Shortcourse outline to help build professional competency in management of tourism and visitation in protected areas. Adapted for Namibia, but applicable everywhere. (c) Steve McCool.

1. Presented by
Stephen McCool
The University of Montana
Missoula, Montana

2. Shortcourse Goals
 Understand consequences of growing tourist demand
for Namibian resources
 Provide a framework for thinking about management
 Build awareness of the science and practice of visitor
management
 A focus more on the why rather than the what or how

3. Shortcourse
Organization/Procedures
 Facilitated discussion
 Participants provide examples, opportunities and
challenges from real world
 Facilitator provides a sense of principles from the
literature and experience
 Organization
 Protected Areas and Tourism in a Changing World
 Identification of Issues
 Presentation and Discussion of Principles

4. Stewardship Responsibilities
 Developing a vision
 Protect values and resources
 Enhance quality of life
 Provide opportunities for employment and income
 Designing a pathway to achieve it
 What actions are effective, efficient, and equitable?
 Monitoring the journey along the pathway
 Is what we thought would happen, really happening?

5. How do we meet these responsibilities
with respect to tourism and visitation?
 Use best knowledge available, including science and
our experience, we manage:
Competing
Demands
Relationships
with Joint Learning
Constituencies

6. But, we know there are obstacles to
addressing any of the above tasks
 Funding
 Politics
 Organizational learning, technical proficiency
 Lack of trust
 Institutional design
 Procedural orientation

7. And we know that protected area
stewardship exists within
 A dynamic, often contentious political context,
 Groups vie and compete for “veto” power over
protected area actions,
 Disagreements over goals of protected areas exist,
 There is often scientific uncertainty about cause-effect
relationships,
 The power to plan and the power to implement plans
are often distinct and separated, and
 Inequities in access to information exist

8. Thus, protected area stewardship
 Is a wicked problem
 Framing the question of management itself is
problematic
 And a messy situation
 There are no solutions (e.g., answers)
 Just resolutions (e.g., agreements)
 Problems are interconnected
 Problems return because the context changes
 Cannot proceed as normal
 Finally, the future is not like the past

9. What is the world like?
 The PLUS world of the past
 Predictable
 Linear
 Understandable
 Stable
 The DICE World of the future
 Dynamic
 Impossible to understand completely
 Complex
 Ever-changing

10. Small Group Assignment
 What do you see as the key issue in the provision of
visitor and tourism opportunities on MET
administered lands over the next decade?
 Short phrases
 Take 30 minutes
 Each group reports on three most significant

11. So, What Principles will Help Address
These Issues in a DICE World …
So We Can be Better Stewards?

12. Some Principles for Managing Visitors
in Protected Areas – A Preface
 Making tradeoffs between protection and
visitation/tourism
 What objective ultimately constrains tourism
development?
 Determine how much change is acceptable
 Making tradeoffs, but involves more than just the biophysical,
also includes the experiential, how much change is acceptable
 Principles derived from science

13. In a Messy World …
 Need a framework to work through issues, challenges
and opportunities
 Principles help us do the working through
 Principles are not answers, but they serve as a
framework to structure our thinking

14. Principle 1:
Appropriate Management Depends
Upon Objectives
 Objectives tell us what to achieve
 Help organize action
 Reflect social agreement on purpose of protected
area

15. Objectives Provide Vision of the
Future
 But, whose future?
Desired Various futures
Present

16. Typical objectives
 “protect the resource”
 “provide a diversity of recreation opportunities”
 Do not provide specific enough direction for decisions
 Do not provide for benchmarks to measure progress
 Not specific enough, lead to an illusion of agreement
when in fact there is significant disagreement

17. What are the characteristics of
good objectives?
 Specific – not vague (e.g., protect the resource)
 Output-oriented – what is the desired result?
 Type of experience, biophysical condition
 Quantitative – how to measure the objective so we know if
it is achieved
 So many people have achieved adventure, challenge, etc.
 No more than 80% of the campsites have more than 50 sq. meters
of barren soil
 Realistic – the objective is attainable with some effort
 Time-bound – the time frame for achieving the objective is
specified

18. Principle 2:
Diversity in Biophysical and Social
Conditions Is Inevitable and May be
Desirable
 Human induced changes vary by location
 Such changes also vary in acceptability
 Is such variation desirable?
 If so, allocating areas to different opportunities is a
useful technique--allocation termed zoning

19. Example:
Expected outcomes for visitors in
Glacier National Park
 Nature appreciation
 Solitude
 Introspection
 Security
 Challenge/Adventure
 Group cohesiveness
 Personal Control

20. Motivations Occur in Packages
 Escapists
 High on personal control and solitude
 Naturalists
 Scenery, introspection and wildlife
 Parkists
 Introspection, security and personal control
 Frustrated Solitude Seekers
 Solitude, security and scenery

21. Visitor Data Glacier National Park
Frustrated Solit ude 21. 9
Parkist s 19. 5
Naturalists 14. 7
Escapist s 36. 7
0.0 5.0 10. 0 15. 0 20. 0 25. 0 30. 0 35. 0 40. 0
Percent of Respondents

22. Variability in Acceptability
Percent selecting picture with nine or more people, Swiftcurrent
F rus trated Solit ude
Park ist s
Naturalis ts
Prefer red
Acceptable
Esc apist s
0.0 10. 0 20. 0 30. 0 40. 0 50. 0 60. 0 70. 0 80. 0
Percent of Respondents
Outdoor Recreation Planning
Capstone 6 -- Fall 2002

