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Animals can be viewed in their native or similar environments, from vehicles or on foot. This elephant in Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe, was quite undisturbed by the people and vehicle.

Elephant safari after the One-horned Rhinoceros in Royal Chitwan National Park, Nepal (photographed by Leonardo C. Fleck)

Wildlife tourism can be an eco and animal friendly tourism, usually showing animals in their natural habitat. Wildlife tourism, in its simplest sense, is watching wild animals in their natural habitat. Wildlife tourism is an important part of the tourism industries in many countries including many African and South American countries, Australia, India, Canada, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Maldives among many. It has experienced a dramatic and rapid growth in recent years world wide and is closely aligned to eco-tourism and sustainable-tourism.

Wildlife tourism is also a multi-million dollar industry offering customized tour packages and safaris.

Negative Impacts of Wildlife Tourism[link]

Wildlife tourism can cause significant disturbances to animals in their natural habitats. The growing interest in traveling to developing countries has created a boom in resort and hotel construction, particularly on rain forest and mangrove forest lands. Wildlife viewing can scare away animals, disrupt their feeding and nesting sites, or acclimate them to the presence of people. In Kenya, for example, wildlife-observer disruption drives cheetahs off their reserves, increasing the risk of inbreeding and further endangering the species.

Direct Impacts

The effect that wildlife tourism will have on wildlife depend on the scale of tourist development and the behavior and resilience of wildlife to the presence of humans. When tourists activities occur during sensitive times of the life cycle (for example, during nesting season), and when they involve close approaches to wildlife for the purpose of identification or photography, the potential for disturbance is high. Not all species appear to be disturbed by tourists even within heavily visited areas.

Disturbing Breeding Patterns

The pressures of tourists searching out wildlife to photograph or hunt can adversely affect hunting and feeding patterns, and the breeding success of some species. Some may even have long-term implications for behavioral and ecological relationships. For example, an increase in boat traffic has disturbed the feeding of giant otters in Manu National Park, Peru. Further disturbance to wildlife occurs when tourist guides dig up turtle nests and chase swimming jaguars, tapirs and otters to give clients better viewing opportunities. On the shores of Lake Kariba in Zimbabwe, the number of tourist boats and the noise generated as disrupted the feeding and drinking patterns of elephants and the black rhinoceros - it is feared that further increases in boat traffic will affect their reproductive success.

Disturbing Feeding Patterns

Feeding of wildlife by tourists can have severe consequences for social behavior patterns. Artificial feeding by tourists caused a breakdown of the territorial breeding system of land iguanas on the South Plaza in the Galapogos Islands. Territories were abandoned in favor of sites where food could be begged from tourists, and this has had a negative effect on the breeding success of iguanas. Artificial feeding can also result in a complete loss of normal feeding behaviors. In the Galapagos Islands, overfeeding by tourists was so extreme that, when stopped, some animals were unable to locate their natural food sources. Similarly, until the early 1970s, the diet of some Grizzly bears in Yellow Stone National Park (USA) consisted, to a large extent, of food wastes left by visitors at park refuse sites. When these sites were closed, the beats showed significant decreases in body size, reproductive rate and litter size.

Disruption of parent-offspring bonds

Wildlife tourism can also cause disruption to intra-specific relationships. Attendance by female harp seals to their pups declined when tourists were present in Canada's Gulf of St Lawrence, and those females remaining with their pups spent significantly less time nursing and more time watching the tourists. There is also a risk of the young not being recognized, and being more exposed to predator attacks. A similar concern has been expressed over whale watching, whale calves normally maintain constant body contact with their mothers but, when separated, can transfer their attachment to the side of the boat.

Increased vulnerability to predators and competitors

The viewing of certain species by wildlife tourists can make that species more vulnerable to predators. Evidence of this phenomenon has been recorded in birds, reptiles and mammals. Problems have occurred in breeding colonies of brown pelicans visited by tourists in Mexico. Breeding success decreased by 52-100% in visited sites compared to unvisited sites.^[1]

Positive Impacts of Wildlife Tourism[link]

Habitat restoration by eco-lodges and other tourism operations

Many owners of eco-accommodation or wildlife attractions preserve and restore native habitats on their properties

Conservation breeding

Many wildlife parks (e.g. David Fleay Wildlife Park, Gold Coast, Australia) and zoos breed rare and endangered species as a major part of their activities, and release the progeny when possible into suitable habitat.

Financial donations

Some wildlife tourism contributes monetary donations to conservation efforts (e.g. Dreamworld, Gold Coast, has a display of Sunatran tigers, and money from visitor donations and from their 'tiger walk' goes to Sumatra to assist in-situ conservation of wild tigers.

Quality interpretation

A good wildlife guide will impart a deeper understanding of the local wildlife and its ecological needs, which may give visitors a more informed base on which to subsequently modify their behaviour (e.g. not throw out plastic bags that may be eaten by turtles) and decide what poiltical moves to support.

