30 Planning land
and picnic areas, handle large numbers of people, provide a reasonable diversity
of recreation types, and tend to have nature obliterated. These intensively used
spots are located near access points and far from the most valuable natural
resources present.
Atrail system providing access for nature-based recreation, such as birdwatch-
ing, photography, and quiet walking, channels walkers through natural areas.
Planning and maintaining the trail layout to avoid or protect the most valuable
natural resources is a key goal. Recreation is an important component widely
supported by society. Managing recreation sites requires strategic land planning
because of fluctuations in budgets, numbers of people entering, and even types
of recreation requested and provided.Nature reserves
Nature reserves may have limited recreation, but involve other major
planning and management issues due to the sensitivity and often rarity of the
nature being protected. In the classic question of the relative importance of
content and context (Forman1987), clearly both are important for a nature
reserve. The valuable nature is the content. The context surrounding area nor-
mally involves multiple land ownership and multiple management goals, many
of which remain well beyond the nature reserve planner and manager to affect.
Nevertheless, as for all protected lands, controlling inputs from outside is a
major focus.
However, planning and managing the internal resource, nature, is often a
different challenge. Should we leave it alone and ‘‘let nature take its course”?
Ecologists no longer believe in the so-called ‘‘balance of nature,” but rather
see anon-equilibrium nature,where species and environmental conditions are
continually changing (Pickett and White1985,Peterken1996,Lindenmayerand
Burgman2005). Therefore, if nature is left alone in the protected reserve, we
expect and predict that it will look different in the future. A dominant species
may decrease and be replaced by another species that increases and becomes
dominant. A rare species, even a rare natural community, may disappear. Pond
sediment may noticeably accumulate, stream habitats may increase or decrease,
and different insect populations may explode or disappear. That’s nature. This
non-equilibrium perspective means that the nature reserve will look different,
often very different, to people over time. Leaving nature alone may or may not
be a worthwhile planning strategy. It is particularly difficult on a small nature
reserve in an urban region.
Alternatively, a nature reserve can be more intensively managed to achieve
adifferent goal. Restoration could attempt to return nature to a mimic of a
former state, such as old-growth or pre-settlement conditions or how it was when
we were young(Primack2004,Groomet al.2006,Lindenmayer and Burgman