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Student Publications
Author: Mark Esposito
Title: The World Heritage and Cultural
Landscapes
Area: Cultural Tourism
Country :
Profile:
Program:
Available for Download:
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Every year, like it has happened for
the past ten years since the
introduction of the
cultural landscape categories,
thirty cultural landscapes have been
inscribed on the World
Heritage List. These cover designed
landscapes such as the gardens of
Villa dEste (Italy),
relict landscapes such as Blaenavon
(United Kingdom), human
landscapes such as Uluru-
Kata Tjuta (Australia) and Tongariro
(New Zealand)1, and continuing
landscapes which
cover the greatest number of
inscribed landscapes, especially
those involved with
agriculture, viticulture, forestry,
pastoralism and their associated
settlements.
The main global reference for the
whole concept of Heritage and World
Heritage is only
duly representative of the massive
workflow that UNESCO2 and the
diverse secretariats
working constantly for the
preservation of Heritage is doing.
It would be hard to figure out a
world without the enormous
contributions that UNESCO
is bringing to the realty of
preservation, restoration and
conservation of our planets
legacies, through the reinforcements
of those procedures and guidelines
which lead to
inscription every year.
It is well recognized that many
previously inscribed sites are also
cultural landscapes.
The primary management
responsibility is to conserve and
protect the "outstanding
universal values" for which the
landscape was inscribed. Management
involves all the
processes of preparing a plan or
guiding document, implementing the
actions lay out in
the plan, tackle the unforeseen
events, monitoring the impact of
management on
conserving the values and reviewing
the original management actions so
as to better
conserve the values.
Conservation means all the processes
of looking after a place so as to
retain its cultural
significance3 which is
embodied in the place itself, its
fabric, setting, use, associations,
meanings, records, related places
and objects.
Values are expressed in those things
from the past and from nature that
we want to
conserve and protect. Values are
generic, or specific. They can
relate to a very peculiar
ethnicity or simply have under
graded into a much more global and
universal entity, but no
mater which specific set of ideas we
want to apply, values are the
traditional core of
conservation4� values
attached to an object, building,
place or landscape because it holds
meaning for a social group due to
its age, beauty, craftsmanship or
association with
significant persons or events, or
otherwise contribute to processes of
cultural affiliation.
1 World Heritage, N. 36 publication
of the UNESCO, Paris 2004, San
Marcos Ediciones.
2 UNESCO (United Nations Educational
Scientific Cultural Organization)
www.unesco.org
3 Convention concerning the
Protection of the World Cultural and
Natural Heritage, adopted by
UNESCO
in 1972.
4 See above reference
2
Any place will have a range of
values � these may be assessed
against criteria in order to
determine whether the values are
important enough for the place to be
listed for heritage
protection. For World Heritage
listing, values must be considered
to be of ,,outstanding
Universal value in accordance
with the six cultural and four
natural heritage criteria of
the World Heritage Convention.
Introductory considerations
The key management objective is to
sustain these landscapes while
allowing both
continuing use to local communities
who are dependent on them for a
livelihood, and
natural ecosystems to continue to
develop.
In other terms of comprehension, the
subtle balance of sustainability and
conservation,
are often projected onto a much more
delicate management of the resources
and a
"superpartes" organization, such as
UNESCO, plays this vital role of
monitoring the
process and assess the necessities
in place, in order to become
effective when required.
In order to take this conversation
to a much more suitable level, we
want to phrase some
questions and assign to each of
them, a steeping stone role, towards
the better cohesion of
concepts and practices, which this
paper is aimed to.
What are the limits of acceptable
change in these landscapes? And how
can that change
be managed5?
A widely understood management
planning process with popular
support is the starting
point. A management plan should
detail the outstanding universal
values as well as other
values in the inscribed landscape
and the policies chosen to conserve
these values. The
plan should also contain a framework
for defining management priorities,
developing
management actions, implementation
and monitoring of their impact.
