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Fushan Botanical Garden distinguishes itself from typical botanical gardens by how its daily admission limit was determined. Although daily admission limit was set at 500 during weekdays and 600 during holidays, the daily admission limit is mainly determined during the park staff group meeting. Until now no relevant research has been done to determine the optimal number of daily tourists or the effectiveness of control measures. Previous research conducted in the Fushan Botanical Garden was focused mainly on animal physiological studies and no research had been conducted to assess the impact of visitor recreational activities on wildlife.
The purpose of this study was to observe species selected from interviews with experts as tourists interference indicator, with a focus on common interference wildlife behavior tourists in Fushan Botanical Garden. To understand tourists encounter distribution plots, field test plots were set to be region where indicator species appeared with higher frequency through local observation. This study simulated the number of tourists in the park and simulated how tourist behavior affected indicator species. The results of this study were used as future park operation and management reference as well as recommendations for further studies.
The results of this study showed that young visitors often shout, chase, and attempt to approach animals, and when adults visitors met Formosan muntjacs also show cry out in alarm behaviors, when the Formosan muntjacs or Formosan macaques meet 5visitors, they will show level 2 or level 3 recreation interference behavior (avoidance, flee). However, no Formosan macaques express friendly behavior (such as begging food) to visitors was observed in the Fushan Botanical Garden, which is significantly different from the behavior observed in Formosan macaques from previous studies.
According to the field experiment main finding are as below: 1.High number of tourist (group of 20 person) affected the Formosan muntjacs’ vigilance to increase with the distance of the tourists, therefore alert time of Formosan muntjacs increased; 2. Formosan muntjacs often show mild interference behavior (ex: slow fled),when the tourists is more less;3.Tthe results show the tourists recreation interference level (mild interference, severe interference) did not directly affect the behavioral activities of the Formosan muntjacs; 4. For tourist group of 5 people, different types of trails in the park (soil, gravel trail) recreation behavior affected the alert and flee distance of Formosan muntjacs.
Therefore, this study recommended the park to establish effective research measurement indicators for wildlife recreation impact and small group (less than 5 people) educational tours to allow visitors to observe wild Formosan muntjacs and Formosan macaques, to help visitors further understand the importance of wildlife conservation, and to teach them how to coexist with nature.
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