This chapter reviews available evidence on cognitive contributions to orangutan innovation and problem-solving. Evidence derives from orangutans in three living conditions (wild, captive, rehabilitation), and as such includes spontaneous as well as experimentally elicited innovations. Reviewed are the range and quality of orangutans’ innovations and problem-solving, including instigating factors, cognitive complexity, and facilitating–inhibiting factors.

Introduction

Orangutan tourism has operated continuously since the 1970s, on both islands that orangutans inhabit (Borneo and Sumatra) and in both countries that govern them (Indonesia and Malaysia). As such it offers a rich example of primate tourism and an important one for conservation, especially from the long-term perspective (Butler, 1980; Catlin et al., 2011; Duffus & Dearden, 1990). Both Bornean and Sumatran orangutans are endangered, like all the great apes, and protected internationally from trade for commercial purposes (CITES, 2012, Appendix I; IUCN, 2011). Since the 1970s, conservationists have promoted great ape tourism as a lucrative and effective strategy for securing their survival (GRASP, 2005; Litchfield, 2001; Woodford et al., 2002) – close-contact tourism included, typically meaning proximity up to and including physical contact. For orangutans, however, the greatest survival threat is humans and much of that threat comes from disease, hunting, and capture, all of which are enabled by proximity (Woodford et al., 2002; Yeager, 1999). With the risk of extinction and the costs of human proximity being so high for orangutans, examining how conservation and tourism interests mesh is critical.

This chapter aims to assess the impact of orangutan tourism on orangutan conservation, both its expected benefits and its known costs. We could not weigh the benefits against the costs in a balanced fashion because the data needed are not available. We therefore focused on weighing the experiences reported against the conservation expectations promoted.

Introduction

Our aim in this book was to encourage balanced, empirically based assessments of primate tourism’s strengths and weaknesses as a primate conservation tool. Such assessments are increasingly called for, since nature tourism has not proven to be as low impact or as strong a conservation tool as previously hoped (Higham, 2007a; Knight & Cole, 1995). In this chapter we review primate tourism’s positive and adverse effects on primate conservation, primarily from the perspective of our contributors’ assessments of the species and sites they study. We focus on the primates and habitats visited and, where possible, weigh tourism’s adverse against positive effects. Insofar as this approach improves understanding of primate tourism’s impacts, it can serve as a basis for developing ways to operate primate tourism to the net benefit of primate conservation.

Assessing primate tourism’s conservation benefits and costs

Assessing the benefits and costs of primate tourism for primate conservation is complicated by the many factors and the long timeframes typically involved. Important complexities are that primate tourism is often only one of several activities at a site; primates are not necessarily the main tourist attraction; humans other than tourists may visit a site’s primates, such as researchers, conservationists, park employees, and local people; conservation may not be the main focus of primate tourism at a site; and patterns associated with primate tourism can also correlate with broader economic, socio-political, and natural events. It is not always possible to isolate which of these factors is responsible for changes relevant to primate conservation. An important case in point is disease transmission: human diseases have infected primates that tourists visit, but there is no evidence that tourists are more likely than non-tourists to have spread the diseases (Muehlenbein & Wallis, this volume).

Introduction

This book aims to assess the conservation effects of nature tourism. In particular, our focus is on tourism to visit nonhuman primates and their habitats. Although humans are also primates, for convenience, we refer to nonhuman primates as “primates” and nature tourism to visit them as “primate tourism.”

Using nature tourism as a conservation tool is not new. It has been advocated since the 1800s, from the view that nature tourism is an impact-free activity that will lead visitors to value nature and help fund its protection (Honey, 1999/2008). Hopes have been especially high for nature tourism that aspires to “ecotourism,” broadly referring to responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and improves the well-being of local people (e.g. Ceballos-Lascurain, 2000; Honey, 1999/2008). It is now well known that even the most ecologically responsible nature tourism is not always the impact-free activity envisioned and it has often failed to deliver on its conservation promises, especially to the conservation of the wildlife and natural areas visited (Higham, 2007). Evidence now shows that adverse effects of nature tourism are widespread (Butynski, 2001; Higham 2007; Knight & Cole, 1995). One result is an increase in calls for evaluative research on whether nature tourism is generating conservation benefits for the wildlife and natural areas visited, what conservation costs it incurs, and whether its benefits to their conservation outweigh its costs (e.g. Higham, 2007).