All policies must relate to the
statement of significance for the
heritage values exhibited
in the designated cultural
landscape. These values will also
have been reinforced in the
management vision and site
objectives.
By using a values-based management
rather than an issues-based
management approach,
we also commit our research to a
much more complying vision of the
wholesome, which
is beneficial to the definition of
cultural landscape and its
implication with the Heritage
List. The policies need to address
the components of the landscape
which have
outstanding universal value such as:
5 "Tell me about World Heritage",
Paris 2002, Unesco Publishing.
3
� natural structure � the
dramatically visual landscape whose
beauty is the tourist
attraction
� the relationship between the
ongoing culture of the local people
and the landscape
� viable and sustainable use of
the resources � for another 2000
years.
All policies revolve around
assessing vulnerability in the
context of limits of acceptable
change. In other words, we could ask
this question to enlighten a viable
path of
solvability:
How much of the twenty-first
century should be permitted to
intrude in these landscapes
of outstanding universal
significance before their values are
compromised and changed
in meaning6?
The values are derived from
interaction of peoples with nature
in a specific place or
ecosystem.
Can this interaction remain
authentic while using modern
techniques7?
For World Heritage cultural
landscapes it is the integrity of
the landscape that is
paramount � that is, the extent to
which the layered historical
evidence, meanings and
relationships between elements
remains intact and can be
interpreted or deciphered in the
landscape. As the expert meeting on
Desert Landscapes and Oasis Systems
in the Arab
Region (UNESCO report from Egypt,
September 2001) confirmed, it is the
integrity of
the relationship of culture with
nature that matters, not the
integrity of nature or culture
alone.
However, some issues stand out as
particularly important in managing
cultural landscapes
and require specific policies for
retention of heritage values. The
following eight issues
recur in the management of many
World Heritage landscapes, though
they vary in detail
and application depending on the
category of cultural landscape and
the social and
economic environment of the place
and they have been a precious tools
of speculative
studies and researches, that has
enabled UNESCO to approach with a
great sense of
conformity and uniformity the
significant sites, the embedded
cultures and the much
more strategic thinking of
conservation, interpreted as a
preventive tool for the future
generations and for the heritage of
anthropological values, which
instill in every days
life, the principle of humanity.
6 See reference above
7 See reference above
4
1. Lack of awareness of and
general education about World
Heritage values in
cultural landscapes and their
relationship to society.8
This can be addressed through mass
media promotion, visitor centers at
the properties
with exhibitions and displays or
guided tours, brochures and
booklets, films and videos.
Popular community support for the
conservation of the heritage values
of a place often
translates into political support
when the values are threatened, for
example by pressure
for development or lack of resources
for maintenance. The use of the
World Heritage
logo as an awareness- raising device
and marketing brand is also to be
encouraged in
promoting the inscribed cultural
landscapes. Beside this, awareness
is a precious
instrument of educational
empowerment and identity recognition
and pride, for the local
population who find in the
"inherited value" a sustainable
realm of prosperity and
cultural symbiosis. In many
examples, it has been such a major
motivator for the
preservation of values and cultural
scenarios, which had been threatened
by the
globalization process.
2. Need for site-specific
training for those working in World
Heritage cultural
landscapes to ensure that all the
values of a place are managed
Sensitively.
A range of skills is needed for
managing cultural landscapes. Some
generic management
and planning skills are required in
all areas of site management, such
as organizational
and financial skills. Specialist
skills will be required depending on
the natural, cultural
and social features of the cultural
landscape. For some cultural
landscapes, maintaining
local cultural knowledge will be
paramount.
This has represented a quite hard
challenge for those specialists who
have remotely tried
to investigate the area and propose
sustainable models of responsible
management,
throughout the recruitment of
key-figures and personalities, who
could have helped the
expertise requirements hunt.
However, traditional social settings
and cultures that have been
dissolved cannot be
successfully recreated, only similar
systems can be developed anew.
