Limits of Acceptable Change and Tourism

Limits of Acceptable Change and Tourism Stephen F. McCool Professor Emeritus The University of Montana Green On-line Version. Citation: McCool, S.F. 2013. Limits of Acceptable Change and Tourism In Holden, A., and Fennel, D.A. (eds) Routledge Handbook of Tourism and the Environment. Routledge. Oxon, UK. Pp 285-298. INTRODUCTION How do managers sustain the values for which protected areas have been designated in the face of growing and diversifying societal expectations, changing climatic patterns, declining government support and accelerating tourism and visitation? This question dominates every manager’s mind, drives thousands of public meetings annually, forms the basis for innumerable scientific studies, and challenges constituencies who not only want to preserve nature’s heritage but also use it for their shelter and sustenance. While no statistics exist on the global economic significance and use of protected areas for tourism, we do know that tourism is one of the largest industries—however fragmented it may be—in the world, that international travel is growing exponentially, and that natural heritage protected areas host hundreds of millions of visitors annually. At an individual level, managers grapple daily with the potential effects of tourism on the values preserved in a protected area. They struggle with how they can provide opportunities for high quality visitor experiences that are the basis for a competitive tourism sector. They contend with communities in desperate need of economic opportunity which see the protected area as a path out of poverty. And, they must integrate these demands into a coherent, effective plan that is resilient in the face of change, acceptable to protected area constit- uencies and one that is effectively implemented. Addressing these tasks requires managers to “work through” the complexities and nuances of tourism management, community relationships and impact mitigation. Tourism or visitor management frameworks provide the structure for this process by influencing what questions are asked and how. The Limits of Acceptable Change (LAC) planning framework (Stankey and others 1985) is one such process. In this article, I provide a brief description of this planning framework. Prior to the description, I describe what is meant by a framework in this context. In the third major section of this paper, I cover some of the significant issues and misunderstandings present in the tourism literature concerning this framework. A case study is briefly presented. In providing this overview, the reader should note that I was involved as a facilitator, scientist and bureaucrat in the initial application of the Limits of Acceptable Change process. Over the years, I have worked with numerous protected area organizations, facilitated many educational workshops to help managers implement LAC and published a number of articles on it, its application, its relationship with the notion of recreation or tourism carrying capacity, and how the framework can be strengthened. I thus hold a unique perspective in describing the framework and responding to some of the numerous issues identified in the literature. WHAT IS A PLANNING FRAMEWORK? A framework may be defined as a process involving a sequence of steps that leads managers and planners to explicate, frame and understand a particular issue. A framework in this sense does not necessarily lead to formulation of “the” answer to an issue, but provides the conceptual basis and scaffolding through which it may be successfully resolved. Frameworks are structures that enable us to apply critical thinking skills to a complex problem; they are not processes or checklists that can be simply followed without understanding their underlying rationale and conceptual underpinnings. Frameworks allow us to gain insights and create deeper understanding of these issues by forcing us to explicate and “work through” the various dimensions of them. A tourism/visitor/recreation planning framework helps decision makers gain insights about the particular issue confronting them and then provides some guidance on how to address the issue. Ideally, frameworks achieve these goals in ways that are conceptually sound, easily translated into practice, within the technical capacity of the organization to implement the methodologies and actions proposed, and identify the distributional consequences of a decision (Brewer 1973). For example, reservation systems to allocate visitation discriminate against those who do not plan in advance; some protected area management policies marginalize the input of local residents; and other management actions may favor those with higher incomes . Finally, the framework must be pragmatic, that is it must be both efficient (“getting the biggest bang for the buck”) and it must be effective, that is simply put, it works. The literature suggests a limited number of frameworks to assist protected area managers in making decisions about tourism and visitation exist. These include the Recreation Opportunity Spectrum, Visitor Impact Management, Visitor Experience and Resource Protection, Protected Area Visitor Impact Management, Limits of Acceptable Change and a few others (see Nilsen and Taylor 1998; Newsome and others 2002; and McCool and others 2007 for comparative assessments of these frameworks). This article is focused on Limits of Acceptable Change both because of its widespread application and because of a number of issues with its use have arisen. