Natural Area Tourism.

D. Newsome, S.A. Moore, and R.K. Dowling (2002) Channel View Publications, Clevedon RRP $US 29.95 ISBN 1873150245

This is an excellent and timely addition to the literature on sustainable tourism, with case studies and information from a world-wide context, but differs from most other

texts in that it takes a holistic approach to understanding of the ecosystems within which tourism planning and management has to be accommodated. While the intention of the authors is to provide a review of natural area tourism, they spend a significant amount of space on synthesising ecological knowledge and the biophysical and landscape contexts within which tourism lies. This approach could have resulted in yet another treatise in ecological determinism, but instead the book provides both the rationale for natural area tourism, and a review of possible management actions with respect to tourism developments in natural areas, that makes it eminently useful and readable for both academic and industry use.

The book offers and supports the view that, with adequate foresight, planning and management tourism development in natural areas is both possible and potentially useful in bringing about increased awareness and conservation. Indeed, the book makes the point that the future of sustainable natural area tourism lies in effective planning and management. They have assembled a significant cast of case studies and reference material to back this up. Following an introduction in which natural area tourism, natural areas, and the rapid growth of natural area tourism are out-lined and/or defined, the book progresses through chapters devoted to the ecological perspective, environmental impacts, visitor planning, management strategies and actions, interpretation (of natural areas), and monitoring of impacts. Each in essence is standalone but integrated with its neighbours through a set format of introduction, substantive material, conclusion and further reading. The overall book is in turn integrated through the Introduction and, to a lesser extent the Conclusion. This format is perhaps the only weakness of the book--a tendency for each chapter to be self-contained leads sometimes to a feeling of disjointedness and being overwhelmed by material much of which suddenly ceases to be pertinent at the beginning of the next chapter. This feeling may not strike every reader though and is very minor compared to the wealth of information made available.

Highlights of the book include the realisation that the mere reserving of a particular natural area as a national park or equivalent is not enough to ensure its protection. In this context the comment that there must be, in a sense, co-option of the visitor through education and interpretation for true protection to be ensured, and the observation that there is in fact very little of either of these to be had in natural areas around the world, are both timely and a warning to action. Just as importantly, the chapter on monitoring makes the point that there is in fact very little monitoring of visitor impact, or environmental auditing, in current natural area management practice. The authors clearly favour an ecocentric or life-centred approach to natural area management, in which human visitor activities for example are embedded in that environment, not human-centred as in the alternative anthropocentric view. This means that the principles of biodiversity, intergenerational equity, sustainability, conservation, the interconnectedness of all living things, and individual responsibility form the core of their reasoning with respect to the use by tourists of natural areas, and should be incorporated within all aspects of the management and monitoring process.

The book also contains a wealth of information on the techniques and methods of visitor planning, natural area management, interpretation and monitoring of impacts. If the authors had concentrated on only these the book would have been worth student and industry interest; the fact that it has so much more is a real bonus. The truism that ecosystems need to be better understood if natural area tourism is to bring about environmental benefits is a welcome central message of this book. That the authors also give us a range of tools to achieve this, and an outline of the world-wide contexts under which they were developed has meant that this book will in my view become a seminal text in the field of natural area management by and for tourism.

Malcolm Cooper
University of Southern Queensland, Australia