The human-nature relationship is entering a new period of intense and accelerating changes at local, regional, and global scales. To sustain and improve human well-being without impairing the ecosystems on which it depends, it is needed to holistically view and manage the human society and the natural environment as a coupled system. Tourism is one of the world's largest and fastest growing industry and has great potential to contribute to the United Nation's Millennium Development Goals, especially on enhancing global biodiversity conservation and fighting poverty. Although it has been widely practiced in protected areas in less developed countries, few have been successful in balancing the needs of both conservation and development and achieve sustainability in the long run. To harness the great potential of tourism for sustainability, there is an urgent need for long-term research of tourism development in protected areas that takes a holistic perspective and integrates both the socioeconomic and ecological dimensions of this globally emergent phenomenon. In this dissertation I studied the evolution of tourism in Wolong Nature Reserve, a flagship reserve in China, across three decades. I investigated both the patterns and drivers of tourism development and also its socioeconomic and ecological consequences. The Tourism Area Life Cycle model was employed to classify and interpret the dynamic drivers and changes associated with tourism through its different development stages. Through a longitudinal analysis on the income sources of over 200 local households, I showed that the local community benefited economically from tourism in various direct and indirect ways. However, most households who benefited more from tourism are those used to possess more livelihood assets than the others; thus the poorer was marginalized during tourism development. To assess the ecological impacts of tourism development, I used a novel habitat-based approach to assess giant panda population capacity and viability to investigate how tourism, as an emerging land use type, affects panda habitat use and its consequences at population level. I found that past human disturbance has depleted more than half of the Reserve's capacity for giant pandas. Although recent forest restoration is likely to help provide more habitat for panda population recovery, over 60% of the potential gain in panda population capacity could be lost if the current expansion of tourism, especially through the use of the multiple trails traversing the Reserve, continues in the future. This interdisciplinary study provided a solid example of how the complexity of coupled human and natural system can be studied using a mixed quantitative and qualitative methods. It makes substantial contributions to the conservation of giant pandas as tourism has become a major threat to their long-term survival in the remaining habitats. It also provides useful tools and essential information for a better management of tourism in protected areas. The findings from this dissertation also have broad implications for sustainable rural development, tourism development, wild land management, and biodiversity conservation.
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