Respect Wildlife

Over last summer I went for a wonderful walk around the Kaikoura peninsula with a cousin from Europe and my family. We saw many seals and did our best to keep a good distance away from them and avoid getting between them and the sea. It was a highlight for all of us to be close to such powerful and beautiful animals.

The bad news

But there has been a fair bit of media attention about how badly some of us interact with wildlife. Some very disturbing stories came out such as the killing of 23 seals at Kaikoura or the harassment of a leopard seal near Invercargill (those involved with the leopard seal posted their pictures to facebook and were imprisoned) (http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/23-seals-clubbed-death-in-kaikoura-3946483 , http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/man-imprisoned-over-seal-attack-3893468).

Trying to do the nice thing but actually causing harm

Then there are the other kinds of stories about animal interactions. Ecopsychology talks about how people have an instinctive love of animals. This is a powerful motivator for ecotourism and encounters with animals from penguins to orang-utans. But this powerful attraction can sometimes lead us to harm animals by accident. We do this by trying to attract animals closer such as by feeding kea (http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/warning-hand-feeding-keas-3066333). While this might seem like a nice thing to do it can have some bad outcomes for the animals. Kea have been killed by going through rubbish bins and either being injured or poisoned (chocolate is a poison for kea). In addition, it gives them a really high energy meal that they aren't adapted to and makes them hang around for the next feed so they aren't doing what they should be – eating berries and spreading seeds.

So what is a good way to interact with animals?

We need to give them space and the power to make decisions about how close they want to come to us. Here is an example of what would be too close for many of us. These are powerful animals in a remote location and clearly haven't had much to do with people before.

http://www.jokeroo.com/user-content/videos/animal/2011/3/503674-snuggling-on-the-beach.html

Sometimes it is best to shoo them away, getting too used to close contact with people can bring them into danger (run over by cars or hurt by careless people).

Giving space, means not getting too close, yet it can be really tempting to have a closer look. Binoculars are a good way of getting a good look without having to get too close. Many cameras have powerful zoom lenses too.

One way of looking at this is to see this place as the animal's home. How would we like it if a stranger came into our homes and started looking closely at us while we were eating a meal or hanging out. If an animal changes its behaviour in response to our presence, we can consider ourselves too close.