Introduction and Objectives Wildlife tourism is popular with people spending considerable resources to encounter specific species in the wild including in South Africa. Some of the most popular species for wildlife tourism in the region are lion, leopard and cheetah (Mangachena and Pickering, 2021). Tourists can encounter these species in natural or in semi-natural environments such as public protected areas including Kruger National Park (KNP), in private protected areas (SANParks, 2020) but also in zoos, sanctuaries, wildlife ranches and farms including outside the species’ natural ranges (Maciejewski and Kerley, 2014). It is important when managing and monitoring tourism to understand where tourists encounter wildlife including for marketing, as well as allocating resources for tourism and species conservation (Drugova et al. 2020). Traditionally, wildlife tourism data has been obtained through fees, road and trail counters as well as visitor surveys, but obtaining such data for a whole country is challenging (Wilkins et al. 2021). Recently, researchers have started using user created online content, including geotagged images from social media platforms such as Flickr, to obtain insights into spatial patterns in wildlife tourism (Wilkins et al. 2021). Such data can be free, relatively quick and easy to acquire, provide historical and current insights into visitation and assess wildlife tourism over large spatial scales (Wilkins et al. 2021). To assess spatial patterns in encounters with popular wild cats in Africa we assessed geotagged data from the photo-sharing platform Flickr for lion, leopard and cheetah. We specifically examined 1) where were hotspots and coldspots of encounters including for different land tenures, and 2) where were encounters outside species’ traditional ranges. We discuss factors that may account for the differences in the spatial patterns of encounters.
Methodology We collected metadata for 142,318 images tagged with lion or leopard or cheetah and ‘South Africa’ from Flickr using an API and R Studio (R Development Team, 2021) on 15 March 2021. Metadata per image included user identification number, geographic coordinates where the image was taken as well as date and time when image was taken. To deal with people posting many images of the same animals at the same time, and so its similar to visitor-day data, we randomly selected one image per person per day resulting in 4,946 wildlife-encounter-days (WED) from geolocated images within South Africa. Then the WED data was combined with protected areas spatial layers (UNEP-WCMC, 2018) and spatial distribution data per species (IUCN, 2020), to map where people engage with these species in QGIS (QGIS Development Team, 2020). We then visualised the distribution of encounters including hotspots for wildlife tourism using heatmaps.

Results There was a total of 142,318 images of the three species South Africa posted on Flickr tagged South Africa but a total of 2,507 WED for lion, 1,416 for leopard and 1,023 for cheetah. While KNP in the northeast of South Africa was a clear hotspot for encountering all three species, there were also hotpots in other public and private protected areas for lion and cheetah (Fig. 1a). Other hotspots for lion and cheetah were in zoos, sanctuaries, wildlife ranches and farms outside any type of protected area. For all three cats, most encounters (80%) were in some type of protected area with 35% in private protected areas, 27% in KNP and 16% in other public protected areas (Fig. 1b). For leopard there were very few encounters outside of protected areas (Fig. 1b). With leopard natural range covering all of South Africa, all encounters were within this distribution. In contrast for lion and cheetah, many encounters were outside their natural range (Fig. 1c).

Figure 1. a) Hotspots of tourists’ encounters with lion, leopard and cheetah, b) proportion of encounters in private, public, Kruger National Park and outside protected areas and c) proportion of encounters in and out of species’ range in South Africa based on geolocated images on social media. Discussion This research shows how there is relevant data on social media platforms such as Flickr for assessing wildlife tourism. The large number of images of lion, leopard and cheetah on this and other social media platforms reflect how people want to share encounters with these species, with lions being the most popular. Some of the differences in the number of images reflect how easy it is to encounter them, with lions often in large prides, sleeping and hunting during the day, while leopards are solitary, and cheetahs are rare in the wild (Okello et al. 2008). In addition, the patterns in images reflect where tourists go to engage with wildlife, with hotspots for all three species in KNP, the flagship wildlife tourism destination in South Africa (Maciejewski and Kerley, 2014). Many encounters with lions and cheetah occurred outside the species’ natural ranges. This could reflect people’s desire to engage with them easily in zoos, sanctuaries, wildlife ranches and farms due to higher stocking densities in relatively confined spaces. Results from our study highlight the importance of protected areas in South Africa for wildlife tourism but also how areas outside protected areas are also important for tourism. References Drugova, T., Kim, M.K., Jakus, P.M. 2021. Marketing, congestion, and demarketing in Utah’s National Parks. Tourism Economics, 27(8):1759-1778. Maciejewski, K., Kerley, G.I. (2014). Understanding tourists’ preference for mammal species in private protected areas: Is there a case for extralimital species for ecotourism? PLoS One, 9(2):e88192. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0088192 Mangachena, J.R., Pickering, C.M. 2021b. Why are some animals popular with wildlife tourists: insights from South Africa. Journal of Ecotourism, 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1080/14724049.2021.2019261 Wilkins, E.J., Wood, S.A., Smith, J.W. 2021. Uses and limitations of social media to inform visitor use management in parks and protected areas: A systematic review. Environmental Management, 67:120-132. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-020-01373-7 SANParks. 2020. South African national parks annual report. Accessed 05 May 2020. https://www.sanparks.org/assets/docs/general/annual-report-2020.pdf