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE LIMITS OF ACCEPTABLE CHANGE FRAMEWORK LAC was originally designed to address the failures of a “carrying capacity” approach (see below) in managing visitor use in designated Wilderness in the U.S. Since its initial application in the Bob Marshall Wilderness (Stankey and others 1984), it has seen use in a variety of areas and in different ecosystems. It has been adapted to tourism (McCool 1994) and used in a number of nature-based situations. The underlying question that LAC focuses on (What are the appropriate and acceptable conditions for an area?) has been argued to be applicable to cultural heritage sites as well (McCool 2006). Limits of Acceptable Change, as with other frameworks, can be embedded within planning processes that cover a broader scope of protected area decisionmaking, or can be used as a framework to assist decisions that are specific to visitor and tourism management. By using indicators and standards, it works within processes designed to assess management effectiveness (see for example Hockings and others 2006). LAC has variously been described as a “management by objectives” approach or an “indicator-based” approach to management. It can be viewed as both a concept (e.g., one that focuses discourse on the appropriateness or acceptability of various conditions) and as a step-based framework to structure planning and decision-making. LAC is based on these propositions:  any level of human use (e.g., tourism in this case) of a natural area results in some change to biophysical conditions and to visitor experiences;  the character and amount of resulting change at some point become unacceptable to at least some constituencies;  diversity in biophysical and social conditions exists and may be desirable;  preservation of heritage and access (for visitation) are goals that are partly competing but partly overlapping;  management is required to maintain human-induced impacts within a certain level of acceptability or appropriateness. LAC as a planning framework incorporates these propositions (McCool 1996 later produced a set of principles underlying management of visitors in protected areas derived out of these propositions) into a series of steps with a particular order and rationale (see Figure 1 and Table 1) that represent an adaptive management approach. Table 1 provides brief descriptions of each of the steps of the LAC planning framework. During the original application of LAC in the Bob Marshall Wilderness, public engagement was an integral component, and thus further applications in the U.S. generally proceeded with the proposition that consensus among constituencies was needed for implementation (McCool and Ashor 1984; Krumpe and McCool 1998; Stokes 1990). APPLICABILITY OF LIMITS OF ACCEPTABLE CHANGE TO TOURISM MANAGEMENT A wide variety of authors have reported experience with use of LAC to manage various aspects of tourism, particularly in protected areas. Its initial applications were to manage visitors in terrestrial designated Wilderness in the U.S. (Stankey and others 1984; McCoy and others 1995). Several authors report using LAC as a framework for managing snorkeling on reefs and in marine parks (Roman and others 2007; Shafer and Inglis 2000; Schultz and others 1999). Ahn and others (2002) used LAC to examine resident attitudes to determine the applicability and usefulness of Tourism Development Zones at a county scale. McCool (1994) proposed modifications of the LAC framework for more direct applicability to regional tourism development. Brunson (1998) suggested using LAC in situations beyond designated Wilderness. While use of visitor planning and management frameworks is relatively rare in Europe (Haider 2006), Erkkonen and Itkonen (2006) report use of LAC for a Finnish National Park. While most applications in the past have occurred in the U.S., LAC as a concept has been at the basis of many applications around the world Despite the wide variety of applications reported in literature that deal with nature-based tourism, LAC, either as a concept or as a planning framework, has received little attention in mainstream tourism journals (e.g., Tourism Management, Annals of Tourism Research, Journal of Travel Research, Journal of Sustainable Tourism, Journal of Ecotourism). Nor have many text authors given more than passing attention to LAC in books about environmental impacts of tourism (e.g., especially Mason 2003; Page 2009; Gunn and Var 2002; Telfer and Sharpley 2009; Singh 2008; Batta 2000) with many of these emphasizing establishing a tourism carrying capacity as the solution to managing tourism’s ecological and social consequences1. LIMITS OF ACCEPTABLE CHANGE ISSUES AND QUESTIONS Those managers and planners that apply LAC to tourism development and management situations are often confronted by a number of issues and questions, not only in terms of application, but also in terms of critique. In this section, I examine a few of these issues in order to provide the reader with a more comprehensive background on what LAC does and what its limitations might be. Before moving on to that discussion, the reader should be aware that a number of assessments of LAC have been produced and are