TripAdvisor no longer sells tickets to attractions promoting endangered animals. Activities like swimming and riding dolphins, riding on elephants, feeding of giraffes, petting wild tigers and other animal interactions do harm and put psychological strain to these animals. They feel stressed and manifest behavioral abnormalities, according to National Geographic.
TripAdvisor aims to educate the people visiting the site and its users about wildlife encounters or interactions to humans and what does this do to the animals.
In visiting zoos, the people might just think that it must have undergone a safe procedure for the staffs to allow interactions with these animal. What they don't know is that most of these 'safe' interactions are a result of hard labor from the animals, like beating of elephants to obey commands, and drugging them, like sedating tigers to keep people safe while petting.
"Such attractions have been shown to cause animal's psychological and physical trauma that can shorten their lives. They also result in more animals being taken from the wild for tourism," NatGeo stated.
PETA applauds TripAdvisor decision to take part in protecting these wild animals who suffer for entertainment. They come into this conclusion after six months consultancy with different environmental groups- the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the Global Wildlife Conservation (GWC), and the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, according to New York Times.
"There are some areas that I think every one of these groups we spoke with would agree on, and there are some that are not universally agreed upon," Barbara Messing of TripAdvisor stated at Times. "We just had to come to our own conclusions internally about what makes sense for us."
TripAdvisor is also not selling bookings that promotes blood sports that involves shooting and killing captive animals.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
