| Abstract |
Protected areas (PA) are key territories for protecting biodiversity while also providing opportunities for human-environment interactions through recreation and tourism, activities that have generally grown all over the world. Over the last three decades, due to the improvement of materials, techniques, and methods of physical preparation, one of the recreational/sports use that has increased considerably in PA has been Climbing that has reached unpredictable popularity and technical levels, increasing pressure and impacts over natural and fragile environments. The Montsant Natural Park, located in the westernmost of the Catalan Pre-littoral range, within the Priorat region, is a special rocky territory with five differentiated climbing areas among which Margalef stands out by being a well known internationally climbing spot with over 1500 routes. This PA that occupies 9.242 hectares, received nearly 166.000 visits in 2020, of which almost 55% concentrated in Margalef area (Farias, Morera & Dorado, 2019). To manage visitation and nature conservation, several carrying capacity frameworks have been developed over the last decades considering all its environmental, social, and economic factors but only a few attempts have been made to operationalize this concept and to transform it into a management tool (Manning 2002). This paper aims to present an adaptation of Cifuentess Touristic Carrying Capacity (Cifuentes,1992), widely applied in the context of trails, to the climbing routes. |
