A before−after assessment of the response of mammals to tourism in a Brazilian national park
DAN IEL E BARCELO S,EMERSON M. VIE I R A MARCEL L SOA R E S P IN HEI R O and GUILHERME B RAGA F ERREIRA
Abstract Worldwide, nature-based tourism is becoming more popular and important economically. However, there is still debate regarding its impact on wildlife in pro- tected areas. We conducted a quasi-experimental study to investigate the effects of tourism on the mammal commu- nity of Cavernas do Peruaçu National Park, a priority area for conservation in Brazil. We used camera traps to survey tourist and non-tourist trails during 2011–2017, encompass- ing periods before and after tourism started in the Park. We used four metrics for assessment: species richness, probabil- ity of using trails, activity levels and daily activity patterns. After tourism began in the Park there was no significant change in species richness and the probability of using tourist trails either increased or remained stable for five of the six species assessed. The rock cavy Kerodon rupestris was the only species to be displaced from tourist areas and to show reduced overall activity on tourist trails after tour- ism began. The ocelot Leopardus pardalis showed reduced diurnal activity on tourist trails, an indication of temporal adjustment. Overall, our results show that the initial years of visitation at the Park had limited negative impacts on the target mammal species, supporting the possibility of accommodating tourism activity and effective conservation of wildlife in the region. However, it is essential to continue monitoring in the Park because of the expected growth in tourism and potential time lags in responses of species.
Keywords Brazil, camera trapping, ecotourism, human disturbance, Neotropical mammals, tourism impacts, wildlife monitoring
Supplementary material for this article is available at
doi.org/10.1017/S0030605321001472
Introduction
forms of tourism (Newsome et al., 2012), particularly in biodiversity-rich developing countries (Balmford et al., 2009). In protected areas, tourism may improve conserva- tion effectiveness by providing funds for management, re- search and education programmes (Newsome et al., 2012; Leung et al., 2018). Furthermore, nature-based tourism is usually concentrated in a relatively small area and has more limited impacts than other economic activities such as logging and agriculture (Turton & Stork, 2008). However, the effectiveness of tourism as a conservation-supporting strategy remains debatable (Das & Chatterjee, 2015; Brandt & Buckley, 2018). A global review revealed that negative ef- fects of tourism on wildlife are relatively common (59%of the 274 studies) and that there is a major research gap on the impacts of tourism in the biodiversity-rich areas where ecotourism is expanding (Larson et al., 2016). Negative impacts of tourism on wildlife are more likely
N
DANIELE BARCELOS*† (
orcid.org/0000-0001-6386-6125) Grupo de Ecologia e Conservação de Felinos na Amazônia, Instituto de Desenvolvimento Sustentável Mamirauá, Tefé, Brazil
EMERSON M. VIEIRA (
orcid.org/0000-0003-3488-621X) Laboratório de
Ecologia de Vertebrados, Departamento de Ecologia, Instituto de Ciências Biológicas, Universidade de Brasília, Brasília, Brazil
MARCELL SOARES PINHEIRO (
orcid.org/0000-0002-2511-1634) Instituto
Biotrópicos, Diamantina, Brazil GUILHERME BRAGA FERREIRA† (Corresponding author,
orcid.org/0000-0001-
7547-2959,
guilherme.ferreira.14@ucl.ac.uk) Centre for Biodiversity and Environment Research, University College London, London, UK
*Also at: Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ecologia, Universidade de Brasília, Brasília, Brazil †Also at: Instituto Biotrópicos, Diamantina, Brazil
Received 4 February 2021. Revision requested 27 May 2021. Accepted 5 October 2021. First published online 21 September 2022.
in protected areas that harbour many species sensitive to human disturbance. In these areas, a constant human pres- ence could drive changes in the use of space by species or in their temporal activity (Zhou et al., 2013; Fortin et al., 2016; Coppes et al., 2017). For instance, leopards weremore active during the daytime and used tourist areas more frequently when a national park in Thailand was closed to visitors (Ngoprasert et al., 2017). Similarly, avoidance of areas near intensively used tourist trails caused indirect habitat loss forwolvesand elks in Canada (Rogalaetal., 2011). In some cases, even low-impact tourism can cause changes in species distributions and habitat use (Reed & Merenlender, 2008; Fortin et al., 2016). However, there are also situations in which wildlife does not seem to be affected by tourism (Blake et al., 2017; Larm et al., 2019). In a large assessment of North American parks, habitat features outperformed tourism in explaining the distribution and use of space of mammal species (Kays et al., 2017). Adequate management of tourism activity is essential in
protected areas given that overcrowding and poor planning could result in the deterioration of biodiversity and scenic
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial licence (
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use. Oryx, 2022, 56(6), 854–863 © Crown Copyright, 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605321001472
ature-based tourism is becoming more popular and is growing at a faster rate than more conventional
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