Research and monitoring

Some wildlife tourism operations contribute to monitoring of wildlife numbers or general research relevant to conservation

Anti-poaching

Bringing tourists regularly into some areas may make it more difficult for poachers of large animals or those who collect smaller species for the black market

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Wildlife tourism

• WILD LIFE TOURISM PACKAGES IN INDIA

Wildlife Tourism in Australia and Asia

• http://www.wildlifetourism.org.au Wildlife Tourism Australia is a national association supporting the wildlife tourism industry (including free-ranging and captive wildlife) and conservation of wildlife and their habitats. The website includes a very extensive bibliography
• South-East Asian Tourism Organisation A new South-east Asian based organisation looking at ways to use agritourism and other initiatives to spread the benefits of tourism more widely.
• http://www.wildlifeexplorer.com.au - Wildlife Explorer takes small groups into the World Heritage Area forests of tropical northern Australia in search of the unique wildlife found in these ancient and beautiful places.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundarbans - Sundarbans is the largest wildlife mangrove forest in the world.It situated mainly in southern part of Bangladesh. The UNESCO has announced it for world heritage in 1997.
• http://www.sustainabletourismonline.com/wildlife-tourism - This leads to many reports published by the Wildlife Tourism sector of the Sustainable Tourism Cooperative Research Centre (Australia)

References[link]

Leslie Lewis
Background information
Birth name	Leslie Peter Lewis
Born	1961, India
Genres	Indi-pop, filmi, rock
Occupations	Singer, composer
Years active	1987–present
Associated acts	Colonial Cousins, Hariharan

Leslie Lewis is an Indian composer, perhaps best known for his work in Colonial Cousins, a duo composed of Lewis and Hariharan.^[1]

In 2003 Lewis stated that he felt the public associated him too much with remixes and for that reason he had begun to avoid remixes and instead concentrate on his original compositions and on his work in Colonial Cousins.^[2] Lewis' father P. L. Raj was a prolific film choreographer.

Biography[link]

Leslie Peter Lewis (or "Lezz", as he is known) inherited his artistic inclinations from his father P. L. Raj.^[3] His father is a choreographer for films. Later, at boarding school, Lezz was exposed to the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton. With these diverse musical influences, Lewis soon began plucking guitar chords at the Cafe Royal, Oberoi Towers. Later, he had the opportunity of recording with renowned film music directors such as Kalyanji Anandji, Laxmikant Pyarelal, R. D. Burman and Louis Banks.

In 1987, Lewis launched a music company and began carving out a career in jingles composing. He composed for some of the leading television networks and picked up nominations for the awards handed out annually by the Indian Academy of Advertising Film Art (IAAFA). After four consecutive nominations, in 1989, Lezz bagged the award.^{[citation needed]}

Lewis's other musical credits include doing the remix job for Asha Bhosle's Rahul and I album and writing the musical scores for the legendary diva's Janam samjha karo album. He also composed and produced the music for Suneeta Rao in "Paree Hu Main", Alisha in "Bombay Girl" and for KK in Pal.

In 1998, Lewis cut his first solo album, Haseena, which sold fairly well. He has also made a foray into film music, completing the scores for the Hindi films Mela and "Jahd" and working on the scores for the Tamil film Modhi Vilayadu. Lewis' father had long been prodding him to do film music, reminding him that that was where the big bucks and big names were.^{[citation needed]}

Colonial Cousins[link]

It was during Lewis's jingles career that the idea of Colonial Cousins was conceived. Lewis had called in Hariharan to sing a jingle for him one evening in 1992. The lyrics for the jingle were late coming in. Lewis began singing something while strumming his guitar, Hari felt inspired to jam with an alaap, and the result: the seamless fusion of Eastern and Western sounds that has become characteristic of the Colonial Cousins.The year 1996 was a career milestone; he formed the band Colonial Cousins with ghazal singer Hariharan.Their first album, Colonial Cousins was a fusion album and was the first Indian act to be featured on MTV Unplugged.^[4] It won a string of awards including the MTV Indian Viewers' Choice award and Billboard Award for the Best Asian Music Group.^[4][5] By this single album, Hariharan established himself as one of the pioneers of Indian fusion music. The next albums by this band were The Way We Do It (1998) and Aatma (2001) but were fairly noticed. 2009 Tamil film Modhi Vilayadu had score and soundtrack composed by Colonial Cousins.^[6] They also scored the 2010 Tamil film Chikku Bukku.

Discography[link]

• Colonial Cousins (1996)
• The Way We Do It (1998)
• Aatma (2001)
• Apna Asmaan (2007)
• Modhi Vilayadu (2009)
• Chikku Bukku (2010)
• Murder Reloaded (With Dialogue)
• Sanskar - Best Of Bhajans
• Mela (2000)
• Tauba (1990)
• Baat Nabi Ki Maan
• Bnhaktisudha - Chhay Ganuli Presented by Jaidev
• Karaoke Tracks - Vol. 3
• Karaoke Tracks (Volume-4)
• Varsha Ritu

Awards and achievements[link]

• 1997: MTV Asia Viewer's Choice Award for Colonial Cousins
• US Billboard Viewer's Choice Award

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official Website
• @LesleLewis on Twitter
• Leslie Lewis (official fan page) on facebook