A protected area is identified as:

"An area of land and/or sea especially dedicated to the protection and maintenance of biological diversity, and of natural and associated cultural resources, and managed through legal or other effective means."
(IUCN)

In many countries tourism plays a major role in the establishment of protected areas and an area's tourism potential is an important factor in the selection process. No matter what sort of protection an area enjoys, the danger that tourism will harm the natural and aesthetic value of the area is always present.

Tourism activity in a national park or any other protected area can serve as a self-financing mechanism and therefore as a tool of conservation. This will, however, only be possible if the level, type and management of tourism are appropriate and, in particular, the "carrying capacity" of the area is respected.

 

An analysis of tourism to UNESCO's 126 World Heritage sites listed as primarily natural shows that the overall problem faced by these critical areas is distribution, and not overvisitation. In general, tourists tend to visit places well served with services and infrastructure, and already well marketed. This leads to the concentration of the benefits and costs of tourism to some areas. Of the 63 million annual visitors recorded in all UNESCO natural heritage sites in recent years, 68% go to the 10 most visited parks in the US, Canada and Australia. The US Great Smoky Mountains park is the leader, with over 9.5 million per year. If we add New Zealand, 84% of all visitors come to areas located in these four countries, which offer 24% of all natural World Heritage sites. In contrast, the 30 sites located in Africa receive only an average of 62 visitors per day, or 22,700 per year. Most public and private protected areas globally, given appropriate management structures, can receive more visitors than they currently do. (Source: Human Use of World Heritage Natural Sites, IUCN, 1998)

Categories of Protected Areas

IUCN has made a distinction in the following six categories of protected areas:

1. a. Strict Nature Reserve: protected area managed mainly for science
   b. Wilderness Area: protected area managed mainly for wilderness protection
   
   
2. National Park: protected area managed mainly for ecosystem protection and recreation
   
   
3. Natural Monument: protected area managed mainly for conservation of specific natural features
   
   
4. Habitat/Species Management Area: protected area managed mainly for conservation through management intervention
   
   
5. Protected Landscape/Seascape: protected area managed mainly for landscape/seascape conservation and recreation
   
   
6. Managed Resource Protected Area: protected area managed mainly for the sustainable use of natural ecosystems

Source: (IUCN)                

Several organizations, including UNEP, focus on identifying areas that should be protected.

• UNEP-World Conservation Monitoring Centre locates and compiles information on protected areas. The relevance of WCMC for tourism is that it provides information services on the conservation and sustainable use of species and ecosystems and on the location and accessibility of scenic areas.
  
  
• UNEP.org has compiled several other organization maps into one comprehensive map of protected areas. UNEP.org is managed by UNEP-Grid Arendal.
  
  
• The UNESCO World Heritage Centre and Man and Biosphere Reserves Programme have identified areas that are in high demand for protection respectively as
  • World Heritage Sites (natural sites and cultural sites)
  • Man and Biosphere Reserves.
    
    
• The IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas has identified the following four theme areas:
  • Biosphere Reserves
  • Marine Protected Areas
  • Mountain Protected Areas
  • World Heritage
    
    
• WWF has attempted to identify the areas, which it calls ecoregions, that best represent global biodiversity and deserve conservation attention.
  
  
• Conservation International (CI) is a field-based, nonprofit organization that protects the Earth's biologically richest areas and helps the people who live there improve their quality of life. It has created a list of Hotspots.