Ecologically Sustainable Visitor Use of Australia’s World Heritage Areas

This report is one of a series in the Sustainable Tourism Corporative Research Centre's overall project to develop a framework, guidelines and tools to enhance assessment, evaluation and reporting of visitor use in protected areas. In this report we review the approaches management agencies have taken to research and assess ecologically sustainable visitor use of Australia's World Heritage Areas. We also review how they assess performance in managing visitor use. World Heritage Areas are popular tourism and recreation destinations with internationally significant conservation values. Research, assessment and reporting processes for World Heritage Areas are better resourced than for other protected areas. Therefore, how agencies research, assess and evaluate the pressures and threats associated with visitor use should represent Australian best practices.