Weekly Topic: When nature goes viral
Lauren Bernstein

Behind the nature-loving selfie: the Instagram effect

Does this photo look familiar? You’ve probably seen one like it on Instagram, Facebook, or Reddit. Perhaps a friend posted it. Or a family member. Or a social media influencer. This trendy social media hotspot has become so popular to photograph that the formerly locals-only view of the Colorado River at Horseshoe Bend is now captured by 2,800 people each day (and not just by millenials).

Social media has changed the way we interact with one another, experience the world around us, and communicate our individuality. With one click, it keeps families in touch, reconnects long lost friends, and brings us closer to corners of the world we had once only dreamed of seeing. Simultaneously, it has contributed to a culture of unoriginality and unsatiated longing for what we often cannot have. When we can have it, we consume it en masse, sometimes contributing to problems more permanent than boredom or envy.

Behind the meticulously curated, but seemingly spontaneous photograph are hundreds of other social media users ready to capture THE image from the same vantage point. They know to capture it from this vantage point because the influencer they follow tagged the GPS coordinates of his exact location. This is the reality behind the millions-of-years-in-the-making image photographed in an instant: people have trampled fragile ecosystems, unwittingly contributed to erosion, and died while trying to capture it.

The Guardian

Overtourism in America’s public lands

Horseshoe Bend is among many other national parks, recreation areas, and historic sites whose social media popularity, among other factors, has contributed to a massive influx of tourists in the last decade, challenging the Park Service’s already tight budget to modernize public safety and accessibility. Overtourism leads to wear on the parks’ 60-70 year-old infrastructure that was built before modern crowds, their vehicles, or their fatal selfies were even a consideration. Disneyland-sized crowds not only decrease the quality of a visitor’s experience with nature, but also create new public health challenges and damage the protected habitat of wildlife already threatened by climate change.

Visitors’ lack of preparation for unpredictable terrain or weather conditions can lead to medical emergencies, prompting places like Horseshoe Bend to increase its safety signage, build railings, and construct new shaded walking trails. Yellowstone encourages its visitors to take the Yellowstone Pledge to protect the park’s fragile treasures and protect visitors from another public safety problem: bear attacks and bison gorings from selfies or intentional taunting. Overtourism also increases visitor trash, enticing animals to access human food items, which may lead to an increased risk of animal attacks.

Twenty-first century problems that threaten animal health and safety within America’s public lands include animal-sighting traffic jams, illegal drones exploring areas humans cannot access, and noise pollution. Visitors often forget that wild animals are wild, sometimes making good-intentioned, but dangerous decisions that have fatal consequences for the animal. In popular backcountry camping spots, unburied human waste creates human health hazards, brings animals closer to camp sites, and redirects tens of thousands of dollars in limited funds to trail waste management.

National Geographic
The Guardian

Captive wildlife tourism

This month’s National Geographic cover story highlights captive wildlife tourism, a lucrative worldwide industry that is neither new nor caused by social media. Its continued popularity, however, is largely driven by the ability to instantly share these exotic, up-close encounters with thousands of social media followers who, in turn, seek the same photo opportunities and experiences.

The story uncovers elephants who obediently bathe with tourists, hand-fed bears whose owner’s 80,000 Instagram followers will pay nearly $800 for identical photographs, and declawed tigers drugged for intimate photo opportunities. It uncovers elephants with broken legs, tigers with ruptured dental abscesses, monkeys with stereotypies from unenriched cages, and premature deaths in sloths illegally taken from the jungle. Not all wildlife-based tourism is the same; when done ethically, wildlife tourism supports conservation and promotes humane conditions. Unethical, economically-driven ventures can be exploitative and will persist as long as there is tourist demand.

The challenge is that these profitable businesses conceal animals’ suffering from the animal-loving tourists who are unaware of what happens behind the scenes. The businesses often appeal to conflicting tourism preferences among different cultural groups, some even using the same elephants for tricks and performances at one park and for free-roaming, “natural eco-tourism” at another. Tourists unknowingly endorse these conditions by legitimizing the activities to their friends and followers. Recognizing its unintentional promotion of these activities, Instagram has introduced a pop-up warning when certain hashtags are used. Despite initiatives like this one, tourists can influence change through educating themselves and redirecting the entrepreneurial nature of wildlife tourism to ethical, humane practices.

National Geographic: Wildlife tourism
National Geographic: Amazon ecotourism
Nature Conservation

Leave No Trace’s tips for ethical social media use

  • Think before you geotag. Tagging a location provides specific GPS coordinates that allow your social media followers to visit that exact location for that exact photograph.
  • Think before you post. Post images of you practicing good outdoor stewardship. Followers follow behavior. Make your post go viral for doing something good.
  • Inspire Leave No Trace (#leavenotrace), but don’t bully people into getting on board.
  • Give back to your parklands.

Leave No Trace

National Geographic’s tips for ethical wildlife tourism

  • Do your research. Visit places where you can observe animals in their natural environments.
  • Be mindful of the words “conservation,” “sanctuary,” and “rescue.” Observe whether the animals’ environments meet their Five Freedoms of Animal Welfare.
  • Look for the red flags: injuries, performances, interaction with tourists (posing, bathing).
  • Avoid large crowds, which cause distress in animals who have experienced fear-based training.
  • Above all, keep it wild.

National Geographic

Questions, comments, feedback about today's Weekly Update? Please email Dr. Lauren Bernstein.

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Lauren Bernstein

Lauren Bernstein

Lauren received her BS in Animal Science from the University of Tennessee. Following a Rotary International site visit to South Africa as an undergraduate student, she decided to focus her prospective veterinary career on public health, specifically on issues involving diseases at the human-animal-environment interface. She completed her veterinary education at the University College Dublin, School of Veterinary Medicine. When she's not in the office, she enjoys yoga, embracing the outdoor activities in Minneapolis, and finding excuses to talk about her rescue cat.