The challenge then is to create new
and alternative structures that
allow revitalization
rather than conserving traditions in
museums or turning the landscape
into a fossilized
outdoor museum.
Revitalization of local knowledge
may occur when older knowledge is
rediscovered and
still existing forms of local
knowledge are re-evaluated. This was
highlighted in the
restoration program for the Kasubi
Tombs in Uganda, in sustainable
development
policies for the Swedish archipelago
fishing industry, and in indigenous
knowledge of
fire in vegetation management at
Uluru in central Australia.
8 The 8 criteria are supported and
extracted by the following document:
UNESCO, 1998, Proclamation of
Masterpieces of the Oral and
Intangible Heritage of Humanity.
5
3. Using farming and forestry
policies to define what changes can
be permitted
in the landscape while still
maintaining their outstanding
universal values,
and what techniques can be used
to ensure this.
Many cultural landscapes are the
result of productive use of the
land, and support farming
communities.
The products of current technologies
� quick-growing forest plantations,
new crops with
a variety of visual effects as well
as biodiversity impacts, new
materials and forms such
as plastic sheeting and wind farms �
will have an impact on our cultural
landscapes.
Given that cultural landscapes in
the past have reflected the cultures
of different periods
(and local adaptations to prevailing
techniques), we should permit change
to continue in
the category of evolving cultural
landscapes.
Following up this conceptualization,
we would like to ask ourselves a
question.
But what are the limits of
acceptable change in land-use and
agricultural production in
such landscapes?
The answer and challenge is to
manage more efficient, intensive
production that increases
the prosperity of the farming
communities so that the cultural
heritage values in the
landscape are not lost. If the
material evidence of successive
layers of landscape use
remains intact, we need to decide
what degree of interference or
stitching in of new uses
is permissible.
This is a major global issue in
cultural landscape maintenance and
the answer depends
largely on local conditions, where
some trial and error may be
acceptable so long as the
patterns in the landscape which
exhibit outstanding universal values
are not compromised.
Yet it is the human interaction with
the landscapes which must remain
intact over time.
For different types of landscape �
vineyards, farmland, forests � there
is a role for
specific landscape type guidelines
to ensure that new built elements do
not detract from
the significant components and
features in the landscape, for local
trusts for conserving
landscape components, and for a
range of legal planning or permit
arrangements in
conserving landscapes with
continuing agriculture and forestry.
One of the most challenging tasks is
to manage the visual values of the
continuing
landscape.
There are many techniques now for
assessing the ability of a landscape
to accommodate
or absorb new developments. The
English Heritage Historic Landscape
Project details
some of these methodologies, which
were underpinned by the principle
that change when
properly planned will usually be
more acceptable than fossilization
and will be
sustainable. This means that the
interaction with the landscape is
controlled and planned
rather than just happening by
default, incremental change or
overwhelming forces.
On top of these consideration then,
the whole idea of "Human Geography"9
has been
implemented in many educational
endeavors and it has represented to
new leading-edge
technique for a better implication
of the use of the land, as a result
of human engineering,
9 "The Importance of Sacred Natural
Sites for Biodiversity
Conservation", China, 2002 UNESCO
Publishing.
6
and consequently as a result of a
cultural element which is implicit
(or intrinsic) to the
landscape which is produced.
In other words, the landscape
originated by forestry and
agriculture is the result of an
attentive match between culture and
skills, and between skills and
nature.
4. Managing tourism to ensure
continuing visitor access and
appreciation of the
landscape.
World Heritage tourism has brought
employment to millions, often in
remote parts of the
world: it has provided inspiration,
recreation, enjoyment and rest to
countless visitors.
But it has also destroyed and
polluted unique, fragile and
pristine environments,
threatened local cultures, and
devalued the heritage
characteristics that make a site
both
of outstanding universal value and a
desirable tourist destination.