available in the literature. For example, McCool and Cole (1998) organized a workshop to explicitly evaluate LAC and its first decade of use. Nilsen and Taylor (1998) in these proceedings developed a comparative analysis of several planning frameworks. Cole and Stankey (1998) also provided a review of the historical development of LAC which is important in understanding the framework and the concept. Newsome and others (2002) discuss LAC, its applicability and limitations. This was followed by McCool and others (2007) more comprehensive assessment of a number of recreation and visitor planning frameworks, providing descriptions of how each framework evolved and an evaluation of experience with each. McCool (1989) identified a number of issues and questions involved 1 An exception is Newsome and others (2002) who provide good discussions of LAC and other similar visitor planning frameworks. with application of LAC. A number of clarifications are presented below to complement this literature. Limits of Acceptable Change as a Change in Tourism Management Paradigms The Limits of Acceptable Change planning framework was designed to respond to the failures of using a carrying capacity approach to manage visitation—both its social and environmental consequences in designated Wilderness. The failures of a carrying capacity approach are well documented in the literature (e.g., McCool and Lime 2001; Buckley 1999; Washburn 1981; Wagar 1974). In their review of recreation planning frameworks, McCool and others (2007) conclude: The experience of recreation carrying capacity in resolving the complex and often contentious issues associated with recreation and tourism development on public lands is uniformly a failure. Not only have intrinsic numerical carrying capacities failed to be identified, but policies limiting use (often portrayed as carrying capacities) often have been unsuccessful in resolving the issue instigating the search for a capacity. We come to this conclusion for three reasons: (1) carrying capacity is a misframing of the useimpact problem, (2) the theoretical foundation for recreation carrying capacity is invalid, and (3) practical implementation of carrying capacity in wildland settings is difficult. The reader is referred to the above literature for additional commentary, and to the Handbook chapter by Coccossis for a contemporary description of carrying capacity in tourism planning and management. An example might be the Saba Marine Park, located in the Netherlands Antilles and described in the Case Study section. That park avoided a carrying capacity approach by focusing on identifying acceptable conditions, indicators, zones, standards and management. LAC represents, if not a new paradigm of management, then a re-framing of the fundamental question driving management of visitors in nature-dominated settings from that of “how many is too many?” to “what are the appropriate/acceptable conditions?” Focusing on identifying such conditions does not lead, as Coccossis (2004) argues in his treatise advocating use of tourism carrying capacities, to incremental and negative changes due to shifting social values. As Freimund (2001) notes, the move from carrying capacity to LAC was a move from focusing on visitor numbers to emphasizing setting quality. Even establishing a carrying capacity, if that were possible, would still reflect a debate about the relative importance of different goals and the tradeoffs inherent in making decisions; such debates and tradeoffs are a function of the social preferences underlying discourse about protected areas and tourism. LAC forces its users to explicitly consider such preferences, values and beliefs in making these decisions rather than having them hidden under an illusion of “scientific objectivity.” The Difference between Carrying Capacity and Use Limit Policies Limits of Acceptable Change is focused first on identifying and securing agreement on the outcomes of management, then on translating those outcomes in quantified standards of acceptable change and finally on implementing management actions. Once the standards have been defined and implemented, then managers select from an array of tools to avoid standards being violated. One of those tools is a use limit policy. A use limit policy is a formalized statement of the maximum number of visitors that is permitted to enter a protected area during a specified time period. This statement occurs as policy and is enforced by management. These policies may also encompass limits on group size or length of stay and represent tools that are implemented to ensure that standards are not violated. For example, in the Saba Marine Park, group size limits are imposed primarily to achieve goals related to visitor experiences and avoid damage to corrals. Use limits are not the same as carrying capacities, which are often defined as the maximum amount of use that can occur before degradation of resources or experiences occurs (see for example Wahab and Pigram 1997; Lubbe, 2005)2. In the carrying capacity approach, managers initially focus on identifying a capacity and then implement actions to achieve that capacity. A use limit policy differs in that it is designed to maintain, or not violate, accepted standards of change in conditions or outcomes which are identified prior to choosing management actions. Managers implement use limit policies