Feral tourism

Like wildlife documentaiy making, wildlife tourism typically seeks to frame nature as an idealised place beyond humanity, with wilderness as something of a gold standard against which nature experiences can be measured as authentic, real or proper. In many places, such as Australia, it also seeks to idealise and showcase native natures, as true or pure ecosystemic communities uncontaminated by feral species, whose mobilities and "invasions'' shadowed naval exploration, colonialism, agriculture, scientific acclimatisations, globalisation - and tourism. Wildlife tourism also arranges tourism experiences and "outcomes" using such framings, seeking to align tourists with such values, and claiming their conversion to conservationism as a major ethical outcome. While not contesting the value of conservation, or the duty of care for our world - indeed seeking precisely to do this more realistically and effectively - this paper asks whether it is time for wildlife/eco-tourism to recognise that nature in places like Australia no longer conforms to such ideals.