The Online Benefit Monitor
www.benefit-monitor.eu

Values and benefits of protected areas

Depending on the type of protected areas, their location and specific natural background, they:

• are important tools for the conservation of biodiversity (genetic, species, ecosystem including agrobiodiversity);
• offer many environmental services, e.g. protected areas provide clear water and fresh air, avoid land degradation and extenuate weather events such as floods or droughts;
• can mitigate impacts and other effects related to climate change, e.g. as a buffer for nature, as safe havens that native species need to retain their natural resilience, as “refugia” (places) where favourable habitat will persist or develop as the climate changes;
• provide quietness & tranqillity

The main benefits of protected areas are that they provide a basis for:

• Recreation
• Health and well-being, quality of lifeQuality of life
• Environmental education
• Sustainable tourism and transport
• Sustainable landuse (agriculture, forestry, fishery, hunting)
• Sustainable development of rural areas
• Regional and national identity (preserving traditions & social cohesion, dialects)
• Regional marketing
• Integrated regional development (including economic impacts)
• Employment (including economic impacts)

Main target groups for communicating values and benefits of protected areas:

• Visitors
• Politicians
• Inhabitants
• Businesses
• Scientists
• others

For further information, please read the outcomes of the Communicating values and benefits Workshop held in April 2009 at the international Academy for Nature Conservation on the island of Vilm, Germany.

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) created a tool for protected area staff and managers enabling them to assess the status quo of their individual protected area. At the same time it is possible to make the assessment available for a database on the global level. It is called Protected Area Benefits Assessment Tool (PA-BAT). The tool aims to help collate information on the full range of current and potential benefits of the protected areas.

Nonetheless, according to park administrations within the Parks & Benefits project the PA-BAT is considered to be too complicated to be used on a regular basis. Therefore, the Benefit Monitor has been developed being a practical observation tool which facilitates to communicate the significance and benefits of protected areas in tourism to stakeholder groups and provides an useful inventory for park managements. It is a simply structured collection of key data limited to a minimum set of indicators.

For more information on the Benefit Monitor, please also see the action plan of Charter parks "Generating socio-economic benefits by a sustainable management of protected areas for the benefit of their regions" as well as the "Guide to sustainable tourism in protected areas".

For the purpose of the Benefit Monitor a standard visitor questionnaire has been developed in the Parks & Benefits project. The results generated from visitor enquiries carried out  were analyzed and documented in separate reports for individual protected areas as "Reports on visitor surveys 2011“.

Such reports are available for:

• Biosphere Reserve Southeast-Ruegen
• Matsalu National Park
• Kemeri NationalPark (Latvian version)
  
• Zemaitija National Park
• Kurtuvenai Regional Park

Further analyses are available for:

• Mueritz National Park
• Dovrefjell National Park