when other techniques and actions are either not maintaining conditions in a desired state or it is foreseen that standards will be violated. Limits of Accepable Change is Not a Method to Identify Carrying Capacity 2 I note here that any level of use leads to some impact, which many would define as degradation, which leads to the ridiculous conclusion that the carrying capacity is zero. Some authors frame LAC as a method to identify an area’s carrying capacity or as an approach to implementation of carrying capacity (e.g., Jensen and Guthrie 2006; Manning 2000; Manning 2002). It is not. It is an alternative formulation of the objective of management and planning which is to provide visitors with opportunities for high quality experiences and to limit the impacts of visitor behavior and tourism development. Unfortunately, this perspective has lead to a number of misunderstandings of the LAC process and similar planning frameworks. LAC was developed because of failures to identify quantitative carrying capacities, principally in U.S. designated Wilderness, Wild and Scenic rivers and backcountry areas of national parks (see an early description of implication for tourism by McCool 1978). While use limits (often called carrying capacities) were established, their efficacy in controlling, mitigating and reducing biophysical and social impacts of tourism use have rarely been evaluated. The reader is referred to the Handbook chapter by Cocossis and the literature in the field for more comprehensive descriptions of carrying capacity. LAC is not a process to establish a tourism carrying capacity. It is a process to help managers think through the complex challenges of integrating two often conflicting and yet frequently overlapping goals: that of providing access to protected areas while at the same time preserving the natural heritage values for which they were established (Cole 1995; McCool and Cole 1998). Managers—working with their constituencies—identify which of these goals is most important, compromise the attainment of one (in order to achieve the other), but in so doing establish how much change (reflected in the compromise) is socially, politically and environmentally acceptable. Decisions about tourism in protected areas—what uses will be allowed where under what conditions—make these trade-offs, whether they are explicated in processes like LAC or they are hidden from purview like carrying capacity. LAC explicitly focuses on what conditions—e.g., natural heritage values, visitor experiences—are acceptable given the desire to have the areas accessible for tourism and visitation. Once those conditions are defined and agreed upon, then tools are applied to ensure those conditions are achieved. In Saba for example, no overall carrying capacities were established. Public Engagement and Limits of Acceptable Change When LAC was in its developmental stages—in the early 1980s prior to publication of the process by Stankey and others (1985)—there was initially little discussion of the role of public engagement. However, when LAC was first applied—and this application began before the Stankey and others (1985) publication—public engagement was an explicit and important component. Engagement of the public in this initial application was deliberately and explicitly constructed using Freidmann’s (1973) theory of transactive planning as the conceptual foundation. The Bob Marshall LAC-based planning process used a task force consisting of managers, scientists, visitors and other constituencies to develop the plan. The task force, although now known by a different name, still holds annual meetings now 28 years after its initial formation. During the planning phase, the task force was engaged in discourse about how each of the nine LAC steps applies to the Bob Marshall Wilderness. Decisions about issues, zoning, indicators, standards, management actions and monitoring were all made in a public setting. The role of the public in LAC processes has been extensively discussed in the literature (e.g., McCool and Ashor1984; Stankey and others 1984; Krumpe and McCool 1998; Stokes 1990; Eagles and others 2002). It is succinctly represented in Figure 2. A better description of the relationship between the technical planning and public engagement processes would be to think of it as a double-helix with each process represented by a strand with connections between (see chapter by Plummer in the Handbook about co-management). Development of the Saba Marine Park plan involved a small group of local residents working with park management. What is Acceptable and What is Preferred? One point of confusion in application of LAC and other similar frameworks is the difference between what is acceptable and what is preferred. The standards that are set through the LAC planning framework are not conditions that are desired, they are conditions, given the goal of access for recreation or tourism, that are tolerated or accepted. Management seeks to avoid violating these standards just as management seeks to avoid violating water quality standards for fecal coliform counts. Most people would prefer that standards describing limits of changes in conditions acceptable would be set at zero. However, given (1) the desire for visitor access and (2) that even small amounts of use result in some change, the limit of acceptable change must be set at some level