Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Commentary: Wildlife Tourism As Crop Protection? Double-Goal Provisioning And The Transvaluation Of The Macaque In Postwar Japan, John Knight

Human–Wildlife Interactions

Human–wildlife interfaces are often sites of friction and conflict in the form of crop and livestock depredations that can lead to negative local attitudes towards the animals responsible. This paper examines the use of provisioning to reduce wildlife damage through diversion (‘diversionary feeding’) and to display the diverted animals for tourism. It focuses on a macaque (Macaca fuscata) provisioning initiative from the municipality of Ōita in western Japan that set out to achieve these two objectives of crop protection and tourism. Provisioning succeeded in establishing the macaques as a popular tourist attraction, but it has been far less …