Kodama Travel is a marketplace for responsible travel booking, and protecting animals who are impacted by the travel industry is at the heart of our mission. Our Animal Welfare Policy is developed in partnership with World Animal Protection to ensure all travel experiences booked through us play a positive role in wildlife conservation. Animal encounters have become an increasingly popular holiday experience, and we believe that meaningful experiences can inspire people to care for our non-human kin, with whom we share this planet. However, some animal-related activities, such as elephant washing and rides, photo opportunities with tigers and koalas, or watching dolphins and orcas perform, have led to animal suffering through cruel treatment and inhumane conditions. It can also distort people's, particularly children's, perception of natural animal behaviours.
We believe that all animals should be respected and that the best way to appreciate animals is by seeing them in their natural, wild habitat. We recognise that given the conservation status of some species, this is unfortunately not always possible. Therefore, when under human care, all animals must have a good life by enjoying good physical and mental health. The conditions they are provided with must favour positive experiences over negative ones, encourage them to make choices and enable them to express the widest possible range of natural behaviours. Where wild animals are kept in captivity, the facility must not only provide them with the best possible welfare conditions, but it must also contribute towards a shift away from exploitative practices and be supportive of phasing out keeping wild animals for commercial purposes.
We only work with suppliers if the animals under their care are provided with the highest possible welfare in line with the Five Domains of Animal Welfare:
- Nutrition: factors that involve the animal's access to sufficient, balanced, varied, and clean food and water.
- Environment: factors that enable comfort through temperature, substrate, space, air, odour, noise, and predictability.
- Health:factors that enable good health through the absence of disease, injury, impairment, and good fitness level.
- Behaviour: factors that provide varied, novel, and engaging environmental challenges through sensory inputs, exploration, foraging, bonding, playing, retreating, and others.
- Mental State: by presenting positive situations in the previous four functional domains, the mental state of the animal should benefit from predominantly positive states, such as pleasure, comfort, or vitality, while reducing negative states such as fear, frustration, hunger, pain, or boredom.
We do not sell or promote venues and/or activities that offer any of the following experiences:
- Close interaction with wild animals, such as touching or riding, including but not limited to elephant riding and bathing, swimming with dolphins in captive environments, or walking with lions.
- Wild animal performances, including but not limited to dolphin/orca shows, circuses featuring animals, snake charming, primate performances or orangutan boxing.
- Photo opportunities with wild animals, including but not limited to big cats, sloths, primates, koalas, and dolphins.
- Watching animals fight or race, or being used in other sports or cultural events that cause animals to suffer or die, including but not limited to bullfighting and running, crocodile wrestling, dog fighting, rodeo, elephant polo, horse and dog racing and any kind of blood sport.
- Visiting facilities where captive wild animals are bred and kept for commercial products, including but not limited to crocodile farms, civet coffee farms, bear bile farms, and turtle farms.
- Engaging in trophy or canned hunting or sport fishing.
- We do not feature any aquariums and we support the 'empty the tank' movement and advocate for all cetaceans to be freed or be moved to suitable sanctuaries.
- We do not work with wildlife safari providers who chase/provoke wildlife with vehicles or other means, or wildlife tour guides/operators who use food to lure wild animals.
- We do not allow any experience involving the purchase or consumption of wild animal products, including but not limited to pangolin scales, whale meat, bushmeat, tiger bone medicine, bear bile, and shark fin soup. Buying and selling products made from endangered species is a criminal offence in many countries, and we reserve the right to report these vendors and activities to law enforcement officials.
- We do not feature camel riding and dog sledding unless we can verify animal welfare standards. Our collaboration with World Animal Protection has provided guidelines to assist in vetting animal welfare standards. When applicable, World Animal Protection will act in an advisory role throughout Kodama Travel’s verification protocol. This is in response to over-tourism in many regions, which has resulted in a decline in animal welfare safeguarding.
When not in conflict with any of the above guidelines, Kodama Travel does offer and/or promotes the following venues and experiences:
- Genuine animal sanctuaries, rehabilitation facilities, and rescue centres that have the highest possible standards of animal care. E.g. sanctuaries certified by the Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries (GFAS) or elephant venues following World Animal Protection's Best Practice Elephant-Friendly venue guidelines.
- Responsible wildlife watching, where a visitor can observe animals in their natural environment from a suitable distance without interrupting their natural behaviours or disturbing their routines. E.g. whale watching experiences certified by the Whale Cetacean Alliance (WCA), and/or those following regional and international whale-watching guidelines and code of conduct.
- Responsible water sport activities such as snorkelling and scuba diving. We observe a no-contact policy, except in situations where a diver/snorkeller may encounter a stranded/entangled marine animal, or when an encounter is initiated by the animal. We encourage scuba divers to always dive
Kodama Travels reserves the right to not sell or promote venues and/or activities that can harm wildlife that may have not been included in the above list. We will remove and ban any vendors found violating the above policy.