Conservation of a protected area with recreational use: is it possible to persuade visitors to produce less litter?

Abstract

Ecología Austral, 25:46-53 (2015)

Littering by visitors is a problem in many highly visited protected areas. We evaluated, in river beaches within a protected area in the mountains of Córdoba, Argentina, whether it is possible to reduce visitors’ littering using environmental interpretation tools. The interpretation tool consisted in a personalized request to the visitors asking them not to litter while picking up the litter already left on the beach. We conducted the study at nine beaches, making a total of 72 observations (spread over 10 dates). Each observation consisted of three rounds: before, during and after the time of the day with maximum influx of visitors. In the round before we cleaned the beaches. During peak visitation we counted visitors and applied the intervention, which consisted in the personalized request and the example, in about half of the beaches (N= 37 and N= 35 with and without intervention respectively). After the peak visitation, the next morning we estimated the amount of litter per beach, which ranged from 0.007 to 32.5 g.visitor-1.day-1. In seven out of the nine beaches, the amount of litter per visitor was lower for the dates on which the personalized request was applied, but the differences were not significant (P= 0.42). Instead, we found significant differences among beaches (P ≤ 0.05), and a significant positive correlation between beach size and the amount of litter per visitor (R= 0.74, P≤ 0.05). We concluded that despite we couldn’t demonstrate statistically the effect of the personalized request, the observed trends are encouraging, and it is necessary to continue the research.