**3.3 How many visitors are enough?**

The calculation of the carrying capacity of DNP for ecotourism development has been considered as a crucial prerequisite for respecting core prescriptions of sustainability

(Poirazidis et al., 2004). In contrast to core zones which include black vulture nests, the buffer zone presents an overall higher diversity of habitats and taxa (Grill & Cleary, 2003; Kati & Sekercioglu, 2006; Kati et al., 2004; Schindler et al., 2008). DNP provides a case study for the challenges presented to protected area managers, which are result of delineation of boundaries (Fall, 2002). Managers have to maintain these boundaries that protect biodiversity and, at the same time, they have to strive to diminish the negative effects that are recognized as consequences of these same boundaries (Knight & Landres, 1998). Managers need to tightly control nature within park borders in order to maintain desired conditions (Wood, 2000). However, strict territorial control frequently leads to the production of a static, ahistorical space (Roth, 2008). This is exemplified in Dadia by the 'eviction' of fire from DNP. Although fire is a feature which has shaped Mediterranean ecosystems, both society and nature in Dadia cannot be reproduced unless fire is

A static, ahistorical nature has to be matched against a society that shares analogous properties. This is exemplified in the measures proposed by protected area managers where activities such as grazing and agriculture are referred to as 'traditional'. One way of reading this adjective is that it addresses small-scale activities, which should be taken in contradistinction to large-scale mechanized agriculture or stock breeding. However, another way of conceptualizing the need of restoring 'traditional' activities is their supposed compatibility with protected area governance, since 'traditional' might denote a state of local community that can be integrated in the park. In this direction, analysis of the local press (Hovardas & Korfiatis, 2008) and of the textual material disseminated in the Information Center of Dadia (Stamou et al., 2009) has shown that production processes are hushed up, which obscures the competition between different land uses and social actors in the area. Quite interestingly, this eventuates in sealing off the production process that has resulted in the ecotourism product offered to visitors (Hovardas & Korfiatis, 2008). Such discursive practices that both produce and limit meaning foster the belief of an independent nature which is to be encountered in the Bird Observatory Post or while walking along trails

Rather than adopting a dualistic approach to address the relationship between society and nature, which opposes society to nature, or a monistic approach, which collapses the natural realm into the social or vice versa, we subscribe to a dialectical position. Our assumption is that society and nature are simultaneously shaping and being shaped by each other, while each maintains a measure of autonomy (Evanoff, 2005). In this dialectical perspective human societies are seen in relational terms as both constituting and being constituted by the environments they inhabit, which has important ontological and epistemological implications. 'Forests' do really exist and are to be found 'out there' independently of our existence and of our definitions (ontological assumption). However, there is no cognitive appropriation of any 'forest', which could provide an objective, socially and culturally unmediated access to some type of essence of this notion (Robbins, 2004). Namely, the cognitive appropriation of 'forests' is always socially and culturally embedded

The calculation of the carrying capacity of DNP for ecotourism development has been considered as a crucial prerequisite for respecting core prescriptions of sustainability

suppressed.

in the forest (Stamou et al., 2009).

(epistemological assumption).

**3.3 How many visitors are enough?** 

(Svoronou, 2000). Most definitions of carrying capacity of destinations for tourism development involve two components: one relating to environmental impacts (natural carrying capacity) and a second one relating to the quality of the recreational experience (social carrying capacity) (Lawson et al., 2003; Seidl & Tisdell, 1999). The notion of carrying capacity implies a threshold of visitor numbers that corresponds to the maximum level of use that a destination can accommodate without unacceptable alteration in environmental aspects or in the quality of visitor experience (Sæþórsdóttir, 2010).

Despite the fact that carrying capacity indicators are considered as a crucial tool for determining levels of use and monitoring tourism development, there are many reservations expressed about the possibility of singling out consistent thresholds and clear benchmarks for quantifying carrying capacity (Fleishman & Feitelson, 2009; Manning et al., 2002). A number of studies attempted to incorporate stochastic and fuzzy decision rules in the estimation of carrying capacity to account for variability and uncertainty in observed indicators (Prato, 2001, 2009). Further, there can be substantial divergence between the natural carrying capacity and the social carrying capacity estimated for the same destination (Zacarias et al., 2011). Moreover, positive indicators (e.g., user satisfaction) might remain over minimum acceptable levels, while negative indicators (e.g., soil erosion from trails) are surpassing maximum acceptable rates. Additional difficulties in determining carrying capacity include uncorrelated crowding perceptions with actual visitor numbers and differences among various visitor groups in tolerating crowding (Leujak & Ormond, 2007). A final remark concerning the contribution carrying capacity in adaptive management relates to its reactive nature (Fleishman & Feitelson, 2009; Lawson et al., 2003): remediary action is initiated only after standards of quality have been violated or are close to be violated.

A question that arises at this point is how carrying capacity can still be regarded as an important management tool in the light of all these reservations concerning its estimation. Handling risk perception in the case of carrying capacities needed desperately for guaranteeing sustainable tourism development in Dadia would necessitate to rename uncertainty into a number of visitors or a range of acceptable natural and social conditions. However, the field of risk perception addresses any objective account of carrying capacities as naïve and maintains that thresholds and benchmarks are not simply derived by scientific measurements of natural attributes but result from motivations and interests of various competing stakeholders which are being projected to nature (Bradley & Morss, 2002). This critical reading recognizes the need of adaptive management but rejects any sharp distinction of 'brute' facts from values (Giessen et al., 2009; Ruppert-Winkel & Winkel, 2011; Warren, 2007). However, there is a possibility that the adoption of this critical perspective might end up in an absolute and unproductive relativism, which would ultimately question the background assumptions of adaptive management. Below we will see how the mixedmotive perspective of local residents in Dadia avoids such a relativistic outcome and how locals attempt to negotiate ecotourism development in the region.
