Linking Culture and the Environment

28 Recreation Ecology in Sustainable Tourism and Ecotourism
1991; Marion and Leung, 2001) have been adapted for assessing visitor
impacts in Chile’s Torre del Paine National Park (Farrell and Marion, 2002b),
eight protected areas in Belize and Costa Rica (Farrell and Marion, 2001) and
China’s Jiuzhaigou National Park (Li et al., 2005). Similar procedures are also
being incorporated into monitoring manuals developed by the National
Outdoor Leadership School and the Nature Conservancy for application in
Central and South American protected areas.
Third, there is increasing cross-fertilization between recreation ecology and
tourism literature as well as researchers. This is in part reflected by an increasing
number of citations of recreation ecology studies in the tourism literature
(e.g. Wall, 1997; Marion and Farrell, 1998; Buckley, 1999a,b; Buckley et al., 2003;
Hadwen et al., 2008). In addition, there are recent books that focus specifically
on environmental impacts of natural area tourism and ecotourism. Recreation
ecology studies contributed significantly to the contents of these monographs
(Liddle, 1997; Newsome et al., 2002; Buckley, 2004). Current membership of a
recently established Recreation Ecology Research Network (RERN) includes
a well mix of recreation ecologists and tourism researchers. They have coorganized
visitor impact research sessions at recent professional conferences.
Fourth, recreation ecologists are increasingly involved in training park
staff at ecotourism destinations. For example, recreation ecologists are
involved in park manager training in South America, Australia and East
Asia. They are increasingly consulted by scientists and professionals in the
tourism and ecotourism fields.
Fifth, non-governmental organizations involved in ecotourism and protected
area management (e.g. Conservation International, The Nature
Conservancy, RARE Center for Tropical Education and The Ecotourism Society)
are becoming increasingly interested in research projects and workshops related
to visitor impact planning, assessment and management (Rome, 1999).
Despite these growing connections and recent progress, much can be
done to enhance further integration. The following is a discussion of potential
contributions recreation ecology can make to sustainable tourism and
ecotourism research. Three major contributions identified are: (i) visitoruse
planning and management; (ii) impact assessment and monitoring; and
(iii) visitor education and communication.
Potential Contributions
Visitor-use planning and management
Carrying capacity was once a guiding concept in the recreation and tourism
management literature. Due to its conceptual elusiveness, lack of management
utility and inconsistent effectiveness in minimizing visitor impacts (Lindberg
et al., 1997; Lindberg and McCool, 1998; Buckley, 1999b), it has largely been reconceptualized
into management-by-objectives visitor management frameworks
(Manning, 2007). The Limits of Acceptable Change (LAC) framework
developed by the US Forest Service (Stankey et al., 1985) and the Visitor