Wow! eBook
Natural Area Tourism: Ecology, Impacts and Management (58) (Aspects of Tourism (58)) 2nd Edition
Author(s): David Newsome (Author), Susan A. Moore (Author), Ross K. Dowling (Author)
- Publisher: Channel View Publications
- Publication Date: 15 Dec. 2012
- Edition: 2nd
- Language: English
- Print length: 480 pages
- ISBN-10: 1845413814
- ISBN-13: 9781845413811
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
Significantly revised and updated, this new edition provides an excellent resource for students, teachers, researchers and practitioners of nature-based tourism. This book is one of the few that goes beyond paying lip-service to the environmental impacts of tourism. Working from ecological first-principles, the authors provide a sound basis for considering how tourism impacts the natural environment. Importantly, the authors critically consider a range of management approaches that can be put in place to avoid or mitigate these impacts, acknowledging the human element involved in planning, management, intervention and monitoring. The book is packed full with extremely useful 'vignettes' (or case studies) from around the world (from Komodo Dragons to coral reefs!) essential in illustrating the variety of ecosystems and species that interact with tourism. A strength of the book is its accessibility - it is well written, and makes good use of images and figures to convey a huge amount of useful information - as such I am sure that it will appeal to a broad audience.
The book certainly achieves the goals it set for itself, and constitutes a solid and authoritative text on the ecology, impacts and management of natural area tourism. It provides an excellent summary of the main issues, interspersed with compatible case studies, offers management solutions, and is based on the state-of-the-art literature. While it is complete in its breadth, it is impossible to be so in depth on any one of the issues. Therefore, the main value of this book is its excellent overview and its use as a comprehensive source both for ideas and references...The authors are to be congratulated for compiling and presenting this extensive and highly relevant material on natural area tourism. The book will serve to acquaint the next generation of undergraduate and graduate students with this topic, and should also provide managers, planners and researchers with an increased understanding of natural areas tourism.
The book contains numerous international case studies and is chock-full of theoretical and practical implications. It is so well written that each paragraph, section, and chapter are seamless, and the reader hears a unified voice as he/she reads. Overall, a valuable resource for libraries with an extensive collection in tourism science and planning.
The book sets out to argue that the foundation to managing tourism in natural areas is an understanding of the basic ecology of the area. This is a significant argument for many of the world's 160,000 or so nationally designated protected areas lay at the basis for a local tourism industry. The book takes the reader on a voyage from understanding the impacts of tourism to managing the visitors that cause them. Key reviews of management frameworks, strategies and actions are included. The text includes hundreds of references, an important feature for students interested in research. The book should be in every tourism researcher's library.
This book remains a valuable resource that is highly readable, well-illustrated and extensively referenced. As such, it continues to introduce and equip managers, students, and researchers from a range of disciplines to the phenomenon of tourism in natural areas. It continues to be very useful as a textbook for natural area tourism in the environmental and social sciences and should be recommended reading for tourism and natural area researchers, managers, and practitioners alike.
This is a critical resource for all those working in the interrelated disciplines of protected area management, sustainable tourism, geography and conservation biology. It is beautifully written in a clear and comprehensive style allowing readers to engage with all the challenges and intricacies of natural area tourism. The second edition updates and expands on the first edition, incorporating the latest outcomes from this expanding area of research and practice. All three authors are authorities in this field with both theoretical and practical experience.
About the Author
David Newsome is an associate professor in environmental science at Murdoch University, Australia. David's research and teaching focus on the sustainable recreational use of landscapes, maintaining the integrity of peri-urban reserves and the assessment and management of tourism activity in protected areas. He has co-authored and/or edited 5 books in the areas of natural area tourism, wildlife tourism and geotourism and is a member of the IUCN World Protected Areas Committee.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Natural Area Tourism
Ecology, Impacts and Management
By David Newsome, Susan A. Moore, Ross K. Dowling
Multilingual Matters
Copyright © 2013 David Newsome, Susan A. Moore and Ross K. Dowling
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84541-381-1
Contents
List of Figures,
List of Tables,
List of Boxes,
Acknowledgements,
Preface,
1 Introduction,
2 The Ecological Perspective,
3 Environmental Impacts,
4 Visitor Planning,
5 Management Strategies and Actions,
6 Interpretation for Nature Tourism,
7 Monitoring,
8 Conclusion,
References,
Index,
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Tourism and the Natural Environment
Natural areas have always attracted people. A visitor writing in a guest book at a destination run by Conservation Corps Africa (CC Africa, now named &Beyond Africa) stated:
My journey to Africa has been the odyssey of a lifetime. I have crossed great, beautiful landscapes and stood on, what seemed to me, the edge of the world as I knew it ... and seen my heart soar into its ancient sky, somehow humbler than I have ever felt. Somehow part of eternity. (CC Africa, nd)
This quote from a guest, evokes a feeling that many people share: the desire to see, touch, feel and connect with, and be inspired by, natural areas. The tourist visiting such areas is often passionate about the conservation of natural areas and the people and wildlife who inhabit these regions. A growing number of such tourists are seeking authentic, inspiring, transformational experiences in nature as they search for a greater sense of self and connection to planet Earth. This search for natural experiences is taking place around the planet, whether it is seeking solitude in the wilderness of the Antarctic, observing the migration of hundreds of thousands of herbivores cross the Serengeti in Tanzania into the Masai Mara in Kenya, or seeing the Iguazu Falls separating the Brazilian state of Parann and the Argentine province of Misiones. All such experiences evoke powerful connections with nature and this is the essence of natural area tourism.
