Page 160 - A bird’s-eye view of recreation - Rogier Pouwels

A bird's-eye view of recreation
Often managers lack adequate monitoring data on visitor densities and have little or no insight into the effectiveness of interventions to restrict visitor use in areas where ecological or social disturbance thresholds are exceeded. In Chapter 2 I derive a tool and rules of thumb which link landscape and environmental features to visitor use and visitor densities. The tool can be used by conservation managers to identify and locate the impact of temporarily closing or changing the capacity of car parks on the density of visitors in particular parts of an area. In a study of the New Forest, UK, I used a large set of GPS tracks of visitor movements to develop random forest models to identify which landscape and environmental features account for spatial variation in visitor densities. The random forest model shows that distance to a car park, distance to roads and openness of the landscape are important variables in predicting the spatial variation in visitor densities. As an example I showed how the model for visitor densities can be used by managers in combination with monitoring data on bird species to assess the impact of changes in location or capacity of car parks on the population of Nightjar (Caprimulgus europaeus). As developing tools based on GPS data need large volumes of monitoring data and a large budget to collect them, I also derived rules of thumb and a simple algorithm that could be applied by managers to obtain insight into the possible impact of management interventions on visitor densities. The rules of thumb indicated that, because visitors avoid crossing roads, changing the location of car parks in relation to tarmac roads can reduce visitor densities in areas with a protected species by 80%.
To balance outdoor recreation and bird conservation, managers need to know how interventions in the pattern of visitor densities relate to conservation targets. In Chapter 3 I link management actions that restrict visitor access to the viability of the Skylark (Alauda arvensis) population. Site-specific data for visitors and Skylark were integrated into an individual-based recreation model and species population model for a large dune area in the Netherlands, the Amsterdamse Waterleidingduinen. Managers of coastal dune areas have for many years struggled to find a balance between recreation opportunities and nature conservation. Dune areas are very popular among local inhabitants and tourists and contain high nature values. Knowledge of the impact of visitor densities on Skylark densities and breeding success was available from research in similar areas in the Netherlands. This knowledge provided a crucial link between the recreation and population model and was used to link changes in path network to the population size of the Skylark. Site-specific recreation data and the local knowledge of managers on visitor preferences were used to adapt the recreation model to the local
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