Penguins connecting the world: the global social-economic power of penguins.

A RAYA REY; K PÜTZ; PIZARRO, J. CRISTOBAL

Congreso; international penguin conference; 2019

Penguins, considered mega charismatic wildlife, attract hundreds of thousands of tourists to their nesting sites ever year. However, social ecological economic benefits and impacts from penguin colony visitation have been poorly studied. We adapted and employed the coupled human and natural systems (CHANS) approach and telecoupling framework to integrate social and biological information and to obtain a more holistic understanding of current human-penguin dynamics and trends. We synthesized research outputs at three sites/penguin colonies. The Antarctic Peninsula receives 40,000 tourist per year with a flow of money of around 201millon U$S. Martillo Island (Tierra del Fuego) receives 29,000 tourists representing 1.8 millon U$S and Punta Tombo (Chubut) receives 90,000 tourists and 4 millon U$S, plus 0.5 millon U$S in fees used for maintenance, infrastructure and salaries. We found that transnational tourism to visit penguin colonies provides economic benefits for local residents and foreign people involved in the tourism industry, although none of the money generated by visits to penguin colonies in these places is re-invested for penguin conservation. Moreover, tourism poses serious potential threats to penguin populations (i.e. decrease in numbers) and the ecosystem (i.e trampling of habitat, carbon emission). Integrating these results into the management of penguin tourism would help ensure that humans continue to enjoy meaningful relationships with thess unique and charismatic species and reinforce responsible tourism as a local-global strategy for sustainable development and global penguin conservation.