A Reframing Of Visitor Capacity - park capacity

Quiz: What management concept in the recreation profession comes to mind when you cross the pink Energizer Bunny that keeps going and going, with comedian Rodney Dangerfield's self-caricature, "I get no respect?"

Answer: Recreational carrying capacity!

Recreational carrying capacity is an enduring tool in the parks and outdoor recreation profession, in spite of being frequently questioned, debased, debunked, and recently cast into "well-earned oblivion" by the published literature over the last 20 years. At the 1999 National Congress on Recreation and Resource Capacity, sponsored by the National Society for Park Resources and 20 other agencies and institutions, more than 500 managers and stakeholders participated, thus, showing widespread interest and need to address the capacity issue.

The 1999 Capacity Congress brought home the realization that the stakes are changing and circumstances increasingly do not permit the abdication of this fundamental professional responsibility. Historically, capacity was principally viewed in the context of a crowded recreation site or impacted trail or campsite. Today, however, the context of capacity involves a larger scale, more and diverse participants, and greater consequences. Incidences of recreational boating deaths attributed in part to too many boaters, lines forming before dawn to access popular state park reservoirs and campgrounds, private sector outfitter and guide permittees (river, horse, educational) requesting a larger allocation of opportunities, rural gateway communities questioning the change in their quality of life, judicial appeals and litigation against federal agency plans and regulations, and national media coverage about such incidences as climbing at Devil's Tower National Monument, snowmobiling in Yellowstone, and off-highway recreation use in Southern California are all evidence of the expanding context of visitor capacity.

The fundamental premise of this article is threefold. First, a numeric visitor capacity is a complex decision that is necessary and beneficial in some situations. Second, What is Past is Prologue (Haas 2000), and the 100-year history of managing recreational hunting and fishing in America is prologue for the future management of all outdoor recreation activities and the inevitability of routine capacity decisions. Third, the profession is not prepared to make complex visitor capacity decisions.

This article briefly overviews the life-cycle of recreation carrying capacity, introduces a decision-analysis approach to visitor capacity decision making, and offers a reframing of visitor capacity.

Life-Cycle of Recreational Carrying Capacity

The Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission (ORRRC, 1962) was the first government institution to acknowledge the value and recommend that recreation carrying capacities be part of outdoor recreation plans. The ORRRC discussed the need to include a numeric capacity as a measurement of the supply of available opportunities. The Bureau of Outdoor Recreation (BOR) was established shortly after the ORRRC, and it set up a requirement that all Statewide Comprehensive Outdoor Recreation Plans (SCORP) include recreational carrying capacities in order to be eligible for Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) monies. As depicted in Figure 1, interest in recreational carrying capacity increased dramatically in the 1960s, particularly among state agencies in the populated east and west coast of the United States.

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A demographic-based approach was taken to derive these capacities. The supply of recreation facilities and services was based primarily upon national recreation standards for different populations. The standards would indicate that the recreation demand for a city or state with population "X" could be supplied by "Y" amount of recreation acres and facilities. Thus, when the population standards indicated that the supply of available opportunities was not adequate, the recreation carrying capacity was said to be exceeded. This approach was a successful tool to help justify increasing state government appropriations and the rapid expansion of the state park systems in the 1960s and 1970s,

The demographic-based approach made several important contributions of relevance today: 1) Capacity is a numeric measurement of the supply of available opportunities, 2) capacity can be decided as part of a large-scale regional planning process (e.g., SCORP), 3) standards can be used as a basis for capacity, 4) capacity can be a tool to justify increased allocation of resources, and 5) a valid management response to reaching a capacity is increasing the supply of available opportunities.

While ORRRC and its subsequent planning and funding legislation gave capacity a high profile in the early 1960s, there were questions about the adequacy of national recreation standards. The research community responded by implementing a research efforts to develop a scientific-based approach to recreational carrying capacity. The intent was to determine the relationship between the amount of visitor use and change to the resources or visitor experience.