other than zero. So, protected area organizations seek to identify this limit of change deemed acceptable through the use of science, experiential knowledge, reference to law and policy and public engagement. This is a matter of making tradeoffs between goals that are partly competing and partly overlapping. This brings up the question of acceptable to whom? Since many constituencies reflecting varying interests in protected areas exist, the question of whose values matter arises. Protected area tourism planning is very much a political process, where various constituencies vie, compete and collaborate in constructing, negotiating and pursuing their interests. What conditions are acceptable to each constituency will vary. Ideally, managers would facilitate construction of standards that reflect the values of those constituencies involved in the initial designation of the area. While this process is often termed “balancing” various interests, the term “integrating” or “accommodating” interests would be more descriptive of what actually occurs. In this respect, McCool (2009) observes: Constructing and achieving such agreement [about goals and acceptable conditions] is a fundamental goal of protected area tourism planning ... While there remain many such desired futures in pluralistic societies, partnerships can build a shared vision that is at least acceptable, if not preferred, to a protected area’s constituencies. Such shared vision is a prerequisite to allocation of resources, and indeed, often serves as a motivation itself for securing resources for implementation. CONCLUSION Limits of Acceptable Change is one of the most widely recognized concepts in protected area tourism planning. Used in a wide variety of situations, it was constructed as a response to failures of carrying capacity based approaches to the issue of resolving conflicts between goals of preserving natural conditions and allowing access for visitation and tourism, goals which are commonly held among the globe’s 140,000 or so nationally designated protected areas. LAC has three particularly noteworthy strengths: (1) focusing management on identifying desired conditions first, then identifying appropriate and effective management actions; (2) forcing the value judgments intrinsic to tourism management to be explicitly stated and therefore subject to discourse; and (3) its traditional use of engaging the public in development and implementation. LAC is not designed to provide global or national level frameworks for tourism policy; it was never intended as such. LAC does not provide answers as such; its value is primarily in providing a structure for planners, managers and constituencies to work through the complexities of integrating preservation and access goals. While it has been used in protected area settings, its use as a regional level planning tool for tourism development has been limited. This use should be tested so we can learn more about its utility. LITERATURE CITED Ahn, B.Y., B.K. Lee, and C.S. Shafer. 2002. Operationalizing sustainability in regional tourism planning: an application of the limits of acceptable change framework. Tourism Management 23(1): 1-15. Batta, A. 2000. Tourism and the environment: A quest for sustainability. Indus Publ. New Delhi. 248 p. Brewer, G.D. 1973. Politicians, bureaucrats, and the consultant: a critique of urban problem solving. New York: Basic Books. 291 p. Brunson, M. W. 1998. Beyond wilderness: Broadening the applicability of limits of acceptable change. ? In: McCool, S.F.; Cole, D.N., comps. 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Tourism, development and growth: the challenge of sustainability. Psychology Press. 302 p. Washburne, R.F. 1982. Wilderness recreation carrying capacity: Are numbers necessary? Journal of Forestry. 80: 726–728. Table 1. Brief description of the steps involved in the LAC planning framework (adapted from Stankey and others 1985). LAC Step Brief Description (1) Identify area concerns and issues Citizens and managers meet to identify what special values, features or qualities within the area require attention, what management problems or concerns have to be dealt with, what issues the public considers important in the area's management, and what role the area plays in both a regional and national context. Scientists also become involved because they may often hold information not readily available. The dialogue among scientists, managers and public helps unify agreement about important values and issues. This step encourages a better understanding of the natural resource base, such as the sensitivity of biodiversity to recreation use and tourism development, a general concept of how the resource could be managed, and a focus on principal management issues. LAC is very much an issue-driven process; issues identified here will be addressed later. (2) Define and describe opportunity classes Protected areas contain a diversity of biophysical features—waterfalls, canyons, valleys, beaches, reefs, forests, swamps, wetlands—with some evidence of human occupation and use. These features may vary significantly in terms of the amount and type of development. Likewise, social conditions, such as level and type of use, visitor density, and types of recreation experiences, vary from place to place. The type of management needed may vary throughout the area. Opportunity classes