Volume: 14  Number: 3  Page: 223–237

Changing Conceptions of Protected Areas and Conservation: Linking Conservation, Ecological Integrity and Tourism Management

John D. Shultis1 and Paul A. Way2 1Resource Recreation and Tourism Program, University of Northern British Columbia, Canada and 210316 78th Street, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6A 3E5

From their first creation, national parks and equivalent reserves were socially constructed in the New World as static, primordial, untouched representations of a pre-European contact environment characterised by the ‘balance of nature’ resting in a steady (climax) state. While these images still linger in the minds of the public, the recent utilisation of landscape ecology, conservation biology and social constructivism to study and re-conceptualise protected areas has demonstrated that parks are not the protected islands of virgin wilderness they were constructed to represent; rather than protecting these areas from disturbance, we now recognise that disturbance is a major component in ecological integrity. We suggest that the resultant shift from species- to process-based conservation (i.e. ecological integrity), from attempting to cocoon parks from outside influences to re-engaging parks with landscape-level processes, has critical ramifications for protected area and sustainable tourism management. Land managers need to adapt to a new paradigm that reflects and supports this philosophical change in conservation principles; this shift is also reflected in science itself, manifested by a move from normal to ‘post-normal’ science which embraces these new principles. This approach should link visitor expectations with dynamic, non-linear, self-organising natural processes in order to meet conservation objectives.

Keywords: ecological integrity, ecosystem management, protected areas, postnormal science, tourism management

© 2006 J.D. Shultis & P.A. Way

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