Feeding wild animals | Bond Shum

Question: A while back, a video of tourists feeding cows at Ngong Ping was being circulated. Some people were feeding them bread, fibre biscuits, and some others fed bento boxes. A number of netizens criticised the actions of the tourists in the video, saying that animals shouldn’t be fed food meant for human consumption. Is this factual?

Expert: Mr Bond Shum, Founder and Conservation Director of Outdoor Wildlife Learning Hong Kong (OWLHK)

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Personally, from an ecological perspective, it is not advisable to feed wild animals, whether the food is processed food or pet food. The average person does not know what kind of nutrition wild animals need, and may feed them into obesity, make them sick, or even poison them. Long-term feeding will also make wild animals overly-dependent on humans, which could reduce their ability to adjust to environmental changes. If these animals become obese, they will run slowly and be unable to escape predators; or they may be unable to adjust to the dry season and lose their foraging ability.

Nature has its own equalisation mechanism. When the population of certain species grows excessively, the population will eventually decrease due to a shortage of food supply, and the balance will be restored. When people feed animals because they look skinny or when they are starving, they are taking on a pet-owner mentality, and their actions may increase the population of said species unnaturally, disrupt the balance of nature, and indirectly threaten other species.

❮Legislation on feeding wild animals❯ https://bit.ly/2G6glfz

❮Feeding wild monkeys could lead to uncontrollable growth in later populations❯ https://bit.ly/2wBqCRE

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*The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the expert and do not necessarily reflect the stance of the centre.