“Photographic tourism cannot universally replace trophy hunting because its economic viability depends on wildlife visibility, accessibility, tourism infrastructure, and political stability.”

While non-consumptive tourism is more publicly palatable, it requires substantial investment in infrastructure, political stability, and continuous tourist traffic. … In Kenya, where hunting has been banned since the late 1970s, photographic tourism has expanded significantly, offering a more publicly acceptable form of wildlife-based income (e.g., Nowak et al. 2019). However, its success depends on factors such as infrastructure, political stability, accessibility, and scenic appeal which are features not available in all areas.

Sustainable wildlife tourism should be considered as a potential tool for development and conservation efforts, but it is not appropriate for all protected areas or local communities. It requires a long-term commitment and careful management. Global case studies and research reveal that location, accessibility, market demand, marketing, presence of infrastructure, finance, and governance, as well as the costs and benefits to the wildlife, environment, and communities, are major considerations.

While income from photographic tourism could equal or exceed income from hunting (e.g., 447 % greater median annual income for conservancies earning >$0, 172 % greater total income across conservancies during 1998–2022), income from hunting occurred in more conservancies and generated income more rapidly, suggesting that hunting cannot be easily replaced.

Profits are higher for ecotourism compared with the trophy hunting option and stocks more sustainable. … The main driver for the decline in white rhino under the trophy hunting scenario is the high increase in trophy price. In these open access models, price drives species abundance. … The study shows that ecotourism could generate profits that are much higher than trophy hunting values, as well as resulting in greater sustainability. This seems logical, since trophy hunting is a once off value, whereas ecotourism generates recurring revenue over time, surpassing the hunting value over time.

Some hunting revenue may be able to be replaced by ecotourism (Di Minin 2013). Ecotourists, however, typically travel only to relatively accessible areas (Balmford et al., 2015). In Botswana, for example, only 22% of the Northern Conservation Zone has in termediate or high potential for photographic tourism (Winterbach et al., 2015).

Potential of trophy hunting to create incentives for wildlife conservation in Africa where alternative wildlife‐based land uses may not be viable.

Similarly, in areas that have tourism potential, e.g., scenic attractions with easy accessibility [40], trophy hunting may cause wildlife to flee or avoid human presence, thereby negatively affecting wildlife watching and ecotourism [41].

Eco-tourism is commonly viewed as a viable alternative to trophy hunting. But our study found that only a third of the landowners said they would scale up or adopt eco-tourism in the face of a hunting ban. The remaining two-thirds believed such a transition to be unfeasible given financial constraints related to entering and competing in a saturated tourism market.

After the hunting ban, communities were forced to shifts from hunting to photographic tourism.

Hunting tourism is likely to be of particular im portance in areas where photographic tourism is less competitive or unviable - such as in areas of dense vegetation, low animal densities, remote locations, or where there is a higher level of civil insecurity.

This transition was difficult for some communities because hunting was undertaken in peripheral areas that are not conducive for photographic tourism safaris and infrastructure. … However, mass market tourism is unpredictable and if a country undergoes political instability, mass tourism can quickly dissipate; in these circumstances, hunting tourism has proven to persevere

The proponents of trophy hunting claim that there are no viable alternatives for Africa. They suggest that non-consumptive forms of wildlife tourism such as photo-safaris, where tourists view and photograph animals, do not generate sufficient benefits to justify keeping the wildlife habitat.

It also suggests an uneven ability among concessions to transition successfully to photographic-based tourism, potentially weakening incentives for conservation in certain areas.

While photo-tourism can be an effective form of wildlife based tourism, it is simply not feasible in all areas. … Factors such as low wildlife densities, lack of scenic landscapes and the absence of transport links, limit the types of areas that can implement photo-tourism.

For tourism to develop, a country needs stability so that visitors feel safe. … That may be one of the clearest lessons from Bayanga so far: Wildlife tourism alone is unlikely to transform a place like this unless it is linked to wider local enterprise, infrastructure and public services.

Large mammals are an important driver of income to Namibia’s conservancies and hunting and photographic tourism can provide complementary benefits.

The Dickman letter argues that these new options are not “viable alternatives” in most places, especially regions that “are too remote or unappealing to attract sufficient visitors.”

“Communal conservancies earned N$166.36 million through joint venture tourism while hunting brought N$292.55 million to the conservancies,” she said.

The KNP’s seasonal inaccessibility, by contrast, constrains visitation, raises delivery costs for local suppliers, and incentivizes operators to procure from distant wholesalers or rely on imported inputs, amplifying leakage [11, 13].

While photographic tourism provides the lion’s revenue share, it is vulnerable to market fluctuations. Global crises, like the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, highlighted the fragility of tourism-dependent economies.

Responsible ecotourism offers a much more acceptable and sustainable income-generation model, which combined with other funding strategies and with equitable distribution of the benefits, can go a long way to halting and ultimately reversing the devastating declines in wildlife populations we are seeing, and which trophy hunting and other destructive use models have utterly failed to tackle.

The product can only function as a tourism economy if it is operationally available to receive tourists. The current intermittent status is not a viable tourism architecture in any conventional sense.

Hunting safaris often make use of remote areas that are unsuitable for high-volume tourism. This spreads tourism dollars beyond national parks.

Across East Africa, conservation and tourism are often framed in terms of biodiversity, climate resilience or investment. Yet the more decisive factor is political and social stability. Without it, ecosystems fragment, visitor confidence collapses and long-term planning becomes nearly impossible.

The growth of photographic tourism changed the way international visitors experienced wildlife. Instead of travelling to hunt animals, millions of tourists began visiting South Africa to observe animals, photograph landscapes and experience conservation areas.