A significant amount of work involving many agency scientists and academicians focused on this topic during the 1960s and 1970s. This effort made several important contributions: 1) Recreational carrying capacity must consider the social-psychological effects of increased visitation along with the biophysical effects, 2) the relationship between use and change involves many factors of the setting and of the individuals visiting the setting, 3) capacities are not scientifically determined by a formula or computation, and 4) scientific tools and strategies are available to secure the important information to help managers make better capacity decisions.

By the end of the 1970s, the attention given to recreational carrying capacity waned due to lack of scientific determinism, the declining impetus for SCORP plans to address capacity due to declining LWCF monies, and the declining role and leadership of BOR. Simultaneously, a promising new approach was being debuted in two separate large demonstration projects involving the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness in Colorado and the Bob Marshall Wilderness in Montana.

By the early 1980s, there was a major shift to a monitoring-based approach to recreational carrying capacity. This strategy involved a shift in focus from determining the amount of use (input) an area could receive to defining the quality of the resources and recreational opportunities the area would provide (outputs). By developing well-defined qualitative or narrative expressions of the desired future conditions for an area, and selecting associated indicator and quality standards, managers could better understand and articulate the outputs of their management efforts. The Limits of Acceptable Change system is the best known example of this approach.

The monitoring-based approach allows managers to address capacity issue by establishing an array of quality standards which serve as a proxy for a numeric visitor capacity [e.g., "X" number of trail encounters per mile). An essential component of this approach is a scientifically adequate and managerially practical monitoring program to measure current conditions of the selected indicators, isolate human-caused change from natural change, and measure the current types and amount of human uses (recreation and non-recreation) attributed to be the cause of declining or unacceptable conditions. Then, as conditions begin to exceed established standards, the type and level of use attributed to be causing the declining conditions could be established as the visitor capacity for the area, if deemed necessary.

The monitoring-based approach remains dominant today and has made important contributions as well:

1) A capacity requires a clearly defined set of management objectives detailing the desired future conditions for an area, 2) the desired quality is defined through an array of indicators and standards for the important resource and social conditions in an area, 3) an adequate monitoring program is essential to the integrity of this approach, and 4) there are areas or situations where the level of public or management concern about the recreation use is benign and numeric capacities are not necessary.

Unfortunately, there is a popular notion that the monitoring-based approach allows managers to skip over or avoid making numeric capacity decisions, and that the need for a numeric visitor capacity has been dismissed. The 1999 Capacity Congress broadened the perspective on capacity and helped many realize that there are situations when deciding upon a numerical capacity is the responsible thing to do, instances when a capacity is necessary to make fundamental planning and allocation decisions, situations when the likelihood of an adequate monitoring program is low, and planning opportunities when proactive capacity decisions can be reasoned, defensible, and beneficial.

The fundamental question of years past still remains, how do we decide upon a numeric visitor capacity? The author sees another approach to capacity which builds upon and complements the contributions of the other approaches, yet borrows from the decades of experience by corporate America in making complex decisions. A decision analysis-based approach is emerging.

Background on Decision Analysis

In 1772, Ben Franklin wrote a letter to a friend who was in need of advice (Russo and Schoemaker 1989).

   "When those difficult cases occur, they are difficult, chiefly because
   while we have them under consideration, all the reasons pro and con are not
   present to the mind at the same time; but sometimes one set present
   themselves, and at other times another, the first being out of sight.
   Hence, the various purposes or inclinations that alternatively prevail, and
   the uncertainty that perplexes us."