The United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) estimated that, in 2011, there were 990 million international tourist arrivals and tourism receipts generated US$1030 billion (UNWTO, 2012a). This represented a rise of 4.7% in tourist numbers over the previous year. According to the UNWTO, tourism has experienced continued expansion and diversification over the past six decades, becoming one of the largest and fastest-growing economic sectors in the world. The number of tourists grew from 25 million in 1950 to 277 million in 1980, 435 million in 1990, 675 million in 2000, to 990 million in 2011. A number of new destinations have emerged alongside the traditional ones of Europe and North America and in the world's emerging tourist regions the share in international tourist arrivals grew from 31% in 1990 to 47% in 2010.
Following the global financial crisis and economic recession of 2008–09, worldwide tourism recovered remarkably quickly. While the advanced economies had an average annual growth in international tourist arrivals of 1.8% for the period 2000–10, the world's emerging economies had a growth of 5.6%, with the Middle East (14%) and Asia and the Pacific (13%) UNWTO regions being the strongest growing (UNWTO, 2011). Overall, the fastest-growing region for international tourism was North East Asia, with growth in Japan and Taiwan being 27%. According to the UNWTO's Tourism 2020 Vision project, international arrivals are expected to reach 1.6 billion by the year 2020, with the fastest-growing regions predicted to be East Asia, the Pacific, South Asia, the Middle East and Africa (UNWTO, 2010).
The key tourist attractors possessed by many of these emerging economies are natural areas, and tourism to them is booming. It has been estimated that nature tourism has risen from approximately 2% of all tourism in the late 1980s (Ecotourism Society, 1998; Weaver & Oppermann, 2000) to approximately 20% today (Buckley, 2009). Thus, natural area tourism is undergoing explosive growth and, as such, it has the capability to change both natural areas as well as tourism itself. In this book we explore this phenomenon from the standpoint that natural area tourism can be beneficial to individuals, regions and countries – provided it is planned, developed and managed in a responsible manner.
The growing interest in conservation and the wellbeing of our environment over the last two decades has moved far beyond the realms of a concerned few and into the wider public arena. At the same time there has been a corresponding upsurge in tourism all over the world, leading to the phenomenon referred to as 'mass tourism'. With this unparalleled growth of the two it was inevitable that one day they would meet and interact. In natural areas, where tourism either already exists or is proposed, there is the potential for both beneficial and adverse environmental and socio-cultural impacts. Thus, there are two streams of thought regarding the environment–tourism relationship. The first is that the natural environment is harmed by tourism and hence the two are viewed as being in conflict. The second is that the two have the potential to work together in a symbiotic manner.
The environment–tourism relationship has been the subject of debate for the last three decades. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN; now known as the World Conservation Union) first raised the nature of the relationship when its director general posed the question in a paper entitled 'Tourism and environmental conservation: Conflict, coexistence, or symbiosis?' (Budowski, 1976). Thirteen years later the question appeared to remain unanswered when Romeril (1989a) posited the question 'Tourism and the environment – accord or discord?' Thus the environment–tourism relationship may be viewed from one of two standpoints – that it is one of either conflict or symbiosis. Either standpoint may be adopted and defended but it is argued here that, no matter which is espoused, the way to reduce conflict or increase compatibility is through understanding, planning and management, grounded in knowledge and understanding of environmental concepts. Such an approach will foster sustainable development.
The environment–tourism relationship is grounded in the sustain able use of natural resources, as fostered by the World Conservation Strategy (IUCN, 1980) and the sustainable development strategy of the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED, 1987). This environment–development link often includes tourism as a bridge. The base of this partnership is resource sustainability and tourism must be fully integrated with the resource management process. This will require the adoption of resource conservation values, as well as the more traditional development goals. Central to the goals of environmental conservation and resource sustainability is the protection and maintenance of environmental quality. This primary goal in turn requires an awareness of environmental protection and enhancement while fostering the realisation of tourism potential. According to Shultis and Way (2006), tourism management in protected areas normally followed a reductionist, deterministic, linear view of nature and conservation research. However, they argue:
Land managers need to adapt to a new paradigm that reflects and supports this philosophical change in...
