Estela Inés Farías-Torbidoni

Managing overcrowding without excluding
Lessons from two decades of monitoring public use in protected areas

Managing overcrowding without excluding: Lessons from two decades of monitoring public use in protected areas

She is associate professor at the Institut Nacional d’Educació Física de Catalunya (INEFC), University of Lleida, Spain, where she currently serves as Deputy Director for Research. She holds a PhD in Physical Activity and Sport Sciences and has more than two decades of experience in research and applied work on visitor monitoring and public use management in protected and peri-urban natural areas.

Her work focuses on recreational use, visitor behaviour, carrying capacity, overcrowding and the environmental and social impacts of outdoor recreation and nature-based tourism, including the management of recreational activities in national, natural and peri-urban parks in Europe and Latin America. She has coordinated and contributed to numerous national and European projects and has extensive experience in applied research and knowledge transfer with environmental authorities and park management bodies.

She has published extensively in international journals and regularly collaborates with park managers and policy makers, supporting the development of adaptive and inclusive approaches to visitor management in protected areas.