Ecoturismo e conservação: uma avaliação dos impactos decorrentes da visitação no Parque Nacional da Chapada Diamantina-PNCD

Abstract

In the modern era, humanity reviews its place in nature and begins to understand itself as part of it. Within this new context of awareness, some attitudes have been taken with the aim of preserving the environment in its most original form, including the creation of Conservation Units. It is also from this awareness that man's need to be in direct contact with nature grew, which means that he is in constant search for this action. Therefore, one of the economic activities that is on the rise is tourism, especially when it comes to modalities related to nature tourism, such as Ecotourism. That said, this work sought to understand how Ecotourism interferes in National Parks, a type of Full Protection Conservation Units that allows visitation, specifically by investigating the impacts caused by this activity, which go against the interests of a UC. Based on an analysis of how the management of the Chapada Diamantina National Park works, based on an observational study, quantitative interviews, interviews with National Park managers, interviews with guides and the evaluation of the current management plan, we investigated the main impacts caused by inefficient planning and sought to suggest a way to mitigate them. Therefore, from the results, impacts were detected such as the presence of dry waste, the presence of solid waste, high erosion, water contamination by cosmetics, in addition to the imminent risk of fires. Several of these impacts are caused due to the lack of PNCD structure (employees, bathrooms, signage and information signs, among others), plus the lack of Environmental Education actions that make visitors aware of their behavior in the middle of nature. With this, measures were suggested such as the institution of Carrying Capacity, better structuring of the Park to support visitors and measures that make them aware of the relevance of the UC and why it should be preserved in order to guarantee its conservation and the consequent maintenance of tourist activities in the region, the environment through which the majority of the local community lives.