Visitor monitoring in Finnish national parks and ASTA visitor information system
Liisa Kajala, Senior Advisor Metsähallitus, Natural Heritage Services
Workshop – Visitor Monitoring in National Parks th Gardemoen Airport, October 17 , 2013
Contents of the Presentation
• Protected areas in Finland • Development of visitor monitoring and information system in Finland and current practices • Use of visitor information • Future development
Organisation of Metsähallitus
3 Performance setting and Steering of Natural Heritage Services
4 Natural Heritage services´ finances in 2012
NHS´activities are largely financed from the national government budget. Additional funding is obtained from EU programmes, fees paid for hunting and fishing permits, rents etc..
5 NHS manages all the state-owned PAs
• 37 national parks Forest land in managed forests
• 19 strict nature reserves Poorly productive land • 7 national hiking areas • 12 wilderness areas Protected areas (NHS) • almost 500 other PAs • public water areas Public water areas (NHS)
Altogether over 7 million hectares, 18% of Finland’s surface area
6 Finland´s National Parks
• a total of 37 national parks • 9 790 km2 • 2,1 million visits in 2012
7 Visitor Centres
• guidance for hikers and other customer service • exhibitions and audiovisual shows • interpretation and environmental education • 887 700 visits Organisation of National Heritage Services
1.1.2012
9 Contents of the Presentation
• Protected areas in Finland • Development of visitor monitoring and information system in Finland and current practices • Use of visitor information • Future development
Why visitor monitoring in protected areas?
“Any phenomenon that is not measured and reported does not exist politically. Governments, societies, communities and individuals place more value on that which is documented.“
11 Development of outdoor recreation data base systems in NHS Year Action
2000 Standardised surveys start and the first manual on visitor monitoring was published in Finland (FFRI=METLA & NHS) 2002 MMV I (Austria)
2004 MMV II (Finland), Reiska GIS was launched in NHS
2005 Nordic and Baltic Project on Developing Visitor Monitoring Methodology
2006 MMV III (Switzerland), ASTA database was launched in NHS
2007 Manual of Visitor Monitoring in Nature Areas was published in Nordic and Baltic countries
2008 MMV IV (Italy), ASTA database was sold to Estonia (RMK )
2010 MMV V (Netherlands), first economic impacts of park visitation report was published in Finland (FFRI & NHS)
2011 Customer segmentation based on motivations (UEF & NHS)
2012 MMV VI (Sweden) 12 2013 Questions on experienced health and wellbeing benefits (multiple research organisations); ASTA information to SASS International cooperation in developing visitor monitoring methodology
The main focus is on practical matters: • how to carry out visitor counting and visitor surveys, • how to report the results and • how to make use of the information obtained. The manual (TemaNord 2007:534 ) includes • guidelines, • recommendations, • tips and examples on visitor
monitoring methodologies 13 The project
• Nordic-Baltic Workshop in June 2004 in Rovaniemi, Finland − common project to develop Nordic and Baltic guidelines for visitor monitoring • Projects 2005 and 2006-2007 • Funding from the Nordic Council of Ministers and Naturvårdsverket • Implementation by a project group that consisted of representatives of both management and research organisations in the Nordic and Baltic countries. • project management in Metsähallitus workshop in November 2009 in Rovaniemi
14 How has the manual been utilised?
• Translations into Swedish, Estonian, Finnish and partly into Norwegian (the model questions, ap