Public Use Plan as a Management Tool for Units of Conservation: Case Study of the São Joaquim National Park/Santa Catarina, Brazil

Abstract

The São Joaquim National Park (PNSJ) covers an area of 49,800 hectares, created with the objective of preserving forests typical of the Atlantic Forest biome. The PNSJ has environmental characteristics of mountain - coast transition that give this Unit of Conservation (UC) unique and diversified landscapes, privileging this UC for the development of Public Use (PU). This article reports the process and method adopted in the preparation of the PNSJ Public Use Plan (PUP), a plan that constitutes an important tool for the management and ordering of the PU of a UC. In this work, the managers adopted a participant observation posture, integrating and interacting with the PU Technical Chamber, created within the scope of the park’s Council with the purpose of discussing the PU issues. As a result, management has an objective and feasible PUP, in which priority areas have been defined for ordering visitors in the coming years, meeting the growing demand for the expansion and diversification of opportunities to be offered. It is also added that the participatory elaboration of the PUP gave legitimacy to the work and resulted in a document that reflects, not only the point of view of management, but of several local actors. In this way, a network of employees was established who, at the end of the process, also committed themselves to further actions related to the implementation of the priority visitation areas. This work reports the process of elaboration of the PUP, describing the method adopted by the management of the PNSJ and the path taken by the members of the CTUP until the elaboration of the final document; it is a record of a process that could contribute to the carrying out of similar initiatives in other UCs.