Tourism also offers a
major avenue for public appreciation
of the values of World Heritage
cultural landscapes.
In the twenty-first century, the
tourist market places increasing
importance on enjoying
authentic experiences authentic
settings, objects and stories, and
if possible a guide or
storyteller who lives in the setting
and owns the objects and stories.
Therefore using local
people to interpret their heritage
is likely to lead to high visitor
satisfaction and increasing
numbers of visitors.
A good example of the above
mentioned scene is the constant
reports and presentations
that occur and embody the theme of
Tourism and Bio-diversity impact. It
has become,
with particular focus within the
past 10 years, a very common table
of discussion,
whereas the importance of tourism as
a leading economic factor, collide
with the poor
sustainability of the way tourism is
handled.
Tourism10 is a value-adding activity
to the economic activities that have
given rise to the
distinctive cultural landscape. This
is especially the case with rural
landscapes and
associative cultural landscapes. The
huge increase in tourist numbers
over the last decade
visiting Cinque Terre by train and
on foot is an indicator of this,
while the increased
numbers at Uluru-Kata Tjuta National
Park are the result of intense
marketing coupled
with provision of access and
facilities outside but immediately
adjacent to the park.
Tourism as a new industry can have a
low impact on the cultural landscape
yet assist in
the transition to a more complex and
diversified economic base for some
communities,
especially those more remote from
metropolitan cities.
Relationships between the
environment and the economy and
standards have to be further
explored � testing issues such as
reinvestment of benefits into local
communities,
10 Extract from the final report of
,,Tourism, Cultural Diversity and
Sustainable Development", July 2004,
Barcelona, Spain
7
promotion of authentic local
products, strategic alliances in
provision of transport and
accommodation.
Tourism should be regarded as a
positive influence on management of
cultural landscapes
and, if managed correctly, will
build support for the conservation
of cultural and natural
heritage and provide income to
assist those living in or managing
the landscape.
As a proof of this, WTO (World
Tourism Organization) and the
Secretariat of UN for
Bio-diversity, work in tight
alliance for the better cooperation
between the financial urges
and the environmental necessities
that our planet is daily needed for.
5. Finding the resources to
ensure economic viability of
operations to maintain
the values of the cultural
landscape, including `User Pays'
concepts and other
external income.
Generating income in ways that do
not conflict with heritage
conservation and are
culturally sensitive is a management
challenge. It is difficult to
generalize because
management authority frameworks
differ so much across the world and
all have different
rules concerning collection and
expenditure of income.
For designed landscapes such as
gardens or for archaeological sites,
where the managing
authority controls or owns the
property, income can be derived from
entry charges,
concessions, leases and licenses. In
larger continuing landscapes, the
managing authority
has planning controls only, the
property is owned by many farmers or
other landholders
who collect the direct charges, and
the managing authority is funded by
taxes levied on
the landholders. This authority may
also involve farmers and landholders
in the
management, not only through
subsidies but also through policies
which will help them
make a profit from sustainable
management.
There is an increasing literature on
heritage economics, detailing a
range of techniques
that could be considered in cultural
landscape protection11:
a. Sustainable development to
support the site, as with tourism or
continued farming.
b. Directing the income from
site operation to site management.
c. Site sustainability
through value adding to agricultural
and tourism products.
d. Labels guaranteeing the
quality and origin of farm products.
11 Cultural Tourism and sustainable
development project,
UNESCO, October 2003
8
e. Public funding through
agricultural subsidies for political
or economic purposes (such
as keeping people resident in the
countryside, supporting exports,
etc.) or through other
sources of funding for rural
activities such as housing repairs,
one-off capital funding for
infrastructure, training in new
skills, oral history and recording,
or unemployment
benefits, which can be directed
towards maintenance of heritage
features in the cultural
landscape.
f. Private funding for
programs, such as establishing
non-profit conservation trusts;
encouraging fund-raising
partnerships with for-profit
concerns; tax breaks for charitable
contributions; establishing special
protected- area funds on the basis
of contributions
from the energy sector; private
sector investment in sustainable
micro-scale enterprises,
especially in buffer zones, to
ensure more equitable distribution
of the benefits arising
from such uses. Sponsorship of
activities or site repairs is
another major high-profile
income generator.
