Country park usage and visitor impacts in Hong Kong

The country parks in Hong Kong, covering 40% of its land areas, were designated in the 1970s to conserve the countryside against unacceptable incursions and to cater for rising outdoor recreation demands. The conservation strategy aims at attracting most visitors to well-defined peripheral high-intensity recreation zones to limit their impacts on the parks themselves. Park usage is spatially and temporally uneven, with considerable concentration in certain popular barbecue/picnic sites and footpaths where soil and vegetation damage is common. Frequent hill fires and widely scattered litter, detracting from the amenity value of the parks, are serious management problems. Some solutions to these pressing and aggravating problems are suggested. Copyright © 1987 Science and Technology Letters, in association with IUCN's Commission on National Parks and Protected Areas.