describe subdivisions or zones of the natural resource where different social, resource, or managerial conditions will be maintained (see in this Handbook for a more comprehensive review of zoning). For example, peripheral regions or easily accessible areas of parks may receive higher levels of use and may show evidence of greater levels of impacts. In some protected areas, isolated rest camps exist where the environment has been subject to significant modification. The classes that are developed in step 2 represent a way of defining a range of diverse conditions within the protected area setting. And, while diversity is the objective here, it is important to point out that the conditions found in all cases must be consistent with the objectives laid out in the area's organic legislation or decree. In this step, the number of classes are also defined as well as their general biophysical, social, and managerial conditions (the reader is referred to Stankey and Clark 1979 for a discussion of the recreation opportunity spectrum which serves as the intellectual foundation for this step). (3) Select indicators of resource and social conditions Indicators are specific elements of the re- source or social setting selected to represent (or be "indicative of') the conditions deemed appropriate and acceptable in each opportunity class. Because it is impossible to measure the condition of and change in every biophysical feature or social condition within a protected setting, a few indicators are selected as measures of overall health, just as we relatively frequently monitor our blood pressure rather than more complete tests of blood chemistry. Indicators should be easy to measure quantitatively, relate to the conditions specified by the opportunity classes and reflect changes resulting from visitor use and tourism development. Indicators are an essential part of the LAC framework because their state reflects the overall condition found throughout an opportunity class. It is important to understand that an individual indicator might not adequately depict the condition of a particular area. It is the bundle of indicators that is used to monitor conditions. (4) Inventory resource and social conditions Inventories can be time-consuming and expensive components of planning; indeed they usually are. In the LAC process, the inventory is guided by the indicators selected in step 3. For example, level and type of development, use density, and human-induced impacts on biophysical attributes (e.g., soils, vegetation, coral) may be measured. Other variables, such as location of infrastructure (parking, roads, trails, trailheads, interpretive facilities, accommodation, picnic sites, shipwrecks, and docks) can also be inventoried to develop a better understanding of area constraints and opportunities. And, inventory information will be helpful later when evaluating the consequences of alternatives. Inventory data are mapped so both the condition and location of the indicators are known. The inventory also helps managers establish realistic and attainable standards. By placing the inventory as step 4, planners avoid unnecessary data collection. (5) Specify standards for resource and social conditions In this step, the range of conditions is identified for each indicator considered appropriate and acceptable for each opportunity class. By defining those conditions in measurable terms, the basis for establishing a distinctive and diverse range of settings is established. Standards serve to define the "limits of acceptable change." They are the maximum permissible change in conditions that will be allowed in a specific opportunity class. They are not necessarily objectives to be attained. The inventory data collected in step 4 play an important role in setting standards. The standards defining the range of acceptable conditions in each opportunity class should be realistic and attainable; they should not mimic existing (unacceptable) conditions. (6) Identify alternative opportunity class allocations Most protected area settings could be managed in several different ways. Protected areas often differ significantly in the amount of development, human density (both residents and visitors), and recreational opportunities available. In this step, we begin to identify some different types of alternatives. Using information from step 1 (area issues and concerns) and step 4 (inventory of existing conditions ), managers and citizens can begin to jointly explore how well different opportunity class allocations address the various contending interests, concerns, and values. (7) Identify management actions for each alternative The alternative allocations proposed in step 6 are only the first step in the process of developing a preferred alternative. In addition to the kinds of conditions that would be achieved, both managers and citizens need to know what management actions will be required to achieve the desired conditions. In a sense, step 7 requires an analysis of the costs, broadly defined, that will be imposed by each alternative. For example, many people may find attractive the alternative to protect a specific area from any development, and restore to pristine condition any impacts that might exist. However, this alternative might require such a huge commitment of funds for acquisition and enforcement that the alternative might not seem as