Carrying Capacity and Visitor Management: Facts, Values and the Contributions of Science

David N. Cole, Research Biologist, Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute, Missoula, MT

ABSTRACT:

Protected area managers have been grappling with the issue of carrying capacity (how to manage visitor use) for decades. Science has been tremendously helpful to management, both in developing decision-making frameworks (e.g., LAC and VERP) and in building a factual basis for management.We know a lot about the relationships between use characteristics and both ecological and experiential conditions and about the efficacy of diverse management techniques. However, at the core of the carrying capacity issue are value-based decisions about what ought to be and managers still struggle with these decisions. Science is less equipped to contribute to decisions about values. The rate of future progress on the carrying capacity issue will be determined more by the willingness of managers to make value judgments than by the ability of science to build a factual foundation. Science can contribute by developing varied sources of information about societal needs and values.

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The Role of Scientific Knowledge in Helping Achieve Desired Conditions in Wildlands

Troy Hall, Assistant Professor, Department of Resource Recreation and Tourism, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID

ABSTRACT:

Several decades of scientific study have informed decisions about carrying capacity of recreation lands. There have been three main thrusts: (1) the relationship between recreational use and bio-physical resource conditions and (2) the relationships between use density/encounters and visitors' experiences; and (3) how recreational visitors (and to a lesser degree, the general public) feels about potential and actual management actions. This paper will give a broad overview of the state-of-knowledge in these three areas, drawing conclusions about circumstances in which relationships are well understood and have been successfully used to guide visitor use management as well as circumstances in which relationships are less well understood and/or have not been seen as successful in guiding visitor use management. In general, the well developed body of research has been very important in guiding the selection of strategies to achieve desired conditions, once those desired conditions have been identified.

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The Science of Values and Values of Science: Research to Inform Carrying Capacity Analysis and Management

Robert E. Manning and Steven R. Lawson, School of Natural Resources, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT

ABSTRACT:

Carrying capacity is a longstanding and increasingly important issue in the management of parks, wilderness, and related public lands. Research and management experience have derived a number of principles of carrying capacity, including the fact that carrying capacity inevitably involves the exercise of values that must ultimately be expressed in the form of management judgments. However, research on the carrying capacity-related values of park visitors and other interest groups can (and should) help inform management judgments. This research might include visitor perceptions of crowding, resource degradation, and other impacts of recreation, and the point at which such impacts are judged to be unacceptable or otherwise inappropriate.

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Advancing the Dialogue of Visitor Management: Getting Beyond the "Culture of Technical Control"

Stephen F. McCool, Professor, School of Forestry, The University of Montana, Missoula, MT
George H. Stankey, USDA Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station, Corvallis, Oregon

ABSTRACT:

The dominance of a scientific-based, expert-driven paradigm is evident in the recreational carrying capacity approach to management of visitor impacts and recreational opportunities. This dominance is derived from Progressive-era visions of the role of government as a neutral party relying on technical expertise to discover policies that serve the public interest. This "culture of technical control," exemplified in the theory of carrying capacity, is simply inadequate to deal with the scope of visitor management, and inevitably leads to a crisis in our ability to protect the values for which the area was established. Making progress in uncovering the public interest in visitor management requires that we broaden the type of dialogues that are acceptable in the social discourse over visitor management. These dialogues would be pluralistic and communitarian in character, recognizing that goals are multiple and competing, that scientific uncertainty in decisions exists, and that significant distributional consequences result from decisions.

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Facts, Values, and Policy in Public Parks

Thomas A. More, Research Social Scientist, U.S. Forest Service, Burlington, VT

ABSTRACT:

Typically we look to research to establish a factual basis in both the biological and social sciences upon which we can rationally found our policies and programs. Yet we often interpret the results of such studies within the framework of an overall value system that is seldom questioned. For example, can we really say that "the parks are being loved to death" when most studies show a very uneven use distribution pattern and the vast majority of visitors never leave the "park loop road"? In this paper I discuss the meta-value structure that is implicit in park management. For example, how can we determine what constitutes a legitimate public function of parks and protected areas? What credence should be given to agency selfinterest? Does "sustainability" merely re-enforce the status quo? The answer to these questions depends on having a clear understanding of the values and purposes involved in the public provision of recreation areas.

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