6. Developing landscape
conservation treatments and new
techniques for
managing essential components in
the designated landscape.
Given that the primary aim of
management, as we want to prove in
this research, is to
retain the outstanding cultural
values in the landscape. All
conservation treatments must
respect the existing fabric and
maintain authenticity in materials,
design, workmanship
and setting so as to prolong the
integrity of the cultural landscape
and allow it to be
interpreted. Care should be taken in
introducing any new elements.
Treatment actions range from
cyclical maintenance to varying
degrees of consolidation,
restoration, continuing traditional
ways of living or even adaptive
re-use.
The appropriateness of treatments
will also vary depending on the type
and scale of the
cultural landscape:
in designed landscapes there may be
reconstruction of missing elements
as at Lednice
(Czech Republic) or Potsdam
(Germany), rehabilitation and
restoration following damage
as at Hampton Court Palace gardens
(UK) and reconstruction via
replanting as at
Versailles (France) following the
destructive storms of 199812.
In other sites such as the alpine
landscapes of the European
transfrontier national parks,
species that had disappeared, such
as wolves, are being reintroduced.
Management of Hadrians Wall
illustrates the need for cooperation
between a large
numbers of diverse partners in the
management of a linear cultural
landscape � farmers,
tourists, archaeologists.
12 Culture and Agriculture :
Orientation Texts on the 1995 Theme.
UNESCO, Paris, 1995, 68p.
CLT/DEC/PRO.1995.
9
Insertion of new cattle sheds into
the landscape was a trade-off to
ensure greater
protection of the primary resource,
the archaeological heritage.
Protection also requires effective
communication when so many players
are involved.
7. Coping with impacts caused by
processes and events or developments
external to the site affecting or
threatening the integrity of the
designated
cultural landscape.
Threats to the integrity of World
Heritage cultural landscapes may
come from within or
without.
They can be natural events such as
weather phenomena, or human-induced
such as war or
disease, or they can derive from the
impact of management processes, such
as from new
developments in the landscape,
provision of utility services,
adaptation of historic
structures for new uses, activities
in the buffer zone with downstream
effects, visitor
pressures and associated
infrastructure, or simply sheer
ignorance of the consequences of
actions.
Sometimes the best heritage
management outcome may arise from
external processes
such as through participation in the
"Environmental Impact Assessment
"process which
leads to a new arrangement and
acceptance by all stakeholders in
that process.
Strategies for improving the
risk-preparedness of World Heritage
cultural properties
consider reducing the impact of
natural disasters, armed conflict,
industrial pollution and
other hazards of human origin.
These strategies can also be applied
to cultural landscapes. There is a
developing
literature on both emergency
preparedness and disaster management
and long-term
cumulative threats such as salinity
impact on heritage sites.
8. Supporting communities which
maintain heritage values within the
cultural
landscape especially where the
associative values of the landscape
reside with
those communities.
There is a large literature on
community participation in planning
and protected area
management. But within cultural
landscapes there are some very
specific challenges:
� working with farming communities
resident in the inscribed property
to ensure
continuing sustainability of the
production and way of life
� maintaining associative values in
the landscape despite pressures such
as youth
migration and new technologies and
involving indigenous peoples who are
the
traditional custodians of the
cultural values which are expressed
in the landscape
10
� engaging in ,,social engineering
to assist with maintenance of
traditional activities
(such as provision of housing for
guest workers; allowing tourists to
view traditional
festivals) while respecting local
community wishes (such as no
photography of rituals).
