| Abstract |
Monitoring visitation is fundamental to effective management of protected areas, directing limited budgets towards mitigation of high priority impacts, such as those related to trails, trash and congestion. Accurate data is fundamental to negotiate problematic ‘hotspots’ and minimize conflicts between visitor segments (Eagles, 2014). However, although considerable research efforts have been devoted to monitoring visitation, many protected areas still function with inaccurate or out-of-date visitation statistics, exacerbated by a lack of systematic data collection due to various problems (Cope et al., 2000, Cessford & Muhar, 2003, Buckley 2009, Aikoh & Gokita, 2015):- – lack of multi-year time series due to changing count methods and institutional arrangements, – under-reporting due to multiple entrances, multiple access roads or non-tourist traffic, – representativeness of sample days undermined by weather conditions, public holidays, etc, – ‘guesstimates’ based on perceptions of staff or local volunteers, indirect or anecdotal evidence. In the ongoing quest for reliable, cost-effective collection methods, the pros and cons of on-site staff versus automated counters is a perennial question which this paper aims to contextualize using the case study example of two parallel systems currently being utilized on Mount Fuji’s north face. |
