Managing Routes and Trails - Tourism and Trails: Cultural, Ecological and Management Issues - page 239

efforts might need to be employed along a trail, or to determine how much
freedom to roam to give to visitors (Gaines, 1997). Baud-Bovy and Lawson
(1998: 55) provided some concrete indicators for carrying capacity by way of
example for trail management. They suggest that for scenic walking trails
that are well hidden by trees and other vegetation, a density of five persons
per day per kilometer of trail 'allows a feeling of wilderness and closeness
with nature, whilst 50 persons per day per km . . . gives a sense of crowding'.
Hall and Lew (2009) see carrying capacity being similar to rational tour-
ism planning involving the following steps:

• Consulting to specify objectives.
• Identifying current levels of use.
• Identifying indicators.
•

Measuring the current state of each indicator.

• Identifying relationships between the state of each indicator and level

of use.

• Making value judgments about the acceptability of impacts.

• Determining threshold limits (more, less, current).

• Implementing management strategies to ensure threshold limits are not

breeched.

Understanding that there is a degree of rational planning thinking in the
carrying capacity concept, it is surprising that there is a virtual absence of
capacity models for routes and trails. Instead, managers insist on looking for
a number or density values and researchers seem set to try to provide them
with practical use levels, when this is impossible, as capacity levels vary
between ecological, social and physical settings and between facilities and
institutions. In most studies, discussions of capacity are limited to ecological
and social aspects. Managers are therefore left having to choose between
emphasizing recreation/use (social carrying capacity) or protection of the
resource (ecological carrying capacity). With respect to the former, much of
the recreation literature in the 1980s and 1990s examined norms, what type
of encounter compatibility was acceptable (Shelby, 1981; Noe et al. , 1982;
Patterson & Hammitt, 1990; Williams et al. , 1991). Some of this research was
on linear spaces, including rivers and seashores. This earlier research estab-
lished an understanding of social carrying capacity according to trail users
where their perceptions are dependent on the degree to which stated norms
and reported encounters influence their senses of crowding, avoidance of
others and overall trip satisfaction.
Butler et al. (1995) developed the POLAR model (Procedure for
Operationalizing Limits for the Administration of Rivers) to determine the
recreational carrying capacity for rivers, specifically Canadian Heritage
Rivers, and so its wider applicability to other rivers (and other linear recre-
ation and tourism resources) is limited. Nevertheless, given the context of