Linking Socio-Scientific Landscape Research with the Ecosystem Services Approach to Analyze Conflicts About Protected Area Management—The Case of the Bavarian Forest National Park

Landscape changes as a result of large-scale windthrows have sparked long-lasting conflicts about protected area management in Bavarian Forest National Park, Germany. We assess tourists, locals, and nature conservation professionals’ attitudes to these landscape changes. Methodologically we look at social media, local newspapers and the National Parks press releases and combine these findings with existing results from socio-scientific landscape research that we transfer to the field of ecosystem service assessments. We find that locals rate the value of landscape based on familiarity, while for tourists the connectivity to touristic landscape stereotypes is important. Nature conservation professionals assess the value of landscape based on biodiversity and especially value the appearance of rare species. As all groups use different measures to assess the value of a landscape, their evaluations of the changes to the national parks landscape differ clearly. We argue that when the value of cultural ecosystem services is assessed, the social context needs to be specified in order to improve the accuracy of any cultural ecosystem services assessment.