Page 12 - A bird’s-eye view of recreation - Rogier Pouwels

A bird's-eye view of recreation
also under increasing pressure to make adequate provision for recreation in line with health policies that promote physical contact with natural environments (Maller et al. 2006, Bell et al. 2007). The challenge they face is to halt the decline of natural values while at the same time provide access to an increasing number of visitors (Eagles et al. 2002, Balmford et al. 2015).
To resolve this emerging conflict site managers need to seek solutions and decide on effective actions to reconcile opposing targets. Scientists argue that conservation managers should base their decisions on scientific evidence (Pullin et al. 2004, Sutherland et al. 2014), but since managers need to deal with differing and sometimes opposing views concerning the values and aims of protected areas, the use of scientific evidence alone is not sufficient to generate stakeholder-supported decisions (Hoppe 1999, McNie 2007, Hanssen et al. 2009). One reason for this is that often scientific evidence is ambiguous and therefore not credible to all parties in a conflict. Credibility is achieved when knowledge is considered reliable and scientifically adequate (Cash et al. 2003). Besides credibility, Cash et al. (2003) give two additional criteria for stakeholder acceptance of scientific evidence: salience and legitimacy. Salience is achieved when the scientific knowledge is relevant to the emerging conflict and is available. Legitimacy is achieved when the knowledge has been developed by a process that considers the values and perspectives of all relevant actors (Cash et al. 2003, Cook et al. 2013). Cash et al. (2003) and Sarkki et al. (2013) emphasize the trade- offs between credibility, salience and legitimacy; striking the right balance between them to ensure that knowledge is accepted is a challenge and requires involving all actors in the decision-making process (Heink et al. 2015, Sarkki et al. 2015). Scientists, site managers and stakeholders must therefore establish relationships and accept each other's knowledge if they are to build trust and break down the professional and cultural boundaries between them (Armitage et al. 2009, Berkes 2009 and Harris and Lyon 2013). Certainly at a time when support for biodiversity conservation in nature areas seems to be declining, it is important to cross these boundaries (Watson et al. 2014, Mace 2014) and take into account the pluralism of societal priorities and values regarding nature (Reed 2008, Mace 2014).
In this thesis I will narrow the scope of the subject by focusing on potential conflicts between hikers and bird species. Hiking is the most common type of outdoor recreation (Bell et al. 2007) and the conservation objectives for many nature areas include targets for bird species (Eken et al. 2004, Hoffman et al. 2010, Osieck and Mörzer Bruyns, 1981). Also, conflicts between people and birds can be expected as bird species are
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