A percepção dos turistas sobre os serviços ecossistêmicos em áreas protegidas e o impacto da visitação sobre mamíferos de médio e grande porte

Abstract

Protected areas aim to conserve biodiversity and provide ecosystem services, including cultural services. While tourism plays a key role in raising public awareness about nature conservation, poorly planned visitation can have negative impacts on local wildlife. The first phase of this study aimed to understand tourists’ perceptions of the cultural ecosystem services provided by protected areas using sentiment analysis. Nouns mentioned by tourists were categorized into four aspects: structure, aesthetics, sociocultural, and recreation. Adjectives were classified as either positive or negative qualifiers. Word clouds highlighted the most frequently mentioned terms, emphasizing the categories with the highest number of references. Chi-square tests and interaction networks were used to identify associations between nouns and adjectives, as well as significant differences. The interaction networks revealed that all assessed aspects were more strongly associated with positive qualifiers, especially structural and aesthetic aspects. Chisquare results showed a stronger association between structural aspects and negative qualifiers, whereas sociocultural and aesthetic aspects exhibited a weaker relationship with negative adjectives than expected by chance. The second phase of the study evaluated the impact of tourism on medium- and large-sized mammals in protected areas. The COVID-19 pandemic, which restricted access to these areas starting in 2020, provided a unique opportunity for a more detailed analysis of this impact. The study investigated whether species’ occupancy and detection were influenced by habitat type (open or closed), the number of tourists, and the period (during or after the pandemic), considering sampling effort as a potential variable influencing detection. It also analyzed whether species’ activity patterns were altered due to the pandemic and the presence of tourists. The results indicated that species adopted different strategies to coexist with humans in these areas, using behavioral adaptations, environmental characteristics, and changes in movement and temporal activity patterns. These findings highlight the importance of protected areas not only for biodiversity conservation but also for fostering positive human-nature interactions. Therefore, it is crucial for protected area managers to implement continuous monitoring of both species and tourism activities, as species' responses to tourism are heterogeneous. This monitoring should be intensified during changes in visitation intensity or patterns.