Interações próximas com o boto-da-Amazônia (Inia geoffrensis)

• Autor(a) principal: Alves, Luiz Cláudio Pinto de Sá
• Data de Publicação: 2013
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações da UERJ
• Texto Completo: http://www.bdtd.uerj.br/handle/1/14289
• topic: Animal behavior; Animal conditioning; Dolphin-human interaction; Tourism; Comportamento animal; Condicionamento animal; Interação homem-golfinho; Turismo; Impacto ambiental; Ecoturismo; Boto; Amazonas; CNPQ::CIENCIAS BIOLOGICAS::ZOOLOGIA

Tourism has been considered the solution to economic problems in many low income communities, however, tourism can also cause negative impacts. Conditioning wild animals through artificial feeding facilitates the work of nature tourism operators by creating more encounters with and decreasing the distances between tourists and these animals, but examples around the world show numerous negative impacts resulting from such activities. In Amazonas State, Brazil, there are five current cases of tourism activities in which botos (Inia geoffrensis) are being conditioned to human contact through artificial feeding, being the case of the Anavilhanas National Park (ANP), in Novo Airão (NA), the pioneer. Therefore, the aims of the present work are to describe these cases of conditioning of botos as a tourism attraction in Amazonas State, to evaluate the influence of this activity on the aggressiveness and social behavior of the conditioned botos in the ANP, to evaluate the perception of the NA community in relation to the possible socioeconomic impacts resulting from this tourism, to evaluate the perception of the fishermen from NA regarding to interactions with the river dolphins and the impact of this tourism on those interactions, and to evaluate the prior expectations, general perception and experiences of the tourists participating in the interactions with botos in the ANP. The methods utilized for data collection were as follows: semi-structured ethnographic interviews, participant observation, self-completed questionnaires and behavioral sampling methods. Results showed that the activities based on conditioning cause numerous negative impacts. It is concluded that this kind of tourism is dispersing through the Amazonas State. Conditioning causes an increase in the competition among the botos and deeply alters their social behavior. Broadly speaking, the population of NA perceives themselves as being excluded from the sharing of the economic benefits resulting from this tourist activity. This activity apparently do not cause a change in the local fishermen negative perceptions about the botos, and they also perceives themselves as being excluded from the sharing of economic benefits. Furthermore, the degree of satisfaction achieved by the tourists in NA during these activities is very high, but such satisfaction is reached by participating in invasive activities that disseminate the idea that conditioning wild animals through artificial feeding is correct. Tourist activities related to boto conditioning are possibly not in complete agreement with the functions of conservation units, ecotourism concepts and Brazilian Legislation. Management proposals aiming to achieve less negatively impacting activities are proposed, such as the implementation of a tourism activity not based on artificial feeding/conditioning and an education/interpretation program to provide more accurate information to tourists about the natural behavior of the botos to provide them with realistic expectations prior to participating in less-invasive dolphin-watching activities