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Abstract |
The use of public forested areas in Ontario, Canada is governed by the Crown Forest Sustainability Act that directs the management authority, the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources (OMNR), to ensure that forest operations co-exist with other uses of the forest, especially recreation and tourism. Implementing these legislative requirements has been difficult for the OMNR: it lacks data on recreation and tourism; it lacks readily available social scientific expertise; and it lacks the necessary integrative model. The larger project of which this work is a part, focussing on the Dog River-Matawin Forest, west of Thunder Bay, Ontario and immediately east of Quetico Provincial Park, is designed to address several of these gaps. This paper seeks to answer two of the many questions concerning how people use the forest for recreation and tourism purposes: what motivates different users and how do those motivations relate to activity profiles. Our findings indicate that four distinct experience preference groups exist among the 1,556 people who used the forest for recreation and tourism purposes. When these groups are compared with four distinct activity profiles, we make connections that, when mapped (a future phase of the work), begin to indicate areas where potential conflicts might occur with forest operations or with other recreation activities. We conclude by noting that, while knowledge about how people use the forest is interesting in itself, both an integrative framework and a scientifically-capable Ministry of Natural Resources are needed if that knowledge is to find its way into management actions to implement the requirements of Ontario’s Crown Forest Sustainability Act. |
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