Michael Marshall, New Scientist 30 Jun 09;
Are people becoming more isolated from nature, spending all their time cooped up at home watching TV? Quite the reverse, according to a new study of nature tourism around the world.
Andrew Balmford of the University of Cambridge, UK, and colleagues looked at the numbers of visitors at 280 protected areas, such as national parks, in 20 countries.
Between 1992 and 2006, the team found that the numbers of visitors had overall increased.
Total visit numbers to protected areas on average grew in 15 out of the 20 countries sampled and fell in four; with Uganda showing no change. Even allowing for population growth, per capita visit numbers rose in 14 countries; with Uganda and Australia added to the list of countries showing a downward trend.
When they pooled the results by continent, they found that Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America all showed significant growth in visitor numbers, while North America and Australasia showed no significant trends.
Too much TV?
The popularity of nature tourism depends on how rich the country is, but perhaps not in the way you might expect, Balmford says. "When you compare the trends in visitor numbers with how wealthy the countries are, you see that growth is stagnant in the richest countries," he says. "Nature tourism is growing fastest in the poorest countries – Madagascar is a good example."
Muttulingam Sanjayan of the Nature Conservancy says, "The paper is interesting and adds a lot to the debate."
Balmford's results go against the suggestion of a much-reported paper by Oliver Pergams and Patricia Zaradic, which showed that visitor numbers to protected areas in the US and Japan had been falling for several decades (PNAS, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0709893105, http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0709893105).
The pair argued that people were turning away from nature-based recreation in favour of "videophilia": spending time on sedentary activities like watching TV, rather than communing with nature.
'Hyped' study
The new study offers some support for Pergams and Zaradic's finding of a decline in the US and Japan, but shows that it is not part of a worldwide trend. "The original study was hyped beyond what the data suggested," says Balmford.
So does this mean Americans are definitely turning away from nature holidays?
Sanjayan says, "Lots of people in the US are pretty disconnected from nature. Given how big a role [the nation] plays in things like overseas aid, I think that's a worrying trend."
'Drive-through' trend
While videophilia may be to blame, there are several other explanations for his results, which can't be tested using his data alone, he adds.
Because many US national parks are overcrowded, people may be choosing to go elsewhere; either to US locations that are less well-known – and where visitors are not monitored – or to more exotic places overseas.
"In those poor countries with rapid growth, the majority of the visitors are often from outside that country," Balmford says.
Sanjayan thinks that other questions need to be asked. "The biggest challenge for anyone doing studies of nature tourism is: how do people experience nature? In the US, most people who visit national parks experience them in a drive-through way, without leaving their cars. That is an emerging trend in developing countries as well."
Balmford's team is now working on a global model that will predict tourist numbers to protected areas.
Journal reference: PLoS Biology ( DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1000144)
Summer Vacation
People are still flocking to national parks. Just not in the U.S.
Journal Watch Online 2 Jul 09;
A new study attempts to resolve two seemingly contradictory and widely reported trends on people’s engagement with nature.
Nature-based tourism is said to be a booming sector within the travel and recreation industry, a trend that’s also a boon for arguments to conserve natural lands. But, to much fanfare, recent studies have also concluded that people are in fact more isolated from nature than ever before, largely based on evidence that the number of visitors to U.S. and Japanese national parks is declining.
The authors, writing in PLoS Biology, conducted a broader survey of 280 protected areas in 20 countries. They confirm that visitation is indeed dropping in the U.S. and Japan, but is growing in 15 of 20 nations. Such results indicate that despite worrying local downturns, tourists elsewhere are still flocking towards natural attractions and generating income for conservation.
Interestingly, the highest rates of visitor increases were generally in the nations with the lowest per capita income whereas the decreases were in richer nations, such as the U.S. and Japan. The authors cannot explain the reason for this trend, but they suppose that corresponding overall drops in international tourism to these countries could have a role. – Jessica Leber
Source: Balmford, A. et al. 2009. A Global Perspective on Trends in Nature-Based Tourism. PLoS Biology DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1000144
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