Evaluating the Impact of Tourism in England Essay -- UK, Britain

Tourist Count During our visit to Ashridge Estate, we carried a tourist count on two honey pot locations known as Bridgewater Monument and Ivinghoe Beacon. 1 out of the 4 groups that visited Ashridge carried out the tourist count as we did not want to hassle the tourists. A member from the group stood at an area in both locations and took a count of the amount of teenagers, adults, OAP’s, family groups and children there were. The information was then tallied onto a table. From this, we will compare the results collected to previous years (2004-2005). The comparison will be useful as it will allow us to analyse the information to see whether there is a correlation between the number of tourism and the hypothesis. If the number of tourists has decreased, then good; less damage done to the wildlife and environment. However, if the number of tourists increased, it may also suggest that the negative impacts have likewise increased. Some of the negative impacts may be footpath erosion; more tourists use the footpath resulting in more damage, Littering; animals may eat the litter which could harm them and also the air/noise pollution created via tourist transportation; affects the air quality and environment of the local wildlife. As we took the tourist count, we categorized the tourists into age groups. The reason for this was to see which age group was more likely to have a negative impact in Ashridge. Children and teenagers for example tend to be more energetic in comparison to OAP’s, doing more active activities that could harm the local wildlife and environment e.g. football; sports. Whilst OAP’s are more passive and less energetic doing activities that are less likely to harm the wildlife and environment e.g. bird watching. So... ...to see whether they were affected by tourism. On the sketch we took detailed annotations to help us visualize the problems we saw such as footpath erosion, debris materials scattered, deep rutted soil and other negative impacts. From this we could see the difference in both footpaths ((un)managed) to see which one was more affected by tourism. The problem with the field sketches was that whilst we were drawing, it was really windy which subsequently distracted us, so there may have been some mistakes. Also, some of the pupils from the groups found it difficult to draw what they saw, so the sketches may also not have been accurate and reliable. We could improve our drawings by taking a camera to capture accurate photos that will give us reliable results. From the pictures we would be able to recall the features of the footpaths we saw in order to help our fieldwork.