Mr. Franklin offered his friend a process which he called moral or prudential algebra. During the last 229 years this line of reasoning has evolved because of three reasons, which also apply to the outdoor recreation profession: 1) Increasing complexity, 2) recognition of inherent mental tendencies, and 3) increasing uncertainty, risk, and consequences from making a bad decision. Today, this field of study is called decision analysis (or science), and it is supported by a large assemblage of research, academic programs, the Decision Analysis Society, and extensive applied and theoretical literature. The sources used by the author and highly recommended are Making Hard Decisions With Decision Tools (2001), The Thinker's Toolkit: 14 Powerful Techniques for Problem Solving (1998), Decision Traps: The Ten Barriers to Brilliant Decision-Making and How to Overcome Them (1989), and Value-Focused Thinking (19921.

Decision analysis is defined as the structuring of a problem and the imposition of analytical techniques (tools) to make better decisions. The structuring allows one to see all the important components (i.e., to see the trees for the forest), while the analytical techniques force decisions to be more objective, comprehensive, creative, deliberate, and trackable.

Decision analysis recognizes that humans have mental tendencies that can become traps in dealing with complex decisions; i.e., deciding upon a preferred solution and working backwards to justify its choice; focusing too much analysis on an initial solution; accepting a solution that satisfices rather than optimizes; confusing discussion with analysis; seeking out confirmatory information; disregarding the development of a transparent process for decision making; examining the problem and solutions through only one perspective; assuming current assumptions and information are unquestionable basic truths; believing that with enough information, science, and input, the right answer will present itself absent of the ultimate use of sound professional judgment; and shortchanging the deliberate assessment and mitigation of risk, uncertainty, and unforeseen consequences. Compounding these tendencies are mental short-cuts, which can become mental short-circuits to complex decision making (e.g., bias, prejudice, stereotype, stored patterns, perceptions and misperceptions, hunches, intuitions, risk aversion, personality traits).

In response, decision analysis helps makes sense out of a complex problem by assuring that all the important considerations are identified and visually represented; thus, depicting how the multiple pieces are chunked or partitioned into components. A popular analogy is that of a jig-saw puzzle, whereby one assembles all the pieces on the table and then groups those pieces by object type such as sky, tree, face, and color.

Decision analysis forces a focus of each component until it is fully and sufficiently considered, and imposes analytical techniques on the mental tendency characterized by Morton Hunt in The Universe Within as "mental messing around" (1982). Popular analytical techniques include screening and ranking protocols, occupation-specific rules of thumb, decision rules or criteria, problem reframing, paired rankings, weighted comparisons, mitigation or problem fixing analysis, information or intelligence audits, divergent or disconfirmation analysis, decision and probability trees, causal models, simulation, simple utility analysis, and multi-attribute compensatory utility analysis. These techniques can accommodate qualitative and quantitative comparisons, weights, and computations for each consideration.

Decision analysis facilitates creative thinking and empowers people to address complex decisions proactively, rather than dispatching decisions to another person or time. And most importantly, decision analysis accepts its own potential decision trap by allowing for sound professional judgment to be the ultimate standard for decision making.

Application of Decision Analysis to Visitor Capacity

As a result of the 1999 Congress and Recreation and Resource Capacity, the Department of the Interior initiated the Federal Interagency Task Force on Visitor Capacity on Public Lands. It is a 12-month Task Force which will conclude its work in the summer, 2001, and has involved the Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Reclamation, Fish and Wildlife Service, Forest Service, and National Park Service. The goal of the Task Force is to improve visitor capacity decision making, and this section illustrates four decision-analysis tools under development by the Task Force: principles (occupation-specific rules of thumb), decision criteria, process formulation, and problem reframing. Some contextual information is provided to help understand how these tools will be useful. Also mentioned is where in the decision process other and more sophisticated tools can be utilized.

A visitor capacity is a decision made by the responsible official managing an area. The decision can be complex and contentious. It is reasonable to assume that some capacity decisions will be tested in a court of law. Most recreation managers do not view the courts as a recreation management tool, but rather as a measure of failing. On the contrary, for most new laws and concepts, it is routine to have numerous judicial challenges until a body of case law has addressed and clarified the major points of debate. Within this judicial process is a very powerful tool called judicial deference. Judicial deference is a long-standing legal doctrine which states that administrative decisions should be made by the responsible official and not the judicial system (Black 1991). The role of the court system is to judge how the decision was made, not the decision itself. Thus, the decision analysis approach to visitor capacity embraces the two dominant legal standards guiding how public land decisions are made today.

