Tourism is a broad industry, but much of it is focused on adventures out in nature, which can include the desire to spot wildlife. When we enter ecosystems to observe animals, though, are we having an impact on those species? New research shows that we just might be.

A team at the University of Georgia recently investigated waterhole activity among African mammals to gauge how human presence around these sites may alter animals’ visits. The researchers studied camera trap footage from 12 waterholes in the private Namibian reserve Ongava Research Centre, which borders a national park with high visitation. While wildlife tourism is important for economies and to garner support for conservation, the goal is to see how this industry can avoid hampering conservation and instead enhance it.

Jessy Patterson, lead author and a doctoral candidate at the University of Georgia, says, “I certainly appreciate wildlife-based tourism, and I support it. We just need to fully understand how we’re impacting the animals and come up with strategies to minimize that.”

According to Patterson’s team’s findings, published in the Journal of Zoology, carnivores including lions and certain hyena species were more apt to spend time at waterholes during the day when humans were around, despite usually doing so at night. The researchers believe this may be due to the animals getting nervous when humans showed up around the waterholes at night.

At the same time, herbivores including mountain and plains zebras started switching their waterhole activity to the nighttime, likely because of predator presence during the day. However, not all herbivores did that, which may heighten their risk of becoming prey at a time of the day when it should be less likely. This can impact an ecosystem’s dynamics, creating more of a predator-prey overlap than there should be.

Patterson says, “When humans are present, some animals shift their daily activity patterns. We think that the carnivores changed because of the human presence, and the herbivores changed because of the carnivore presence. It was not just one species that altered their behavior.”

They did find that the number of visits to waterholes didn’t seem to be impacted by human presence, but animals like giraffes spent more time rehydrating before there were people around. 

The data was based on pictures taken three days before humans visited, three days during human visits, and three days after, for two years.

The team says that monitoring wildlife changes linked with tourism is necessary to optimize the impact of conservation goals.