S3. E3: Natasha Daly: Shedding Light On The Dark Reality Of Wildlife Tourism
Natasha Daly is a writer and editor at National Geographic where she covers animal welfare, exploitation, and conservation. She wrote National Geographic’s June cover story, Suffering Unseen, the Dark Truth Behind Wildlife Tourism.
If you haven’t read it yet, read it.
It is the story of the bleak reality that is daily life for so many captive wild animals, including: elephants, tigers, sloths, dolphins, whales, even polar bears. And, it’s the story of why so many wild animals are living miserable and often painful existences. The answer is, us. Well… us and social media – which is also us.
Animal related activities that we often associate with travel and global tourism, activities like bathing elephants in Thailand or taking selfies with sloths in South America, have become social norms and even rites of passage when it comes to taking off to see the world with a backpack or on holiday or honeymoon. And that is because of social media. Yes, people were doing these things pre-internet, but the numbers didn’t compare.
We see friends or celebrities swimming with dolphins or holding baby tigers in their Instagram feeds and it looks innocent, harmless and fun and all of a sudden, there’s one more thing to add to the bucket list. But the truth is a different story. The truth involves a lot of pain and a lot suffering behind the scenes. Natasha and photographer, Kirsten Luce spent a year on four continents investigating this story, and what they learned and reported will astonish you.
Natasha and I met in DC this fall and we talked about her time reporting the story - the behind the scenes of being behind the scenes. One of the many reasons that her article has blown up all over the internet, is that she wrote it for everyone – friends, family, people like her, like us. No one doing these activities is trying to cause harm, in fact, many of the tourists and travelers are animal lovers. People just don’t know and in most of these cases, it’s hard to know as the darkness is almost always hidden.
Natasha’s story shines the light.
Visit Natasha’s Website
National Geographic's June cover story by Natasha
Follow Natasha on Instagram
You can listen to our podcast via our website or you can subscribe and listen on Apple, Spotify, or Google Play. If you enjoy listening to the Species Unite podcast, we’d love to hear from you! You can rate and review via Apple Podcast here. If you support our mission to change the narrative toward a world of co-existence, we would love for you to make a donation or become an official Species Unite member!
As always, thank you for tuning in - we truly believe that stories have the power to change the way the world treats animals and it’s a pleasure to have you with us on this.