Linking Culture and the Environment

30 Recreation Ecology in Sustainable Tourism and Ecotourism
and procedures for tourism-specific EIAs are still rudimentary in development
and application (Warnken and Buckley, 1998, 2000). There is also increasing
interest in adopting the concept of post-impact environmental auditing (EA) to
tourism management (Ding and Pigram, 1995; Diamantis, 1998). Tourism’s
EIAs are primarily oriented towards the potential physical and environmental
effects of tourism-related infrastructure and facility development projects.
Tourism’s EAs, on the other hand, focus on monitoring broad-scale environmental
performance of tourism operations.
Recreation ecologists have developed IA&M programmes that focus
directly on tourist activities within protected areas, and these are increasingly
recognized as a complementary part of traditional EIAs and EAs (Hadwen
et al., 2007, 2008). IA&M programmes are particularly valuable for ecotourism
destinations, as the ecological effects of tourist activities are of particular concern
in these areas. A variety of standardized IA&M protocols for monitoring
visitor impacts to trails and recreation sites have been developed to evaluate
impacts and the efficacy of management actions (Marion, 1991, 1995; Marion
and Leung, 2001; Newsome et al., 2002). These protocols generally focus on
quantifying indicators such as area of trampling disturbance, vegetation loss,
soil exposure and soil loss. Unfortunately, in many ecotourism destinations,
particularly in developing countries, insufficient staffing and experience have
prevented such programmes from becoming firmly established components
of decision-making processes. The integration and continuation of IA&M programmes
requires that they be low-cost, efficient and require minimal specialized
knowledge or equipment (Buckley, 1999a). Based on a review of
monitoring methodologies, Rome (1999) offered specific guidelines for establishing
effective programmes to monitor ecotourism impacts.
Another related issue in sustainable tourism is the development of sustainability
indicators (McCool and Moisey, Chapter 1, this volume). The
World Tourism Organization has proposed a set of indicators for sustainable
tourism management (IWGIST, 1993; Manning, 1999). Most of these are
macro-scale indicators associated with tourism infrastructure, with none currently
included to evaluate tourist activity impacts at the micro-scale or site
level. Due to its scale of focus, recreation ecology may complement these
efforts by identifying and selecting site-level sustainability indicators that
address tourist activity impacts (Buckley, 2003). However, while impacts
such as tramping disturbance or soil loss may be assessed for a sample of
recreation sites or trails, such data can be extrapolated to characterize macroscale
changes for an entire protected area. Nevertheless, the processes and
procedures of indicator selection and measurements in recreation ecology
research may inform similar processes in selecting macro-scale sustainability
indicators.
Visitor education and communication
Education can play a pivotal role in reducing environmental impacts from
tourism. Educational efforts apply to three target groups: tourism developers,