Impacts of tourism on anxiety and physiological stress in wild male Barbary macaques

<p>Wildlife tourism is a burgeoning global industry with the potential to make a significant contribution tothe conservation of endangered species. However, a number of studies have provided evidence that tourists’presence and behaviour may impact negatively on the animals involved, with potentially harmfulconsequences for their health, reproduction and population viability. Here, we investigate impacts oftourism on wild male Barbary macaques (Macaca sylvanus) in Morocco, quantifying a behavioural indexof animals’ anxiety (self-scratching) and a measure of their physiological stress levels (faecal glucocorticoidconcentrations – FGCs). Four measures of tourist presence, number or proximity were explored:maximum number, percentage of time present, mean number while present, and closest proximity tothe macaques. In addition, rates of three types of interactions between tourists and macaques – neutral(e.g. photographing), feeding and aggressive – were quantified. Males’ rates of self-scratching were positivelyrelated to the mean number of tourists present and to rates of all three human-macaque interactions,but were unrelated to the other three measures of tourist pressure. FGCs were positively related torates of aggressive interactions between humans and macaques, but unrelated to any of the other sixmeasures of tourist pressure. These findings suggest that while tourist presence and interactions (evenapparently innocuous ones) with the macaques elevate the study animals’ anxiety levels, only aggressiveinteractions are sufficient to elicit a detectable increase in our measure of physiological stress. Theseresults can be used to inform management of tourism both at this site, and at other locations where touristsview and can interact with wild primates.</p>