Penguin tourism: how many people are visiting wild penguins?

GARCIA BORBOROGLU, P.; WAGNER, ERICK; BOERSMA, DEE

Dunedin

Congreso; International Penguin Congress; 2019

University of Otago

Penguins are popular. If tourists can access them in the wild they will make the journey. Consulting many sources, we found 298 sites that support penguin-related tourism in the wild. Antarctica had the most sites with 123; Namibia had the fewest with one. Every species of penguin is exposed to tourists. Visited colonies ranged in size from more than 1,000,000 breeding pairs (e.g., Macquarie Island, Australia) to fewer than 20 (several sites). While estimates were available for over 90% of sites, they varied in recentness and reliability. Often there was no current information on whether colony size was increasing, stable, or declining. The number of annual visitors was tracked at only 49% of sites, and ranged from >750,000 per year (Phillip Island, Australia) to fewer than twenty (various sites, Antarctica). Excluding Antarctica and the Galápagos Islands, where visits are more closely regulated, less than half of sites had management plans beyond federal wildlife laws. Entrance fees varied, from free to more than US$100. The fees tourists paid often did not go to support penguin conservation. Guided tours were available at over 90% of sites, but in extreme cases, tourism was so poorly managed that sites became overdeveloped, contributing to declines in local reproductive success. Information for sites was generally sparse, making fundamental questions about tourism sustainability difficult to answer. Penguin-related tourism operates mostly in a black box, with substantial information gaps that need to be filled if tourism is to benefit the penguins people want to see.