Catlin et al. (2011) [CJJ] interpreted Duffus and Dearden (1990) [DD, cited in CJJ] to argue (a) that wildlife tourism consists of destinations which grow from smaller numbers of specialist wildlife watchers initially, to larger numbers of generalised mainstream tourists later; and (b) that this produces impacts which exceed limits of acceptable change (LAC) and damage tourist experiences, businesses and wildlife alike. We suggest that this interpretation is incomplete and potentially misleading, for the following reasons.