The Administrative Procedures Act (1942) provides substantive guidance that a responsible official is not to make art "arbitrary" decision; that is, it is unlawful to make a decision without principle or without reason. The Task Force is responding by developing a set of twelve visitor capacity decision-making principles, and a set of decision criteria or reasons to help assess the consequences of a specific numeric capacity decision.

The National Environmental Policy Act (1969) is the national charter for environmental planning and provides procedural guidance for significant environmental decision making. The Task Force is responding supporting the notion that complex capacity decisions will benefit from the thoroughness and legal sufficiency afforded a NEPA-compliant planning process.

Thus, the strategy is that a visitor capacity decision will be a better decision and will receive judicial deference if the decision is principled, reasoned, and afforded the thoroughness and legal sufficiency of a NEPA-compliant planning process.

The fourth decision analysis tool is problem reframing, which involves the deliberate examination of a problem from diverse perspectives. A problem becomes clearer as it is clinically examined from different perspectives such as from stakeholders (e.g., recreationist, manager, outfitter, educational group leader, city council, lawyer, wildlife biologist, economist), settings (e.g., Statue of Liberty, Gettysburg National Battlefield, Colorado River, Bob Marshall Wilderness, Chatfield State Park, Mt. Shasta), or activity types (e.g., snowmobiler, snorkeler, backpacker, fly-fishing person, recreation trailer user, tour group). Problem framing is one of the most fundamental tools because it helps to assure identification and definition of the real problem to be solved (Jones 1998).

Table 1 reflects the author's reframing of visitor capacity within the context of a decision-analysis approach, and not necessarily the views of the Task Force at this writing. There has been considerable debate and discussion among many colleagues, and final clarity and consensus is still in the future. Table 1 is an example of problem framing, and it is offered to focus the continuing dialogue on each important word, idea, and aspect of visitor capacity.

TABLE 1. A REFRAMING OF VISITOR CAPACITY

1. The public is accustomed to capacities in their everyday lives, and can relate to the phrase "visitor capacity" better than "recreational carrying capacity"

2. A visitor capacity decision is made by a responsible official based on sound professional judgement and a public planning process

3. An inventory of the type, variety, distribution, quality, and abundance of the supply of available recreation opportunities is a fundamental recreation management responsibility

4. A visitor capacity is a numeric measure of the supply of available opportunities that an area can accommodate

5. A visitor capacity is a tool with multiple purposes related to clarifying and protecting the desired resource conditions and recreational opportunities, allocating opportunities among private and public providers, integrated regional ecosystem planning, analysis of recreation demand and supply, risk management, evaluation of management alternatives, justifying additional resources, predictability for the private sector and local communities, visitor management, and area closures and limits

6. A visitor capacity can supplement and help clarify qualitative expressions of capacity and the standards which define the desired future conditions for an area

7. A visitor capacity decision should be based upon well-defined management objectives, desired future conditions, quality standards, current resource and experiential conditions, trends, foreseeable events or changes, management capability, best available science, monitoring information, public preference, regional supply of same or similar opportunities, visitor management activities, expected quality of future monitoring program, level of uncertainty and risk surrounding consequences of the decision, and other information inputs to a public resource planning effort

8. A visitor capacity decision will be afforded judicial deference if it is demonstrably principled, reasoned, and arrived at through a nepa-compliant planning process

9. Capacity decision-making does not require a special or separate capacity planning process, but can be integrated into any appropriate agency planning effort

10. Capacity decision-making can use a sliding-scale rule, whereby the type and amount of information, the tools used, and the time and effort is commensurate with the purpose and potential consequences of the capacity decision

