Introducing people to wildlife and helping them appreciate their beauty, understand something of their ecology and behaviour, get curious about things we don’t yet understand, and realise some of the conservation thetas currently facing them, has been a lifelong passion. It is one of the major reasons I sarted our wildlife tourism business.

Coming more from an academic background than a business one (although I did run a holiday farm focussing on nature studies and horsemanship many years earlier), the business of starting and running a small business took me and my family into a very steep learning curve. I knew little of the red tape involved,  how much time and money was needed for advertising (or how to reduce some of that), or about book-keeping, insurance,  or working with booking agents. One of the aims of the book is to help others who may be in the same boat, starting out with loads of enthusiasm for  wildlife and sharing their enthusiasm with others, but lacking experience in running a business venture.

Others come from the other direction – they’ve been running a tourism or related business but have an interest in wildlife and want to brush up their knowledge, so there are chapters devoted to getting a grasp of the basics and leads to finding more of the sort of information you’ll need to run good tours in your locality, as well as guidelines or interpreting this to your guests.

For students and job-seekers there are guidelines on what will appeal to your prospective employers, and most of the book will be very relevant for any who seriously want to work in this field.

Most of the examples are Australian, but there is ample general advice to be applicable anywhere in the world.

Contents

1 Introduction

• Is this book for you?

• The big picture: does wildlife tourism matter for our economy or for conservation?

• Not just the facts ma’am (but not ignoring them either): why good interpretation is so important

• What this book will do for you

2. The basics

• Skills you will need as a guide

• Going a bit further: how to excel as a tour guide

• Becoming self-employed as a tour operator or using your skills in other areas

3. Wildlife Skills 1: knowing the wildlife

• Getting the ‘big picture’ of wildlife in Australia (or other countries): a good start for avoiding major errors and showing your guests what is different from their own homelands

• Identifying wildlife: how to know what you’re looking at (or at least narrowing down the possibilities)

• Finding out what species to expect in your district

4. Wildlife Skills 2: finding the wildlife

• Knowing when and where to search

• When you can’t see the wildlife: tracks, scratches, scats and sounds

5. Wildlife Skills 3: understanding the behaviour and ecology of wildlife

• Why should you understand ecology?

• Population ecology: why populations of animals of a particular species increase, decrease, stay the same or never enter a particular area.

• Community ecology: interactions between species living in the same locality

• Further notes on wildlife behaviour

6. Wildlife Skills 4: not disturbing the wildlife

• How much disturbance can animals tolerate without changing their behaviour, avoiding you or even disappearing from the region?

• How should we approach wildlife?

• What happens to the wildlife you never see?

• Feeding animals

• Other interactions with animals

• Wildlife habitat

7. Wider conservation issues

• Getting it straight

• Some threats to wildlife

• Learning about conservation problems while still enjoying a holiday

• Knowing the legislation.

• Contributing positively to conservation

8. People Skills 1: Attending to customer needs and desires

• Not making them unhappy – general etiquette

• Making them happy – Changing customer satisfaction to customer delight

• Dealing with problems: avoiding them if possible, acting appropriately when they do happen

• Feedback from customers, and what to do about it

9. People Skills 2: Interpretation

• Enjoy your creativity

• Not a school-room: remember people want to learn but are also here to enjoy themselves

• Clarifying your goals: what would you most like them to remember and talk about?

• What to tell them and how to tell it: the guided walk, drive or cruise

• What to tell them and how to tell it: the information display

• What to tell them and how to tell it: the self-guided nature trail

• Learning about Interpretation techniques: links to further information

• Testing: what best holds their interest and stays in their memories?

10. People Skills 3: Workplace, networking, and public relations

• Why network?

• Making face-to-face networking effective

• Keeping records

• Social media

• Don’t forget your customers

• Employer/employee and workmate relations

11. Financial matters

• Starting an ecotourism venture

• Staying afloat through the bad times

• Hiring yourself out as a guide

• Keeping records and projecting costs

12. Health and Safety issues

• Food and water

• First aid courses and kits

• Driving

• Walking

• Other modes of travel

13. Legal matters

• Licences and permits needed for starting and running a tour business

• Public liability – nowadays it’s risky not to have insurance, and there are some things you can’t legally do without it

• Copyright (yours and others), slander and related topics

• Hiring staff

• Indigenous culture

• Conservation legislation

14. Final note: Never-ending Learning and Innovation

• Learning about wildlife

• Nature interpretation and guiding techniques

• Wildlife tourism literature

• Market trends: keeping up to date with what your potential customers are looking for

• Thinking creatively: it’s fun and often productive!

References and further reading