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Article Dans Une Revue Conservation Science and Practice Année : 2023

Mountain gorillas benefit from social distancing too: Close proximity from tourists affects gorillas' sociality

Résumé

Gorilla tourism supports the protection of its ecosystem, benefiting humans and wildlife populations living therein. Assessing to what degree the presence and proximity of tourists affect wildlife aids long-term benefits. Because wild animals might see human activities as stressors, we hypothesized that the increased presence and proximity of tourists leads to immediate changes in gorilla social cohesion. We constructed social networks from association rates before, during, and after tourist visits, and when tourists were very close (≤3 m) or close (>3 m) to them. Our analysis focused on this distance threshold (≤3 m and >3 m) because the 7 m rule, enforced by the national park, was violated 84% of the time. We showed that gorillas spent more time in closer association after tourists arrived and when tourists were <3 m away from gorillas. Immediate changes were detected in the number of individuals close to each other, the time they spent together and the distance of an individual to all others, indicating that gorillas might increase social cohesion because they perceive tourists as a risk. These results highlight the need to enforce the Valéria Romano and André S. Pereira contributed equally. The order of these authors was decided by the number of World Cups finals reached by the author's home countries in professional female football. In a post-pandemic era, as the natural parks reopen to visitors across the globe, our manuscript has the potential to become a landmark work to the understanding of modern forms of conservation, bringing the attention of scientists, local authorities, and tourists to the potential consequences of tourism on wild animals' behavior and on risk for zoonotic spillover. Because we aim to reach specialists and non-specialists alike, we wrote the manuscript in a way suitable for a broad audience.
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Dates et versions

hal-04060350 , version 1 (06-04-2023)

Identifiants

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Raquel F P Costa, Valéria Romano, André S Pereira, Jordan D A Hart, Andrew Macintosh, et al.. Mountain gorillas benefit from social distancing too: Close proximity from tourists affects gorillas' sociality. Conservation Science and Practice, 2023, 5 (1), pp.e12859. ⟨10.1111/csp2.12859⟩. ⟨hal-04060350⟩
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