Visitor survey and counting in the Biosphere Reserve Southeast-Rügen
This year, through an electronic system and regular surveys to visitors, the park rangers have started to collect data to better understadn the visitors flows in the Zicker Berge Nature Reserve.
In July 2018, the Biosphere Reserve Southeast-Rügen began implementing surveys and installing electronic counting systems to analyse the visitor numbers in the Zicker Berge Nature Reserve. The goal is to better understand visitor flows in the area and based on this to promote the development of a sustainable tourism flow management in the nature reserve.
The guest surveys are conducted by the Biosphere Reserve Rangers once or twice a week and will continue until mid-October this year. In the coming year, the manual survey will be carried out from March until October. During the entire survey period, the automated counting systems are estimating the visitor numbers in the Zicker Berge nature reserve.
Electronic sensor for automatic counting of tourist flows - Picture by South-east Ruegen UNESCO Biosphere Reserve
To ensure that a sustainable tourism flow management in the nature reserve addresses the local issues properly, the local population, tourism businesses and the tourism association are being invited to participate in discussion rounds and workshops to jointly develop activities, actions and campaigns that promote a sustainable tourism in the Zicker Berge nature reserve.
Ranger D. Witt interviewing a tourist - Picture by South-east Ruegen UNESCO Biosphere Reserve
The visitor monitoring is part of the Interreg project "CEETO - Central European Ecotourism: Tools for Nature Protection". CEETO is being developed with 11 partners from 6 European countries to examine methods of attracting visitors to protected areas and develop appropriate relief strategies for high traffic areas.
