For Your Safety

For Your Safety

Beautiful Bali is one of Perth's favourite holiday destinations and at this time of year,  lovely summer temperatures around 30 degrees and clear blue rain-free skies!

Tourism is Bali’s biggest source of income.  Each year there is a new shopping centre, a new theme park or a new zoo.  Many of the tourist attractions use animals, both native and exotic, as a revenue source.  There are brightly coloured horse and carriages waiting to offer you a ride on the streets of Kuta.  A trek with the Indonesian elephants of Ubud not only teaches you about elephant behaviour and diet but you also get to swim with them and participate in their balancing tricks.  The new Bali Safari and Marine Park gives you the opportunity to dine, swim, sleep and even visit the loo with animals from the African savannah looking on - always through the safety of glass!  Hands on encounters are available too - pat a lion or tiger cub, cuddle a baby orang-utan or hand feed an elephant!

Animal conservation is also used to attract the tourist dollar to help raise funds for rehabilitation and breeding.  There are foundations and groups set up to help all sorts of animals including sea turtles, komodo dragons and pythons as well as dogs, cats and even osprey.

The basis of Balinese food is rice where ours is meat.  They do eat some protein, mostly chicken and pork and sometimes fish and sea turtle.  The sea turtle has been overfished (not necessarily by the Balinese as the surrounding islands eat turtle as well) and now there is a conservation group in south east Bali breeding these amazing creatures. 

A visit to the Turtle Farm just north of Benoa Harbour gives you the opportunity to see tiny baby turtles, hold some of the older ones and hand feed seagrass to a big group of adult turtles in the tidal pool where they’re kept.  As with many species, sea turtles need to feed underwater.  In shallow water you can see how they take water in with their food to chew/swallow and what goes in, must come out, through the nostrils!  This physical process probably wouldn’t be noticed if the animal was entirely submerged but seeing the proof in shallow water is amazing!

One aspect of eco-tourism is that animals being rehabilitated are used to attract the tourists – hold the fruit bat, have your photo taken with the osprey, hang a big python around your neck.  While it would be better for these animals to recuperate in a quiet place well away from humans to eventually be released, the conservation group wouldn’t have any attractions for the tourists and would therefore lose their donated revenue, the revenue that goes to rehabilitating and breeding the animals.  Unfortunately international tourists don’t always understand species specific behaviour and sadly pythons are still “big scary snakes” to the ignorant.   So – for your safety – the python has its jaws sticky-taped shut!

Animals in tourism can be a hotly debated topic especially by animal and herp lovers but it is undeniable that the animals' welfare is dependent on the tourist dollar.    Be aware and perhaps don’t judge too harshly.

Photos and text by Gabby Lewis