Fitness effects of ecotourism on an endangered carnivore M. Larm , R. Erlandsson, K. Nor en & A. Angerbj € orn Department of Zoology, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden Keywords carnivore conservation; ecotourism; fitness; predator refuge; researcher disturbance; tourism disturbance; tourism management; wildlife tourism. Correspondence Malin Larm, Department of Zoology, Stockholm University, 10691 Stockholm, Sweden. Email: malin.larm@zoologi.su.se Editor: Vincenzo Penteriani Associate Editor: Pia Lentini Received 26 February 2019; accepted 09 October 2019 doi:10.1111/acv.12548 Abstract Nature-based recreational and tourism activities can exert significant direct and indirect impacts on wildlife, through behavioral, physiological and distributional changes. Despite many studies demonstrating such changes, few attempts have been made to quantify the fitness consequences and evaluate their biological signif- icance. Helagsfj € allen in Sweden is a core area of the endangered Fennoscandian arctic fox Vulpes lagopus, and a popular area for recreational tourism. Some dens in the area experience daily disturbance from tourism during the summer season, while others are virtually undisturbed. We used a long-term dataset (2008–2017) of 553 juveniles in 74 litters to investigate summer juvenile survival, which is an important fitness component for the arctic fox. We found that the mean juvenile survival rate increased from 0.56 at undisturbed dens to 0.83 at disturbed den dur- ing years of decreasing small-rodent abundance, where predation on the arctic fox is presumed to be highest. We suggest that the increased survival could be medi- ated by a human activity-induced predator refuge for the arctic foxes in close proximity of trails and mountain huts. Our study demonstrates a possible positive indirect effect of nature-based tourism on wildlife and is one of a few studies attempting to quantify this impact. It highlights the importance of context for how animals are affected by disturbance. We also demonstrate that studying how the effects of tourism activity vary depending on the context could provide opportuni- ties for identifying the mechanisms behind these effects, which can be an impor- tant link between scientific research and the management of wildlife and tourism activities. Introduction Nature-based recreational activities like wildlife tourism can exert both significant positive and negative impacts on wild- life (Czech, Krausman & Devers, 2000). Impacts can be either direct or indirect and affect animals on a scale from individuals to entire populations and ecological communities (Higginbottom, Northrope & Green, 2001). The interest for recreational and tourism activities in natural areas is increas- ing rapidly worldwide and many visitors are seeking more and more intense experiences at remote locations (Snyder, 2007; Geffroy et al., 2015). Even non-consumptive activities like wildlife watching may cause disturbance and can be intrusive in the sense that they have an explicit focus on exploring nature and wildlife that often have little previous experience of humans. In addition, tourism activities tend to target charismatic species that are rare and/or endangered (Reynolds & Braithwaite, 2001). On the other hand, orga- nized tourism activities in natural areas often incorporate conservational and educational features with potential to gen- erate positive effects to compensate for disturbance. Such positive effects could, for example, be economic contributions from wildlife tourism, which is crucial for con- servation of many species worldwide. It can also provide income for local communities, increasing the incentive to support protection of biodiversity and avoid more exploita- tive land uses (Jones, Diggle & Thouless, 2015; Buckley, Morrison & Castley, 2016). Several previous studies have found that tourism can affect individual animals directly and indirectly by inducing behavioral, physiological and distributional changes (Le Corre, G elinaud & Brigand, 2009; Ben  ıtez-L opez, Alkemade & Verweij, 2010; Penteriani et al., 2017). The direct effects on individual animals are typically negative or neutral (Hig- ginbottom et al., 2001). Changes in behavior or physiology could compromise activities like foraging and parental care, with potential fitness consequences. If tourism activity causes individuals to leave disturbed areas, it could affect the distri- bution and demography of the population (Frid & Dill, 2002; Bejder et al., 2006). The impact of a disturbance on individual animals is, however, context-dependent and may vary according to several context-related factors, such as food availability, time of year and group composition as well as the sex, age, previous experience with humans, physical Animal Conservation  (2019) – ª 2019 The Zoological Society of London 1 Animal Conservation. Print ISSN 1367-9430