Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Arizona, receives over 5 million
visitors a year.
TOURIST AND RECREATIONAL DEMAND FOR WILDERNESS,
NATIONAL PARKS AND NATURAL AREAS
Many values are attached to wilderness in western society. Tourism and recreation has
increasingly become significant as one of the main values attached to wilderness and its
conservation with substantial increases in demands for access to wilderness in recent
years. Demand for tourist or recreational experience of wild country or wilderness may
be related to two major factors: first, changing attitudes towards the environment; second,
access to natural areas.
As discussed above, there has been the development of a more favourable response to
wild country in western society over the past 200 years. These positive responses have
been reinforced in recent years by the overall development of a climate of environmental
concern which has served to influence recreation and tourism patterns in natural areas.
Going hand-in-hand with the increase in demand for personal contact with nature has
been the production of natural areas for tourist consumption. While the setting of a
boundary for a national park may be appropriate for assisting conservation management it
can also serve as a marker for tourist space on which it is appropriate for the viewer to
gaze. In the same way that notions of rurality are complex spaces of production and
consumption (see Chapter 6), so it is that the ideas of wilderness and naturalness are
bound up in the commodification of landscapes for tourist and recreational enjoyment
(Olwig and Olwig 1979; Short 1991; Evernden 1992; Mels 1999, 2002; Saarinen
2001,2005). For some, such a perspective is at odds with the mythology that national
parks are ecological rather than cultural landscapes, but the cultural idea of wilderness is
implicit in the very notion of wilderness itself. For example, R.Nash (1982:1) noted that
wilderness is 'heavily freighted with meaning of a personal, symbolic and changing
kind'. Although the personal meaning of wilderness may not be of great value when it
comes to the designation of wilderness areas from a biocentric perspective which
concentrates on actual rather than perceived naturalness (see above), it is of value in
terms of the recreation and tourism values of wilderness.
Since the early 1990s, there has been growing academic attention in the field of
wilderness perception imagery (e.g. Kliskey and Kearsley 1993; Kliskey 1994; Higham
1997). Stankey and Schreyer (1987), for example, demonstrate that wilderness
perceptions may be shaped by a wide range of influences. These include social attitudes,
cultural influences, recreational experiences, expectation and personal cognition. It is
apparent, therefore, that 'while wilderness environments have an objective physical
reality, what makes that reality “wilderness” rests very much with personal cognition,
emotion, values and experience' (Higham and Kearsley 1994:508).
Kliskey (1994) argued that, while demand for access to wilderness increases, so too
does the need to define the extent to which certain qualities of wilderness are sought.
Kearsley (1990) illustrates this point with his proposal for a classification of natural areas
based on degrees of naturalness, ease of access and the provision of facilities.
Implementation of such a classification would facilitate the use of 'degrees of
