Monitoring and Management of Visitors and Visitor Flows

This year’s EUROPARC Nordic-Baltic Section fall workshop Monitoring and Management of Visitors and Visitor Flows was held in Rovaniemi, Finland.  The co-arrangement between Metsähallitus Natural Heritage Services and the Section secretariat was lead by Joel Erkkonen and made possible by funds from the Nordic Council of Ministers. There were 26 participants, equal numbers of women and men, and Nordic-Baltic member countries but Iceland were represented.

Presentations brought us all up to date with the current state of visitor monitoring and management in the Nordic-Baltic area. Participants enthusiastically shared successful practices as well as challenges large and small – from shortage of funds, to erroneous data caused by birds nesting in front of visitor counting devices. Additional international input was given by Giacomo Benelli of the Po Delta Park in Italy and key note speaker Professor Paul Eagles from the University of Waterloo, Canada. 

The Nordic-Baltic collaboration on visitor monitoring started around 2004 and one of the most important achievements since then is the manual Visitor Monitoring in Nature Areas, published in 2007. Now, two years later, the Rovaniemi workshop constituted an opportunity to get feedback on the manual and discuss the way forward. Many participants reported to have used its guidelines when implementing and/or improving counting and survey practices in their parks. With the manual thus tested and found very useful, it was concluded that the much needed common tool for measuring visitation in protected areas is in place and that the fundamental monitoring part is well underway. The next step is to improve the reporting and communication of results. Sharing this information will aid in harmonising methods, thus contributing to higher management standards and, eventually, to greater appreciation of protected areas among governments and citizens.

Wednesday 4 November
Keynote speech: Outdoor recreation statistics in protected areas - a global perspective. Professor Paul Eagles, University of Waterloo, Canada 

Session II: National perspectives in visitor monitoring Presentations and discussions, 15 + 5 mins. Chairman Rolands Auzins 
• Visitor management practices in protected areas in Estonia, Kaili Viilma
• Visitor flow management in a metropolitan park – a case study from Nuuksio National Park, Finland, Lasse Loven
• Visitor flows in the Po Delta Park - Italy (878.10 KB), Giacomo Benelli
• Visitor monitoring in Curonian Spit National Park, Lithuania (1.78 MB), Algina Vainilaviciene 

Session III: National perspectives in visitor monitoring Presentations and discussions, 15 + 5 mins. Chairman Carl Bjurstedt
• Visitor monitoring in Dovrefjell-Sunndalsfjella National Park, Norway, (NB this file is10 MB) Carl Bjurstedt and Vegard Gundersen
• Visitor monitoring in Ķemeri National Park, Latvia (1.15 MB), Agnese Balandina
• Estimating visitor flows at a sightseeing tower in Krustkalni nature reserve, Latvia, using IP camera and IR detector (1.88 MB), Juris Jatnieks
• Visitor monitoring in Tyresta National Park, Sweden, Lena Pettersson  

Thursday 5 November
Keynote speech: Making use of visitor monitoring data - local economic impacts of park visitation in Finland (383.83 KB). Researcher Maija Huhtala, Metla Forest Research Institute, Finland 

Group work (4 groups)
Introduction by chairman Pertti Itkonen (32.22 KB)
• New perspectives of visitor monitoring in the future (29.99 KB)  (chair Liisa Kajala)
• Challenges and solutions in visitor monitoring (31.14 KB) (chair Kaili Viilma)
• Making use of visitor information in Nordic-Baltic countries (43.67 KB) (chair Mia Olausson)
• Ways of networking in the field of visitor monitoring (37.27 KB) (chair Lena Malmström) 

Conclusions and seminar wrap up
• Evaluation of the substance and contents of the workshop, Paul Eagles.
• Conclusions and future cooperation, Thomas Hansson. 
End of work shop

Participants' evaluation  (67.89 KB)

Some of the presentations are not available for downloading due to this website not supporting file sizes exceeding 2048Kb. We are working to solve this. In the meantime, please contact coordinator lena.malmstrom(at)naturvardsverket.se to get the files.

Visitor Monitoring in Nature Areas - a manual based on experiences from the Nordic and Baltic countries (ISBN 91-620-1258-4) is available in its entity in English, Swedish, Finnish and Estonian. The survey questions are also available in Norwegian. Books are available for purchase, pdf-files are available free of charge.
English and Swedish: http://www.swedishepa.se/en/In-English/Menu/GlobalMenu/Bookshop/
Estonian: http://www.norden.org/sv/publikationer/publikationer/2008-516
Finnish: http://www.norden.org/sv/publikationer/publikationer/2009-525
Norwegian (survey questions only, i.e. Manual Appendix 4) http://www.dirnat.no/content.ap?thisId=500034071&language=0

Read more
EUROPARC Nordic-Baltic Section project Visitor Monitoring Methods  - information about the project and past meetings