What does ethical wildlife watching entail?

Wildlife watching is one of the most powerful experiences travel can offer. Seeing a humpback whale breach, tracking a proboscis monkey through Borneo's canopy, watching a flock of cranes take flight — these are the moments that inspire people to take action to protect this planet. Furthermore, many such activities fund local conservation initiatives.

But not all wildlife watching is equal. And unfortunately, wildlife exploitation is widespread in the travel industry - sometimes even being masked as 'eco', 'ethical', and 'supporting conservation'.

So what does ethical wildlife watching mean?

The rule of thumb: no touch

When in doubt, remember, if you can get close to a wild animal, something is going on behind the scenes - even if the said animal comes from rescue or are 'good tempered'.

Feeding, bathing, riding, or confining animals so tourists can get close to them — none of these is ethical. This includes elephant bathing and feeding, which are often offered at 'ethical sanctuaries'. Sometimes the animal can be a cute one, like a koala, and cuddling them for photos has often been paraded as ethical and sold by sanctuaries. In fact, a koala can become highly stressed in such situations. Just imagine, would you like to be used as a prop and take photos with strangers all day?

Ethical wildlife watching begins with the recognition that the encounter is for you, not for the animal. And it means that the welfare of the animal in question — its ability to behave naturally, to feed, to rest, to reproduce, to avoid stress and predation — always takes precedence over the quality of the tourist experience.

What to look out for in ethical wildlife watching

The animal is wild and free. The most fundamental requirement is that you are observing animals in their natural habitat, living natural lives. Any experience that involves an animal being confined, trained, baited, or managed for tourist access fails this test. This rules out aquariums, most zoos (with narrow exceptions for rescue and rehabilitation facilities), captive dolphin and whale shows, elephant bathing and riding, and the many "sanctuary" experiences that involve touching or bathing animals in ways that serve tourist satisfaction rather than animal welfare.

Behaviour is not altered. Ethical operators do not feed or bait wildlife to create photo opportunities or use calls or other techniques to lure animals into unnatural situations. Feeding an animal — even once, even with good intentions — alters its behaviour, changes its relationship to humans, and can have cascading effects on the wider ecosystem. This applies as much to a tour in the Amazon as it does to a bird hide in a British nature reserve. Currently, the use of bird feeders is being debated, as some argue that increased avian disease may be linked to the shared use of feeders by species that don't naturally cross paths. However, this excludes situations where human rescue is needed, such as providing waterholes during extreme droughts or providing extra food for endangered species, as the issue was created by humans in the first place, often due to climate change and habitat fragmentation.

Distance and approach are managed. For whale and dolphin watching, there are guidelines and various national regulations governing approach distances, vessel speed, and the number of boats permitted in proximity to any individual animal (however, not all countries have such national guidelines). These include:

• Do not chase animals
• Operate well within the speed limit
• Limit the time spent near the same individual
• Approach slowly and from the side, never from ahead or behind
• Avoid separating mother and calf

Numbers are controlled. Overcrowding is one of the most common ways in which otherwise well-intentioned wildlife watching causes cumulative harm. A single quiet boat causes minimal disturbance. 20 boats jostling for position around the same whale, drone footage being taken from overhead, and passengers leaning over rails or snorkelling in the water — that is a different matter entirely. Ethical operators cap group sizes and are selective about which sites they visit and how frequently. Most importantly, this should be controlled by the local government to control total tourist numbers.

The experience is grounded in education, not performance. The best wildlife watching guides are naturalists, not entertainers. They understand the species they are showing you, explain behaviour in context, acknowledge uncertainty, and treat a distant glimpse of an animal behaving naturally as more valuable than a dramatic close encounter achieved through pressure. If a guide's selling point is that you are guaranteed to see certain animals, treat that as a red flag.

The problem with certification

Ethical wildlife watching cannot be verified by certification alone. This is something we have encountered repeatedly in our own vetting work at Kodama Travel.

Operators can hold recognised certificates and still sell experiences that fail basic welfare standards. We have seen "ethical" Amazon tour operators — highly rated on TripAdvisor and certified by platforms that claim to vet wildlife tourism — whose photos show guides hand-feeding river dolphins, surrounded by tourists from all sides. We have seen elephant "sanctuaries" endorsed by B Corp-certified travel companies that, while better than outright abusive facilities offering rides and performances, still involve bathing, touching, and close human contact that prioritises tourist experience over animal behaviour.

Our approach at Kodama is to look past the certificate to the photographic evidence, user-generated content, on-the-ground reports, and where possible, direct visits. We believe photographs — particularly those shared by tourists rather than operators — are among the most honest signals of what actually happens on a tour.

High-risk geographies

Not all regions carry equal risk. In places where wildlife trafficking is rampant, where regulatory frameworks are weak, or where economic pressure on local communities creates incentives to monetise wildlife in damaging ways, the bar for vetting needs to be higher. This includes widespread use of camels for tourism, where many are ill-treated, with their legs tied at night to prevent them from escaping. In some places, open-air trading of endangered species happens in broad daylight, and tourist operators openly sell illegal caches, such as pangolins.

Some activities are so prevalent that it is almost impossible to find operators who are considered responsible by us. Therefore, we are not operating in some geographies.

Citizen science and conservation contribution

The best wildlife watching experiences do more than avoid harm — they actively contribute. Operators who have built citizen science components into their tours, recording sightings for population monitoring databases, identifying individual animals by natural markings, or collecting behavioural data that feeds into conservation research, are doing something highly valuable.

We look for this kind of contribution when vetting operators, and we support the small number of NGOs running travel programmes whose purpose is conservation rather than tourism with conservation branding.

How to choose an ethical wildlife watching operator

When assessing a wildlife watching experience, here are the questions we ask — and that you should too.

• Does the operator avoid feeding, baiting, or using calls to attract animals?
• Do their photographs show animals at natural distances engaged in natural behaviour (unless the close-ups are shot from telephoto lenses or through binoculars)?
• Do the guides have naturalist or conservation backgrounds?
• Is group size limited?
• Are there clear policies on approach distances, time limits, and vessel speed near wildlife?
• Is there any financial or reputational connection to extractive industries targeting the same species?

Reviews can be useful, but read them carefully. Glowing reviews describing incredibly close encounters are not always a good sign.

The bigger picture

Wildlife watching, done well, supports communities and conservation. Whilst many think we should 'leave them alone', the reality is they are rarely left alone. Habitats can be destroyed to pave the way for far worse activities, such as ranching, mining, industrial production or agriculture. A community that earns its livelihood from live, free-roaming wildlife has a direct economic incentive to protect it. For example, in Borneo, we are working with NGOs that have changed poachers to wildlife guides - conservation can never happen in a socioeconomic vacuum.

Travel that benefits wildlife is not a slogan - it is a specific set of choices, made at every point in the chain from operator vetting to on-the-ground behaviour. We try to get those choices right, and we are transparent as we continue to figure them out.