After almost being hunted to extinction, New Zealand fur seals are now on the rebound and are no longer considered endangered. This photo was taken on the South Island of New Zealand in the Otago region with Elm Wildlife Tours.

Elm Wildlife Tours: Protecting the Coast

The necessity of government support for improving conservation

The yellow eyed penguin is one of the world's rarest penguins and is highly endangered. Emerging research indicates it may also be the most ancient extant penguin species. This photo was taken on the South Island of New Zealand with Elm Wildlife Tours.

Regardless of your stance on global warming, it is an observable fact that the polar ice caps are shrinking annually. This change in global albedo (a measure of reflected light) negatively impacts the vast majority of ecosystems on earth but most immediately harms Arctic and Antarctic species that depend on the ice and cold.

The South Island of New Zealand is home to many such species including penguins, seals, sea lions, albatross, and kea, the world’s only alpine parrot. Acknowledging the vulnerability of these species to global warming, I actively sought experiences well off the beaten path to explore the sub-Antarctic habitats in New Zealand.

One such experience I discovered was Elm Wildlife Tours based in Dunedin, Otago, New Zealand. Elm Wildlife Tours has been recognized with a Trip Adviser Certificate of Excellence annually since 2011 and has received numerous other “enjoyable” and “leisure” awards. However, more importantly for my purposes, Elm Wildlife Tours is Qualmark certified (New Zealand tourism’s official quality assurance organization) and received a Qualmark Gold Enviro Award stating that Elm, “Exceeds the highest levels of environmental and social responsibilities. Represents strong leadership and advocacy.”  Elm is additionally Green Globe certified to the highest standard of operation, approved by the New Zealand Department of Conservation, and has had a positive carbon footprint since 1997 due to their eleven-hectare forest.

Elm Wildlife Tour is particularly unique because it treads a fine line between neoliberal environmental protection and government control. According to my source who works for Elm, the company was founded in the 1990s by conservationists who found a rare yellow eyed penguin colony along the coast of privately owned farmland. The conservationists struck a deal with the farmers which enabled Elm to use and protect the coast. In order to fund the conservation efforts and land use agreement, Elm began taking tourists to see the colony. Currently, Elm helps protect vulnerable populations of Albatross, Giant Petrel, Little Blue Penguin, New Zealand Fur Seal, New Zealand Sea Lion, and the Yellow Eyed Penguin, to name just a few species. Additionally, Elm is one of only two commercially funded and managed yellow eyed penguin protection programs.

Elm Wildlife Tours has been a leader of neoliberal environmental conservation in the Otago region. In partnership with the owners of the farms, Elm's has worked to remove many invasive species and plant native vegetation that helps protect the penguins on land. On the Elm managed property, the populations of both the yellow eyed penguin and the little blue penguin have grown annually.  Additionally, funding from Elm Wildlife Tours has been used to establish the New Zealand Sea Lion Trust to protect Hooker's sea lion, which is currently considered to be the rarest sea lion species in the world. Elm also helps promote the Royal Albatross Centre, which maintains the world's only mainland breeding colony of Royal Albatross. 

This map taken from Art Trails New Zealand shows the size of the Otago coastline and the location of Dunedin where Elm Wildlife Tours is based. 

Revenue from Elm Wildlife Tours is used to offset deficiencies in government oversight in the region. According to my source at Elm, the New Zealand Department of Conservation budget only allocates $1500 (NZD) annually for management of the entire Otago coastline. This amount can be generated by a mere 10 patrons to Elm Wildlife Tours. Considering the Otago coastline is home to the world's rarest sea lion, two endangered species of penguin, and the world's only mainland royal albatross breeding site, more money and conservation programs are needed to adequately protect these species and ecosystems. While the whole responsibility cannot fall to Elm, they are certainly helping to make up these deficits in resources. 

Unfortunately, Elm Wildlife Tours is inhibited by similar external factors to Zealandia including habitat fragmentation and global warming. Elm is limited by habitat fragmentation because the land surrounding the Elm is predominately privately owned farmland. Purchasing more land or searching for new penguin nesting sites would require a prohibitive amount of human or financial capital. In theory the Department of Conservation should also be searching for and monitoring nesting sites, but with only $1500, their resources are already spread thin. 

Additionally, the ecosystem managed by Elm Wildlife Tours is even more susceptible to global warming than Zealandia. Located on the southern end of the South Island of New Zealand, the Otago region and the neighboring Southland and Fiordland are all sub-Antarctic ecosystems. Native species in this region depend on the cold. Minor changes in the global air temperature or water temperature could have devastating effects on these already vulnerable animals. Elm Wildlife Tours, despite their best efforts, cannot prevent global warming or its widespread impact on conservation.  

Even as highly effective conservation programs, the similarities between Elm Wildlife Tours and Zealandia demonstrate that whether an ecotourism business is neoliberal or connected to the government, external issues will still limit the ultimate effectiveness of the business as a conservation strategy. 

Furthermore, as noted in Scuba Diving in AU and NZ, the effect of human use can also create an internal limit on ecotourism as a conservation strategy. McClung and colleagues (2004) researched the effects of unregulated visitor access on yellow eyed penguin fledgling weight and juvenile survival.  They found that there is a correlation between increased human use and decreased fledgling weight; however, a causal relationship could not be determined. While this may seem like cause for alarm, the study focuses on unregulated human use. Elm Wildlife Tours strictly controlled all tourist interactions with all animals and required us to maintain a safe distance behind observation blinds. Since Elm has seen population growth in the past few years, these preventative steps seem to be effectively mitigating the negative impacts of human use. 

While human use is a common concern in the ecotourism industry, Elm Wildlife Tours demonstrates that there are ways to reduce impact while still maintaining the longterm viability of the business and, more importantly, the environment. 

To learn more about Elm Wildlife Tours's mission or to aid their conservation efforts, please visit their website by clicking here. 

Resources

McClung, Maureen R., Philip J. Seddon, M. Massaro, and A.n. Setiawan. "Nature-based Tourism Impacts on Yellow-eyed Penguins Megadyptes Antipodes: Does Unregulated Visitor Access Affect Fledging Weight and Juvenile Survival?" Biological Conservation119.2 (2004): 279-85. Web.