Page 80 - A bird’s-eye view of recreation - Rogier Pouwels

A bird's-eye view of recreation
Thus, nature managers and recreation stakeholders may have opposing views about biodiversity conservation plans and actions, and nature managers and biodiversity conservationists may disagree about recreation plans and actions. To resolve this dilemma between recreational development and biodiversity conservation, scientists, policy makers, local managers, and user groups must together seek a solution (Cash et al. 2003). Scientists can contribute to conflict management by providing objective information (Young et al. 2005) and helping to justify management plans and actions (McCool et al. 2007). However, they are hampered by a shortage of knowledge, the inadequacy of their approaches, and the inaccuracy of their tools (Sutherland 2007; S. McCool, unpublished manuscript, http://umontana.academia.edu/SteveMcCool/ Papers/395214/Outdoor_Recreation_in_the_New_Century_Frameworks_for_Working_ Through_the_Challenges). The major gaps in knowledge concern visitors’ spatial use of nature areas (Gimblett and Skov-Petersen 2008), the impact of visitors on biodiversity values at the landscape scale (Cole 2006, Sutherland 2007), and the effectiveness of measures to influence the trade-off between biodiversity conservation and recreational use (Wilhere 2002, Cole 2006). Despite having shortcomings, scientific tools such as knowledge systems, simulation models, and agent-based models have proved to be helpful in recreation management (Cole 2005, Gimblett and Skov-Petersen 2008). They have not only helped elucidate current visitor use and find management alternatives that better accommodated recreation–biodiversity combinations, but have also been important for communicating the implications of decisions (Cole 2005, McCool et al. 2007, Gimblett and Skov-Petersen 2008).
However, in the context of the emerging knowledge society (Nowotny et al. 2001), the effectiveness of such tools needs reconsideration. The role of science as a credible provider of irrefutable knowledge is being questioned (Hanssen et al. 2009). Stakeholders are becoming more involved in deciding about land use issues (Young et al. 2005) and often have a good knowledge of local history and conditions. Compared with scientists these stakeholders have opposing opinions about what should or should not be considered as a problem (Cole 2006, Fry et al. 2007) and know how to use the law to their advantage to preclude changes they consider undesirable. They exploit the uncertainties inherent in scientific tools when arguing their case (McCool et al. 2007) and question the credibility of the tools, even those built in accordance with quality standards (e.g., Refsgaard and Henriksen 2004, Brown 2006). In this paper, we therefore reconsider the effectiveness of current scientific tools in recreation– biodiversity conflict management as a part of a learning strategy of facilitation and
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