Environmental Impacts

Mount Ngongotaha walks are the one of the best tracks situated near Rotorua. It is located near the city just at the distance of 6.5 km. It is at the height of 757 m and is accessible by the Jubilee track (DOC, Mt Ngongotaha Jubilee Track, 2018). It is a walking track, starts from the Paradise valley Rd. Lower of the jubilee park is shared by the nature loop, which is a 3.7 km long loop. There is a space for the car parking at the start of the track. Bikes are not allowed on the tracks. Nature loop is walked in the clockwise direction whereas Jubilee track is walked in both the directions (DOC, Mt Ngongotaha Nature Loop Track, 2018).

Source: (Rotoura-Travel-Secrets, 2018)

The loop track shows the beautiful flora and fauna of Mount Ngongotaha to the families or school groups.

Due to the increasing number of visitors in Rotorua who wants to perform and engagement in outdoor activities that includes walking, jogging, horse riding, and mountain biking, make the authorities to expand the existing Mt Ngongataha science reserve to meet the demands of the increased visitors. Due to the increased number of visitors, there will be several negative impacts on the environment. It requires developing strategies for monitoring the visitors in the protected areas (motowalknz, 2016). In order to minimise the effects of visitors on the environment, there are four main strategies.

Increased visitors numbers in the protected areas leads to several adverse impacts on the environment. More and more number of people is interested in nature and cultural studies. These increased numbers of visitors are demanding services that support them and high quality recreational opportunities (Belsoy, Korir , & Yego, 2012). Some negative impacts on the environment due to the increased number of visitors in the protected areas include more demand for fresh water, disposal of litter and sewage, more vehicles in and near the area cause air pollution, crowding, tracks and recreation vehicles, trampling, taking souvenirs, and many more (EuropeanCommision, 2005). To construct the infrastructures like creating more space for the car parking and development of large number of toilets require vegetation removal on larger areas. Managing waste produced by humans will also be a big challenge for the protected area mangers (Managing Visitor Impacts, 2018).

As increased number of visitors in the protected areas causes several negative impacts on the   environment, therefore it requires proper strategies and plan for protecting and preserving these areas from the negative environmental effects. The main purpose of these strategies is to control, mitigate ad influence visitor impacts on the areas. Some of the main strategies are described below (Managing Visitor Impacts, 2018):

1. Managing the supply of visitor opportunities.
2. Managing the capabilities of resource to handle use.
3. Managing the visitation demand.
4. Managing the impact of use.

Visitor Management Tactics

This report will elaborate visitor management strategy to protect areas. This will be further categorised as hard and soft approaches (BalticProtectedareasandTourism, 2015).

Visitor Management: Visitor management is one of the best strategies to reduce the impact of increased visitors. It has become a major tool at large scale to control visitor flows. There are three ways of managing visitors (Mason, 2005), these are as follows:

• Managing visitor numbers: this includes limiting the visitor numbers according to the capacity of the area, and evenly spread the visitors throughout the year instead of visiting them in ‘tourist season’.
• Resources should be made in such a way that they will be capable of adapting the number of visitors, and hence causes less damage to the environment.
• Modification in the behaviour of visitors.

To limit the visitor numbers, the first step is determining the carrying capacity of the area. According to the carrying capacity of the place, some threshold limits at which the character and the ambience of the place are damaged are determined (Belsoy, Korir , & Yego, 2012). These limits are described below:

• Level for the physical damage;
• Level for irreversible damage;
• Level at which local community face unacceptable side effects.

Second practise is modification in the resources as a part of the visitor management. Main aim of this approach is to minimise the damage through resource adaption (Mason, 2005). This method suggests the following approaches:

• To watch and supervise the unruly behaviour, to prevent deliberate damage or theft, wardens, guides and guards should be used(B?lt?re?u, 2011);
• Site use should be restricted by preventing access to the area, cordoning off areas, and permit re-growth;
• Protective measures such as construction of footpaths;
• Construction of duplicate.

These two approaches ‘controlling visitor numbers’ and ‘resource adaption have evolved largely in recent years due to the mass tourism. Third approach is modifying the behaviour of visitors through some form of regulation. This method includes number of suggestion to minimise the negative impact of increased visitors (UNEP). Behaviour of visitors can be modified by following ways:

• Make visitors to come in out of season in order to spread the load;
• Specific information to the visitors;
• Alternative destination for the visitors;
• Promote niche marketing for attracting particular types of visitors;
• Use of codes of conduct to educate the visitors about regulations regarding area.

Other strategies and tactics for managing number of visitors are as (UNEP):

1. Restrict the use of protected area: this can be achieved by limiting the visitor number, limiting the length of stay, make access to areas difficult, application of visitor fee, and so on.
2. Modification in the problem area: prohibit the use of horses, permit horses in certain areas only, and discourage off-trail travel, separate different types of visitors.
3. Alter timing of use: encourage people to avoid peak hours use, ban the access when potential impact is high, and charge some fees during high impact potential.
4. Modify visitor behaviour: stop damaging practices, encourage required skills and behaviour, educate visitors about wilderness ethic, put limit on use of horse number use, ban pets in the area, and many more.
5. Maintain resources: maintain impacted locations and remove problems from the area.

