Global relationships between biodiversity and nature-based tourism in protected areas

Abstract

The relationships between biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services (ES) are widely debated. However, it is still not clear how biodiversity conservation and ES interact with different strategies in and surrounding protected areas (PAs), the cornerstone for biodiversity conservation. Here, we present results on the interplay between biodiversity conservation and nature-based tourism (a cultural ES), while controlling for environmental and socioeconomic factors in and surrounding terrestrial PAs worldwide. Results indicate that nature-based tourism is more frequent in PAs that are of higher biodiversity, older, larger, more accessible from urban areas and at higher elevation. High population density surrounding PAs and national income levels are also major socioeconomic factors related to nature-based tourism. Furthermore, PAs managed mainly for biodiversity conservation have nearly 35% more visitors than those managed for mixed use. Strict management for biodiversity is also associated with increased biodiversity. These results show the importance of biodiversity in addressing nature-based tourism and suggest this interrelationship could be altered by different management strategies used by PAs.