Natasha Daly: Shedding Light on the Dark Reality of Wildlife Tourism
Species Unite
elizabeth novogratz
5.0 • 911 Ratings
🗓️ 5 December 2019
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Natasha Daly is a writer and editor at National Geographic where she covers animal welfare, exploitation, and conservation. She wrote National Geographic's June cover story, Suffering Unseen, the Dark Truth Behind Wildlife Tourism.
If you haven't read it yet, read it.
It is the story of the bleak reality that is daily life for so many captive wild animals, including: elephants, tigers, sloths, dolphins, whales, even polar bears. And, it's the story of why so many wild animals are living miserable and often painful existences. The answer is, us. Well… us and social media – which is also us.
Animal related activities that we often associate with travel and global tourism, activities like bathing elephants in Thailand or taking selfies with sloths in South America, have become social norms and even rites of passage when it comes to taking off to see the world with a backpack or on holiday or honeymoon. And that is because of social media. Yes, people were doing these things pre-internet, but the numbers didn't compare.
We see friends or celebrities swimming with dolphins or holding baby tigers in their Instagram feeds and it looks innocent, harmless and fun and all of a sudden, there's one more thing to add to the bucket list. But the truth is a different story. The truth involves a lot of pain and a lot suffering behind the scenes. Natasha and photographer, Kirsten Luce spent a year on four continents investigating this story, and what they learned and reported will astonish you.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Humans identify suffering in other humans by universal signs. |
| 0:05.0 | People sob, wince, cry out, put voice to their hurt. |
| 0:09.0 | Animals have no universal language for pain. |
| 0:12.0 | Many animals don't have tear ducts. More creatures still, prey animals, for example, instinctively mask symptoms of pain, lest they appear weak to predators. |
| 0:22.7 | Recognizing that a non-human animal is in pain |
| 0:25.8 | is difficult, often impossible. Hi, I'm Elizabeth Novergrats. |
| 0:35.0 | Welcome to Species Unite, the podcast where we talk to people who are fighting |
| 0:41.0 | some of the hardest fights on Earth to stop the unnecessary suffering of animals. |
| 0:45.1 | Today's conversation is with Natasha Daly. |
| 0:49.2 | Natasha's a writer and editor at National Geographic where her investigative reporting focuses on animal welfare and |
| 0:55.3 | exploitation. She wrote the June cover story for the magazine. It's called Suffering Unseen, |
| 1:01.5 | The Dark Truth Behind Wildlife tourism. If you haven't read it yet, read it. |
| 1:06.9 | These days it's hard to scroll through social media without seeing pictures of |
| 1:10.7 | friends or celebrities on vacation posing with animals. |
| 1:14.9 | Like the post you see about bathing elephants in Thailand or sloth selfies in South America, |
| 1:21.0 | these pictures may seem fun and harmless or even helpful to animals. |
| 1:25.0 | But as Natasha uncovered, there's a dark underbelly to wildlife tourism. |
| 1:30.0 | Natasha and photographer Kirstenlous spent a year on four continents investigating this story. |
| 1:35.5 | I'm really excited to have Natasha here today. I started National Geographic four years ago and I remember actually at my very |
| 1:49.7 | first day of work there was a all staff meeting and our editor and chief |
| 1:54.3 | Susan Goldberg was announcing this new project that we had coming up called |
| 1:58.2 | Wildlife Watch which was going to be this journalistic investigative project looking at ways that animals are exploited around the world. |
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