Modifying behaviour of visitors is all about educating visitors. There are two major categories related to the visitor management, these are termed as ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ approaches. ‘Hard’ approaches involve economic management, physical management, and regulatory management. On the other hand ‘soft’ approaches use interpretation and education. ‘Hard’ approaches are successful to some extend only while ‘soft’ approaches plays important role in visitor management. Two approaches under ‘soft’ approaches are code of conduct and interpretation (Mason, 2005).

Interpretation is defined as a way of making people aware through communication about the significance of a place in order to make them enjoy it more, know its importance and develop a sense of responsibility for its conservation. Interpretation aims to stimulate people’s empathy towards conservation of areas by enhancing their understanding about the place. Also interpretation aims to develop interest and understanding in visitors (Tourism in Protected Areas). Interpretation benefits in reducing impact of visitors and support of public for the park. Three fundamental importance of interpretation are promotion of management goals, better understanding of the reserved area, and promotion of understanding of the agency. Interpretation techniques that help in developing the plan for visitor management are as follows:

1. Personal services: information is directly provided to visitors by staff of park or private individuals, providing knowledge through special programmes such as theatre dramas, guided walks, and campfire programmes, and so on.
2. Non-personal services: use of technology for providing information to the visitors, use of wide range of technology for providing information such as signs, films, radio broadcasts and internet sites. These are less expensive as compared to the personal services and also make information available widely.
3. Supporting facilities and activities: interpretative programmes include involvement of private tour guides, park staffs and volunteers. Some common activities include specialised audio, highly trained interpretative specialists, visual equipment, media specialists, and programme effectiveness evaluation.

Monitoring and Evaluation

Visitors need basic information about the park before they arrive such as they want to know about the natural and cultural resources of the area, how to get into the area, what will be the cost to get into area, and its programmes and facilities. And after getting into the park their needs change (Jones, Shone, & Memon, 2003). They want to know the details of resources and the available facilities, types of activities that can be performed and what kind of activities are forbidden, and also want information regarding safety and security of visitors. This development of interest about area makes visitors more curious to get knowledge about natural environment and history of the protected area and also about the role of the visitors (Managing Visitor Impacts, 2018).

Initially interpretation services are provided to the customers at little additional cost or without any fees. But with the increase in interest of visitors to gather more knowledge and information, it becomes expensive for the agencies to provide the detailed information and interpretation services at free of costs. Advancement in technology and multi-media techniques has made interpretation services available with ease to the visitors (MMV, 2012).

Monitoring is essential part of project planning and management. This strategy of visitor management focuses on limiting the number of visitors in the protected areas. It requires certain kind of information to perform the monitoring of the strategy (B?lt?re?u, 2011). Following are the considerations that are needed for monitoring the strategy:

Cost: It is simple to collect baseline data and the subsequent data that does not require large investments or time to the administration. Data for the number of visitors in the protected area is easily available and this monitoring cost can be easily collected from the visitors’ fees (LatvianCountryTourismAssociation, 2012).

Personnel: Data needed for the monitoring process can be collected by the park staff. But third parties can also be used for the data collection such as naturalist guides, community members, university biologists.

Recordkeeping: Some data is needed on the daily basis and it requires being managed properly and very good recordkeeping system. This include number of visitors and the characteristics of the visitors, amount collected from fees, and complaints and observation of the visitors.

Visitor questionnaires and surveys: Evaluation of characteristics of visitors and different levels of satisfaction with different aspects of the area is important for the sustainable tourism management. This evaluation can be done by asking question and conducting surveys on the visitors. A survey that describes the objectives of the management should be presented to a sample of visitors on regular basis. To know about the opinions of visitors, there should be a visitor register.

Conclusion

As due to the increase number of visitors in the Mt Ngongotaha walks near Rotorua, there are several numbers of negative environmental impacts that are causing problems for both the environment and the management. This requires developing more infrastructure like building more toilets and space for parking leads to vegetation removal. Also increase in human numbers in the area cause sewage and waste management problems. There are four main strategies to reduce the negative impact of the increased visitors. This report discussed about one of those four strategies that is visitor management. Visitor management talks about managing the number of visitors in the protected areas. This includes three ways such as controlling the number of visitors, resource modification, and the modification in the behaviour of the visitors. Further visitor behaviour modification is achieved by two approaches that are ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ approaches. ‘Soft’ approach further describes two approaches that are code of conduct and the interpretation. Discussion about ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ approaches tells that ‘soft’ approach is better than as compared to the ‘hard’ approach. In the last report also discussed about the process for monitoring the strategy. From the entire discussion it is found that it requires proper management strategy to control the number of visitors in the protected area. And also there is need of proper planning for development in the area to support the increased number of visitors. Main aim of the strategy is to reduce the negative impact of the increased visitors on the environment.

Reference

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