WildChoices identifies the captive wildlife facilities in South Africa that offer tourist attractions and activities, including interactions and volunteer programs, by applying the publicly available SATSA Captive Wildlife Attractions & Activities Guidelines and Decision Tool as the current tourism industry standard to publicly available information about the facilities and their activities.
The Tool is in the form of a Decision Tree that guides the user through the rapid assessment of a facility against a series of qualifying and disqualifying criteria.
Click to view full image or see the PDF here.
WildChoices applies the Tool outcomes from their identified list of facilities with a support recommendation assisting users in making an informed decision whether to visit a facility or not. The WildChoices Support Recommendations are as follows:
- Support Level 1 – true sanctuaries or rehabilitation centres per Question 1, and facilities with 3 ‘no’ answers to Question 6
- Support Level 2 – facilities with 2 ‘no’ answers to Question 6
- Support Level 3 – facilities with 1 ‘no’ answer to Question 6
- Support Level 4 – facilities with 0 ‘no’ answers to Question 6
- Don’t Support
We assess facilities prior to the experience, without visiting them, in line with the intended application of the Tool. No publicly available information prior to 2019 is considered in the assessment process. We constantly engage with facilities, operators, and visitors who approach us about any support recommendation, and we review and update assessments where necessary.
Our searchable, interactive map of South Africa shows the location of the captive wildlife tourism facilities, colour coded per our support level recommendation.
How to do your own assessment
- Make sure that you work through the Guidelines.
- Apply the Decision Tool to a facility based on your own research about the facility.
- Use the following image on Page 19 of the SATSA Captive Wildlife Attractions & Activities Guidelines to guide your decision based on the information at hand:
- Support Level 2 – facilities with 2 ‘no’ answers to Question 6
- Support Level 3 – facilities with 1 ‘no’ answer to Question 6
- Support Level 4 – facilities with 0 ‘no’ answers to Question 6
Captive wildlife facilities are defined as facilities that keep wild animals in a human-made enclosure that is of insufficient size for the management of self-sustaining populations of the species and designed to hold the animals in a manner that prevents them from escaping and facilitates intensive human intervention or manipulation in the provision of food and/or water, artificial housing and/or healthcare.
Note: Exotic (non-indigenous) animals are automatically deemed captive due to their permit restrictions.
