1. Introduction
Tourism within protected areas has always been a paradox for administrators and especially for planners, in many cases tourism has been the driving force behind conservation and protection, in several others it has been the cause of the rapid deterioration of resources natural and biodiversity that the protected area wishes to conserve.
adaptation-of-natural-areas-to-public-useThat is why a series of tools have been developed in order to effectively evaluate the best conservation and protection models, which allow use schemes for recreation, public use and tourism, but with a minimal impact on natural resources and biodiversity..
One of them is the Diagnosis of Capacity for Public Use (DCUP), a model that allows the establishment of the visitation structure, intervention models at the level of interpretation, zoning, specific programs and visitation regulations. The DCUP becomes one of the tools that will allow "public use to be strategically oriented".
Considering the points previously exposed, a Diagnosis of Capacity for Public Use (DCUP) was developed within the process of preparing the PNJBPR Management Plan, considering the protected area with a high potential for its ecotourism development and due to the "public use" that to date, it has been developed in a little systematized, sporadic and widely dispersed manner. The study was carried out during the peak visitation months of December 2005 and January to March 2006, coinciding with the dates of greatest visitation within the protected area, which are:
- December dates (Christmas and New Year); Carnival; and Holy Week.
Allowing to have a rather specific aspect on the type of visitors, places of visitation, behavior and desire for better models of areas of "public use", unfortunately for the type of visitation that exists within the protected area and the little or no systematization is not He was able to go deeper into the “Study of Tourist Load Capacity” ECCT, due also to the lack of interpretive trails enabled and in use. In addition, the areas visited have characteristics of high dispersal of visitation.
Thus, the study focused on identifying the areas currently used for visitation and which may be subject due to their ecotourism potentials to be maximized in the medium term. It is important to conceive that due to agro-productive characteristics, communities do not consider tourism as a viable means of obtaining economic resources. So the development of short-term ecotourism projects is unlikely unless actions with agroecotourism guidelines intervene.
2. Objectives of the Management Plan
- Establish a first quantitative estimate of the number and typology of its visitors; Define management deficiencies, such as environmental impacts beyond its ecological, physical and perceptual limits of carrying capacity; Propose management measures of its ecological and recreational potential in order to make its use sustainable, compatible with the objectives and category of management; and Strengthen the future zoning proposal to be considered for the management and administration of the protected area.
3. Methodological synthesis
The method to Determine the Capacity of Public Use –DCUP-, inside a Protected Area (PA), corresponds to an interactive and iterative process of analysis and action, qualified as an “Environmental Monitoring System”, whose results feed back the basis data from the PA and allow taking and controlling the necessary management measures to minimize the negative effects of tourist visitation. For the application of the methodology it is necessary that the AP has a minimum of institutional presence and a technical or legal declaration of the AP.
