Planning and Development
Managing Environmental Impacts
Integrating Wildlife Tourism and Conservation
Products and Markets

Authors have submitted their conference presentations to be made available on this website. These presentations have been converted to pdf format from either word or powerpoint documents. The presentations are listed below in alphabetical order by surname of the author. For a detailed list of presentation titles and authors, please download the SWTC Program and Abstracts (pdf 768kb).

Please note that most images in the presentations have been deleted for copyright reasons, we apologize for any formatting or reading difficulties.

Copyright Notice

All work contained in these presentations is copyright, and authors also assert their moral rights in this work. Apart from any fair dealing as permitted by the copyright law of your country, all reproduction in any form or transmission by any method is forbidden without the express permission of the authors. The CRC for Sustainable Tourism has published this work on the World Wide Web with the permission of the authors.

Sustainable Wildlife Tourism Convention Presentations

Bennett, Mark (pdf 183kb)
Boyle, Alicia (pdf 33kb)
Burns, Leah (pdf 560kb)
Cameron, Phil (pdf 54kb)

Davies, Joanne (pdf 44kb)
De Lacy, Terry (pdf 257kb)
Eagles, Paul (pdf 687kb)
Ellis, Claire (pdf 119kb)
Fausnaugh, Carolyn (pdf 54kb)

Galletly, Anne (pdf 48kb)
Giese, Melissa (pdf 393kb)
Gyuris, Emma (pdf 446kb)
Ham, Sam and Weiler, Betty (pdf 32kb)
Higginbottom, Karen (pdf 76kb)

Higginbottom, Karen ? Plenary (pdf 56kb)
Higham, James (pdf 1,934kb)
Ingram, Colin (pdf 246kb)
Kerr, Anne (pdf 105kb)
King, Narelle (pdf 101kb)

Kriwoken, Lorne (pdf 243kb)
Mallinson, Jeremy (pdf 36kb)
Manteit, Mark (pdf 15kb)
McIntyre, Mick (pdf 462kb)
Moncrieff, Daryl (pdf 272kb)

Nevard, Tim (pdf 189kb)
Newell, David (pdf 476kb)
Northrope, Chelsea (pdf 43kb)
Page, Skye (pdf 138kb)
Tremblay, Pascal ? A (pdf 981kb)

Tremblay, Pascal ? B (pdf 42kb)
Rann, Kelley (pdf 15kb)
Rodger, Kate (pdf 805kb)
Saltzer, Rebecca (pdf 153kb)
Scott, Noel (pdf 161kb)

Sofield, Trevor (pdf 810kb)
Stokes, Tony (pdf 386kb)
Tanner, Zoe (pdf 334kb)
Tribe, Andrew (pdf 352kb)

Summary of Proceedings

For a free copy of the proceedings from the conference, please download either the complete or summarized version:

Outcomes

The following recommendations for the future of wildlife tourism in Australia were generated through the workshop and plenary processes, and were supported by the vast majority of delegates. A number of mechanisms to achieve these objectives were also discussed.

It was recommended that the overall goal of planning and development in relation to wildlife tourism in Australia should be to develop a ‘strong diverse industry which supports biodiversity conservation’.

The recommended priority objectives to be addressed were as follows:

Build coordination and communication channels between wildlife tourism stakeholders
Enhance development of wildlife tourism businesses
Ensure adequate funding of relevant authorities/ interested parties to ensure management of acceptable (priority) environmental impacts (and identification of unacceptable impacts)
Identify, evaluate and monitor activities and environmental impacts associated with wildlife tourism on the environment
Improve awareness and understanding of domestic legislation and regulation; treaties and conventions; guidelines; standards; codes of conduct and ethics dealing with the environmental impacts of wildlife tourism
Strategically increase links between wildlife tourism and conservation
Improve conservation-related education
Assess product quality
Develop excellent guides
Obtain knowledge of, and meet consumer expectations

Further Actions to progress recommendations

A working group was formed consisting of 27 of the delegates. This group is to work on progressing the above recommendations. This will include sending letters and seeking audiences with government representatives, and developing practical action plans.

Future Conference

Delegates supported the idea of holding another wildlife tourism conference in approximately two years time.