National Parks By Visitor Management Tourism Essay

The recreationists who visit and enjoy the planets protected natural areas cause serious ecological damage to the very lands they enjoy. To maintain ecosystem integrity, park managers must increasingly focus on recreation management as a vital part of their jobs. Managers agree on the importance of pursuing objectives using the least cost mix of tools. To make this choice wisely, the efficacy of various tools in influencing recreationists’ behavior must be assessed.

Natural resource managers often confront the dual objectives of encouraging recreation while simultaneously preserving the ecosystems they manage. Unfortunately, human behavior often degrades natural processes.

To maintain ecosystem integrity, park managers must increasingly focus on recreation management as a vital part of their jobs. The choice of recreation management strategy requires that objectives be delineated and that the efficacy of the many tools at their disposal be evaluated.

Visitor management in parks, wilderness and other protected areas requires information about visitor environment interactions and, particularly, the distribution and flow of visitors in space and time. Such information is usually sketchy and based largely on the verbal reports of visitors.

Many of the world’s natural parks, wilderness areas and other protected areas are established for the dual purposes of ecological preservation and recreational use. Managers of such places must balance visitor use and environmental protection. Regardless of the balance selected, policy development and implementation requires fundamental information about visitors, their needs and wants, the impacts of their visits, and their distribution and flow in space and time.

While well-established protected areas in developed countries often receive large numbers of visitors, newly established ones can struggle to attract them.

This is especially so in some developing countries, where protected areas often depend on tourism income, and the number of visitors may be too low to provide even a small portion of the necessary income to run the park. Therefore strategies to manage the problems of large numbers of visitors in some protected areas often need to be complemented by other strategies designed to attract them to other areas.

Managers have at their disposal a wide array of strategies to manage the impacts of park tourism. Their choice will be determined by any restrictions that legislation or agency policy places upon them, by the efficiency and appropriateness of the management strategy, and the resource implications. The main features of these strategies to control, influence and mitigate visitor impacts are described below.

There are four strategic approaches which can be used to reduce the negative impacts of visitors on protected areas:

1. Managing the supply of tourism or visitor opportunities, e.g. by increasing the space available or the time available to accommodate more use.

2. Managing the demand for visitation, e.g. through restrictions of length of stay, the total numbers, or type of use.

3. Managing the resource capabilities to handle use, e.g. through hardening the site or specific locations, or developing facilities.

4. Managing the impact of use, e.g. reducing the negative impact of use by modifying the type of use, or dispersing or concentrating use.

Literature review:

The requirement of Environment Canada, Parks’ mandate to protect heritage resources and to facilitate visitor use of those resources has not been met in park management plans or operations. Care of the physical, biological, and cultural heritage resources led Parks Canada to develop objective data about natural resources within park boundaries but minimal data about the dimensions and nature of human use. Park planning reflected a protection bias with the result that issues related to the mix of opportunities, activities, services and facilities were not well analyzed or taken seriously. In practical terms, management action in national parks suffered. Facilities were badly located and sometimes too large or too small.

Managing the tension between the resource and the visitor requires that park visitors and their activities be treated seriously. This requirement has led to the development of the Visitor Activity Management Process (VAMP). The advent of VAMP represents a fundamental change in orientation in Parks from a product or supply basis to an outward-looking market-sensitive one.

Traditionally, park agencies have utilized a product orientation to visitor activity planning and management. Park planners and managers, believed ‘their primary task to be providing facilities, services and programs which they consider to be most appropriate, as efficiently as they are able’.’ This approach involves deciding what the public wants and how the park agency can best provide for visitor and local wants.

The resulting facilities, services and programs are offered to the public with the hope that they will be utilized. Ensuing management then becomes operation-orientated, focusing on the facility or resource being offered rather than on the recreation experiences or benefits provided.

Natural resource information is collected through the Natural Resources Management Process and is assessed to identify resource opportunities and constraints. The inclusion of such information in VAMP is important because it helps achieve integration between visitor use and resource protection.

From the recently revised US National Park Service (NPS) Management Policies, provides a strong mandate to guide recreation management decisions in protecting park resources and values at some 375 parks.

This policy guidance recognizes the legitimacy of providing opportunities for public enjoyment of parks. However, the Management Policies also acknowledge that some degree of resource impact is an inevitable consequence of use and direct managers to `ensure that any adverse impacts are the minimum necessary, unavoidable, cannot be further mitigated, and do not constitute impairment or derogation of park resources and values’ (NPS, 2001).

Most protected areas internationally operate under similar mandates. Success in achieving an appropriate balance between recreation provision and resource protection mandates requires professional management of park natural resources and visitor use. Managers must have the ability to assess and find out visitor impacts and determine what their acceptability with respect to park management objectives is.

Objective of the research:

National Park Service lands are administered under dual legal mandates requiring managers to achieve an acceptable balance between resource protection and recreation provision objectives. While some degree of environmental degradation is inevitable, managers are challenged to develop recreation resource management policies that can preserve environmental conditions and processes, while sustaining high quality recreational experiences. Recreation ecology knowledge can assist managers in this challenging task by providing procedures to monitor resource conditions and evaluate the effectiveness of management actions.

Provisions of (physical) facilities in recreational areas often have a double purpose. They offer service to the visitors, but their primary purpose might equally be as management actions with the purpose of limiting impacts on the natural environment.

Research in the outdoor recreation field shows that land managers usually are more sensitive to ecological impacts from recreation than are the visitors.

1. How do the two groups judge the need for facilities?

2. Which management actions are regarded as good or acceptable tools in order to repair or minimize impacts?

3. How we can apply visitors’ management tools to integrate protection and use of national parks and facilities at the same time?

Methodology:

This project will utilize both quantitative and qualitative data collection tools, but is rooted in a qualitative method. It means combination of quantitative and qualitative method but rely on qualitative one.

Data collection will consist of primary data and secondary data. In secondary data collection, using of magazines, books, articles, journals, internet, websites and conference’s papers are common ways and primary data can be gathered by: communication methods and observation methods such as interview and questionnaire.

Expected benefits to the society:

Protected areas provide opportunities for visitors to develop a sense of perspective, to begin to appreciate that the past played an important role in shaping the present, and to understand that what we now hold dear came because others before us made sacrifices, were worried about the future or were simply far-sighted. Parks are thus highly valued for their opportunities for these experiences.

The potential pressures that tourism may place on cultural resources are significant, yet such tourism is highly dependent on maintaining the integrity of the site. National parks and protected areas provide important reserves for biological habitats, ecological processes, pure air, clean water and individual species. These functions serve the important role of providing the security that cultures need for maintenance of natural processes important to the survival of human life. National parks and protected areas provide critical habitats for humans to enjoy, appreciate and learn about natural processes.