23. Thus,
 No such thing as an average visitor!!
 Acceptability of conditions varies by visitor type
 Who is the park managed for?
 Finally, management is driven by variability more than
averages

24. Zoning as a means of protection for
both biophysical and social conditions
 Allocates land to different opportunities and
conditions
 Controls the spread of the types and amounts of
impacts
 Protects unique and highly valued opportunities

25. Principle 3:
Management is Directed at
Influencing Human-Induced Change
 Ecosystems are dynamic, change always occurring
 Human use occurs within context of change
 Underlying assumption that human uses threaten park
values
 Protected area planning is directed toward the location,
type and intensity of human-induced change

26. Some Visitor Management
Processes for Dealing with Change
 Carrying (Visitor) Capacity based Frameworks –
1960s +
 Social, Biophysical, Facility
 Recreation Opportunity Spectrum based
Frameworks
 Recreation Opportunity Spectrum – 1970s
 Tourism Opportunity Spectrum – 1990s
 Water Recreation Opportunity Spectrum – 2000s

27. Some Visitor Management
Processes for Dealing with Change
 Limits of Acceptable Change based Frameworks
 Limits of Acceptable Change – 1980s
 Visitor Impact Management – 1980s
 Visitor Experience and Resource Protection – 1990s
 Tourism Optimization and Management Model– 1990s
 The Benefits Based Management Framework –
1990s
 Placed-based Frameworks – 2000s

28. Principle 4:
Impacts on Resources and Social
Conditions are Inevitable Consequences
of Human Use
 Any level of use leads to some kind of impact
 Can managers prevent visitor impacts from occurring?

29. What is the relationship between
use level and impact?
Impact
Use Level

30. Given this relationship …
 How much change is acceptable?
 How would you decide?
 Is this a technical question or a value judgment?

31. But, Setting Standards Means Making
Choices Among Visitor Experiences
What standard should we use?
Impact
How do we decide?
Setting standards is a function of
human values.
Use Level

32. Principle 5:
Impacts may be Spatially or
Temporally Discontinuous
 Impacts often occur offsite
 Impacts may take a long time to appear
 Secondary and tertiary effects difficult to ascertain and
attribute
 Need to think regionally, the Whack a Mole
Phenomenon

33. An example
 Campsite impacts too high,
 Thus, closing campsites to reduce impacts seems to be a
reasonable action.
 But, didn’t work
 Visitors create new campsites
 Thus, the total impact is actually larger
 This represents a focus on the event (campsite
impacts, not understanding the system)

34. A “Fixes that Fail” System
Close Campsites
Delay
Delay
Unintended
Gap
Consequence
People create
Desired
Current Campsite new campsites
Condition
Condition

35. Principle 6:
Many Variables Influence the
Use/Impact Relationship
 Use level may be important in influencing amount of
impact, but
 Other variables often more significant
 behavior
 season
 type and size of group
 biophysical characteristics

36. Principle 7:
Many Management Problems are
Not Use Density Dependent
 Visitors seek many different things during a visit to a
protected area
 Motivations such as solitude, adventure, learning,
appreciating and learning about nature, family
cohesiveness
 not all of the above are adversely affected by number of
visitors
 Other problems--littering, etc.

37. Principle 8:
Limiting Use is Only One of Many
Management Options
 Limiting use may be one management tool, but …
 It may not be effective in dealing with problems
 It controls use levels, but does it control impacts
 The problem of problem displacement

38. Managers have a box of “tools” available,
but … to what extent do we want regulation
and intrusive measures?

39. How Systems Thinking Can Help Avoid
Traps when Limiting Use
Limit Use
Side Effects:
Implement More Rules
Unacceptable Impacts Shift Use Elsewhere
Impact Visitor Experience
Visitor Behavior and
Development Patterns

40. Principle 9:
Monitoring is Essential to
Professional Management
 Periodic remeasurement of key information variables
or indicators
 Followed by evaluation and reflection
 Key attributes
 feasible
 objective
 timely

41. Monitoring Plan is an Essential Part
of Management
 Description of procedures
 How data will be analyzed, displayed and evaluated
 How does monitoring data influence planning and
management?
 Personnel assignments

42. Monitoring Principles
 Where conditions are at or in violation of standards
 Where conditions are changing rapidly
 Where values are threatened by visitation
 Where effects of management are unknown
Source: Cole 1989

43. Principle 10:
The Decision-Making Process
Should Separate Technical
Description from Value Judgments
 What is is not necessarily what should be
 Separate inventory from decisions about what should
be done in time

44. Principle 11:
Consensus among Affected Groups
is Needed for Implementation
 Shared problem definition
 Problem can be resolved through public involvement
 Inclusive
 Live with results
 Knowledge distributed equally
 Permission to act

45. Successful
Management
Technical Public
Process Engagement

46.  Implementation of plan
 Understanding social acceptability
 Representativeness
 Learning
 Ownership
 Relationships

47.  Many visitor management issues confronting
MET
 Principles serve as a framework for thinking
through
 Not answers, but ways to reflect
 In the long run, reflection leads to more
efficient management

48. Thank You
Steve.McCool@gmail.com
Perspectives on Protected Area Planning
http://pasqueflowerparadigms.blogspot.com