Management of a Feeding Program for Wild Formosa Macaque: Two Cases Comparison in Uncle Guo’s Free-Ranging Macaque Park and Wushan Macaque Reserve

• Main Authors: Ya-Ting Lee, 李雅婷
• Other Authors: Che-Yu Hsui
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2014
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/8rgse7

碩士 === 南華大學 === 旅遊管理學系旅遊管理碩士班 === 102 === 　　In recent years, as wildlife tourism attracts more attention, feeding wildlife has become a popular tourist activity. Feeding wildlife offers tourists a unique experience in the tourism activities, and a majority of tourists feel a sense of excitement or satisfaction through feeling wildlife. Some tourists are even inspired to participate in ecological conservation projects. However, a large number of studies around the world have indicated that tourists who wish to interact with wildlife at a close or even zero distance during feeding often bring about unfavorable impacts of the feeding activity. Thus, the aim of this study is to find an operational paradigm that can effectively lower the impact of feeding wildlife. The Formosan macaque, an endemic species in Taiwan, was selected as target species, and presented as a case study. 　　This study chose two sites in Taiwan for research, including Uncle Guo’s free-ranging Macaque Park in Taichung and Wushan Macaque Reserve in Tainan. A questionnaire survey was conducted on tourists in both sites, and field observations were also performed to substantiate the research findings. The survey was conducted on the weekends from August 2013 to December 2013. A total of 350 and 101 valid samples were respectively collected from Uncle Guo’s free-ranging Macaque Park and Wushan Macaque Reserve.The results indicated that the tourists expressed significantly different levels of satisfaction at the two sites’ environmental attributes. They were more satisfied with Uncle Guo’s free-ranging Macaque Park, where a number of regulations intervened in the management. However, tourists in both sites showed no significant differences in the joy they experienced. Neither having intimate interactions with macaque monkeys nor feeding the monkeys themselves. Most tourists at Uncle Guo’s free-ranging Macaque Park were not unhappy about the restriction on the interactions with macaque monkeys or feeding the monkeys. The tourists in Wushan Macaque Reserve were concerned about the safety of the feeding activity. According to the analysis results, the number of macaque monkeys at the feeding areas for tourists, behavior of macaque monkeys, park personnel’s philosophy of ecological conservation, the crowdedness of the activity setting, the safety of the activity, explanatory guides, time for feeding, the arrangement of touring routes, and hardware facilities at both sites all affected tourists’ level of satisfaction. 　　These results are beneficial to wildlife feeing tourism and have significance in sustainable management. In other words, for business owners, the pursuit for tourist satisfaction is not only derived from interaction between tourists and wild animals. It is suggested that resources can be applied to other aspects that can be controlled (for instance, guidance and explanations, arrangement of movement paths, and hardware and facilities). This not only lowers the impact caused by interaction between tourists and wild animals,but also would not result in decreased satisfaction.