Page 115 - A bird’s-eye view of recreation - Rogier Pouwels

credibility
new policies gaining trust
new scientific knowledge new local experiences
salience
new recreation types mutual learning
credibility
new scientific knowledge
new local experiences
legitimacy
salience
new recreation types mutual learning
Synthesis
legitimacy
new policies gaining trust
Figure 5. Internal and external developments can lead to changes in credibility, salience and legitimacy during the decision-making process (left). The scientific knowledge and tools used at the beginning of the process (represented by the red dot) must keep pace with these changes to avoid losing credibility, salience and/or legitimacy later in the decision-making process (right).
6.4 Future research
In this thesis I have provided examples of how science can help managers and stakeholders to balance outdoor recreation and nature conservation targets in nature areas. In my work I encountered several knowledge gaps that need to be covered in order to solve potential conflicts between outdoor recreation and bird conservation. I propose three main directions for future research to address knowledge gaps on the relation between outdoor recreation and nature conservation and the use of scientific knowledge and tools in decision-making processes with stakeholders.
6.4.1 The impact of outdoor recreation on the population sizes of bird species
Site managers and stakeholders need knowledge about the impact of outdoor
recreation on bird species. In Chapter 2 I gave an example of how dose–impact relations 6 can be used to estimate the impacts of changes in visitor use on the population of
Nightjar. However, for many species little is known about such impacts (Steven et al.
2011, Buckley 2013, Sutherland et al. 2007) and dose–impact relations are urgently
needed for species that are in decline and expected to be sensitive to recreational
disturbance. Monitoring data on visitors and bird species is needed in order to derive
these relations (Hadwen et al. 2007, 2008, Monz et al. 2013), but this type of monitoring
is costly and difficult to implement at the population level. In Chapter 4 I propose a new
approach that uses existing monitoring data for bird species with recreation models.
This approach still needs to be tested for other species and areas. For rare species this
approach might not be applicable, as monitoring data is insufficient for the statistical
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