attractive. (8) Evaluation and selection of a preferred alternative With the various costs and benefits of the several alternatives before them, managers and citizens can proceed to the evaluation stage, and can select a preferred alternative. Evaluation must take into consideration many factors, but examples would include the responsiveness of each alternative to the issues identified in step 1, management requirements from step 7, and public preferences. It is important that the factors figuring into the evaluation process and their relative weight be made explicit and available for public review. (9) Implement actions and monitor conditions With an alternative finally selected, and articulated as policy by decision-makers, the necessary management actions are put into effect and a monitoring program instituted. Often, an implementation plan, detailing actions, costs, timetable, and responsibilities, will be needed to ensure timely implementation. The monitoring program focuses on the indicators selected in step 3, and compares their condition with those identified in the standards. This information can be used to evaluate the success of actions. If conditions are not improving, the intensity of the management effort might need to be increased or new actions implemented. Case Study: Saba Marine Park The park is likely typical of many protected areas in the world: it is small, not particularly wellresourced and intimately connected with the nearby community. At the time of the case study it employed three people and maintained a small visitor center. Divers were required to register and pay a dive fee. SCUBA diving can lead to unacceptable impacts to coral and reefs, although the relationship between diving intensity and coral damage is not particularly deterministic. Poor buoyancy control, dive supervision and touching can lead to breakage and other damage of coral. In addition, visitor use densities and diver behavior at some moorage points can result in lower quality visitor experiences. In the late 1990s, therefore, the Saba Conservation Foundation embarked on a planning process to protect coral and provide for high quality visitor experiences using Limits of Acceptable Change as the framework for planning (see Schultz and others 1999 for the actual plan document). The planning process involved a small group of Saba residents and the park manager working with a consultant, who resided on the island over a period of four months. The consultant facilitated the group in working through the nine steps of the LAC planning framework in this period. Planning proceeded based on the following propositions developed during the first step of the LAC:  The marine environment forms the basis for all other values and benefits associated with the Saba Marine Park and its management.  Recreational activities and fishing in the Park are dependent on maintenance of pristine conditions, yet provide substantial monetary and social benefits to participants, the local community and the Park administration.  The Saba Marine Park and its management organization exist to protect the values of the coral reef environment through active management of recreationists and provision of learning opportunities for the local community.  The Saba Marine Park exists within a larger social and environmental context that requires active community involvement and understanding. The LAC identified four prescriptive management zones displaying a continuum of biophysical, social and managerial conditions. Following this, the process identified several indicators. These indicators included turbidity, salinity, temperature and pollutants to measure water quality, sedimentation, diversity and abundance of fish stock, the amount of broken and abraded branching corals near mooring anchors, number of dive boats anchored at the same mooring point simultaneously, and diving party group size. The process included a monitoring plan for each of the indicators. Explicit standards could not be developed for several indicators because of the lack of available and credible scientific information. However, two examples of standards for the SMP are shown here to exemplify how they can be used: For the amount of broken and abraded coral: Zone 1: The proportion of damaged (broken and abraded) branching corals in high use areas will not exceed 150% of the proportion of damaged (broken and abraded) coral colonies in low use areas at the same site. Zones 2 - 4: The proportion of damaged (broken and abraded) branching corals in high use areas will not exceed 200% of the proportion of damaged (broken and abraded) coral colonies in low use areas at the same site. For the number of dive boats at a mooring buoy at once: Zone 1: 90% of the time only one dive boat will be present at each site. Zones 2 - 4: 50% of the time only one dive boat will be present at each site. The plan then identifies a series of actions accompanied by a rationale. For example: Action: The SMP will organize and schedule regular meetings with all the dive operators. These meetings will serve as a forum for addressing current issues and discussing special problems. The operators will also be able to provide feedback to Park management on areas that may need increased monitoring. Rationale: These actions are intended to modify the character of use by controlling where and when use occurs, as well as visitor behavior.