11. All management decisions involve a degree of uncertainty, and capacity decision-making addresses uncertainty by use a numeric "at-risk" range and expressed level of certainty

12. A visitor capacity can be described as a numeric range, which reflects when the desired recreation opportunities are at-risk, when the natural or cultural resources are at-risk, or when managements capability to adequately respond is at-risk

13. A capacity range can include several trigger points or signal points, which serve to communicate to managers that current use has reached an at-risk or jeopardy level, and can serve to justify the need for additional resources for an appropriate response

14. A capacity can be proactive, whereby as use is approaching or is within the capacity range, it can trigger consideration of the reasonable range of management responses including altering the recreation demand (use) and/or altering recreation supply

15. A capacity decision should consider important physical, social, biological, and design considerations

16. A capacity decision will change and be adaptive to new information, science, and circumstances, although any change should be based on a level of analysis equal to or greater than that of the original decision

17. Monitoring efforts are essential, and the integrity and precision of a visitor capacity should increase over time

And finally, by partitioning the steps of a NEPA-compliant planning process, the Task Force is considering specific places in the process where tools would be helpful, such as in ranking important public issues and management concerns, assessing the adequacy of the best available science, deciding what level of analysis is appropriate, help in creating a reasonable range of alternatives, evaluating the consequences of alternatives, mitigating negative consequences, and assessing public support.

Conclusion

Deciding upon the number of available recreation opportunities for an area or region can be complex, and alternative approaches and perspectives continue to evolve. The decision-analysis approach views a visitor capacity as simply one of the many complex and interrelated decisions that a manager is responsible to make in a public planning process. By structuring and fully considering all the important component parts influencing visitor capacity, and by imposing analytical techniques, responsible park and recreation officials will make decisions that are more objective, comprehensive, creative, deliberate, and trackable.

Park and recreation professionals have a moral and professional charge to maintain the integrity of their resources and recreation opportunities, and to help sustain the benefits these afford our society. A numeric visitor capacity is one tool that would be beneficial towards that end, and the decision-analysis approach is one approach to deal with the complexity of the decision.

Literature Cited

Administrative Procedures Act. 1942. 5 U.S.C.A.

Black, H. C. 1991. Black's Law Dictionary. St. Paul, MN: West Publishing Company.

Clemen, R. T. and T. Reilly. 2001. Making Hard Decisions With Decision Tools. Pacific Grove, California: Duxbury Thomson Learning

Jones, M.D. 1998. The Thinker's Toolkit: 14 Powerful Techniques for Problem Solving. New York: Random House.

Haas, G. E. 2000. What is Past is Prologue. Parks and Recreation. 35(9):34-35. National Recreation and Parks Association, Washington, D.C. September.

Hunt, M. 1982. The Universe Within. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Keeney, R. L. 1992. Value-focused Thinking. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.

National Environmental Policy Act. 1969.42 USC 4321 -- 4370D; PL 91-190.

Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission. 1962. Outdoor Recreation for America. Washington, D.C.: US GPO.

Russo, J.E. and P.J.H. Schoemaker. 1989. Decision Traps: The Ten Barriers to Brilliant Decision-Making and How to Overcome Them. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Dr. Glenn E. Haas is currently on sabbatical leave from the College of Natural Resources at Colorado State University, working as an advisor to the Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks in the Department of the Interior, and serving as the Chairperson for the Federal Interagency Task Force on Visitor Capacity on Public Lands. His areas of interest include natural resource planning, policy formulation, public administration, leadership, and outdoor recreation management. Glenn worked in the national office of the U.S. Forest Service where he drafted national policy on limits of acceptable change and helped advance the recreation opportunity spectrum system; served four years on the board of the National Society for Park Resources, six years of the board of the National Parks Conservation Association; and twelve years as a university department head. Read his article, "A Reframing of Visitor Capacity", on page 68.

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