World Heritage associative cultural
landscapes have special needs for
strategies and
actions to maintain the traditional
associations which give that place
its outstanding
universal values. Identification of
these associative values by a local
community or
special group occurs during the
nomination process and they are
confirmed by inscription.
In order to conserve these
associative values there is a need
to pass on rituals and
traditional knowledge to the ,,right
people culturally, that is, those
who have been
initiated or are next-of-kin.
Maintenance of culturally viable or
strong communities with these
associative values is
subject to similar pressures and
problems throughout the world youth
attracted to cities
and new ways of life and being
unwilling to undergo initiation and
training in required
rituals and obligations.
Alternatively, young people may
remain on site with no economic
livelihood and fall prey to modern
social problems, such as drugs and
alcohol.
This is relevant to some World
Heritage cultural landscapes such as
Uluru, Tongariro, the
Philippines rice terraces, or Sukur
(Nigeria) 13 . As well as
opportunities to pass on
traditional skills and knowledge,
which are often dependent on being
present in the
landscape when seasonal changes and
resources are available, managers of
cultural
landscapes have to assist in
maintaining the health and
well-being of those residents in
the landscape. This is illustrated
in the case of the community now
resident at Uluru.
Cultural associations must be
maintained to keep the associative
values alive as detailed
in the original cultural landscape
listing.
For example, if no young people
are working or living traditionally,
as revealed by
monitoring reports, then is the
associative cultural landscape put
on the World Heritage
in Danger list or reclassified as
a relict landscape?
This issue must be addressed by
World Heritage cultural landscape
property managers.
13 DACYL, J.W., WESTIN, C.,
Management of Cultural pluralism in
Europe. A Progress report submitted
to the 5th Ordinary Session of
the Inter-Governmental Committee of
the World Decade for Cultural
Development 21-25 April, 1997,
11
Summary
These eight issues recur in
landscape development and change, in
identifying threatened
but valued landscapes, in
determining acceptable levels of
intervention, and in managing
old landscapes and making new ones.
They occur worldwide as recent
phenomena and
must be addressed by World Heritage
cultural landscape managers.
The message from all this is that
managers must know what values are
found in their
cultural landscapes and make sure
that their management protects and
enhances these
values. But values are dynamic and
evolve and change. Knowledge about
the values must
be updated, and therefore management
strategies must be able to change to
protect the
outstanding universal values of
World Heritage properties.
Values
Landscapes have a range of values
that communities recognize as
important and want to
conserve. Cultural and natural
values are the qualities which make
a place or landscape
important. We tend to separate these
qualities into natural and cultural,
including historic
and indigenous, but heritage
managers are increasingly finding
that the categories overlap
to such an extent those responsible
management demands that these values
be catered for
simultaneously.
The World Heritage Convention
recognizes the outstanding universal
value of some
cultural and natural heritage not
only to each nation but to humanity
as a whole. Its
Operational Guidelines14 have
ten criteria and tests for
authenticity and integrity to be
used in assessing whether a place
has outstanding universal value. The
Convention also
requires periodic reporting on the
condition of the values and whether
they have changed.
The following case study illustrates
the updating of cultural values as a
result of further
and ongoing research into aspects of
the archaeology and history of the
Tasmanian
Wilderness (Australia), a property
inscribed on the World Heritage list
in 1982 and
expanded in 1989 in recognition of
its outstanding World Heritage
values. Features of
outstanding significance include
extensively glaciated landscapes;
undisturbed habitats of
plants and animals that are rare,
endangered and/or endemic and
represent a rich variety
of evolutionary processes;
magnificent natural scenery and an
impressive assembly of
Aboriginal sites that include cave
art.
14 http://whc.unesco.org/
12
Case study � Tasmanian
Wilderness World Heritage area15
The Tasmanian Wilderness World
Heritage Area (TWWHA) covers
approximately 20%
of Tasmania, 1.38 million ha in the
south-west of the island. It
includes Tasmanias four
largest national parks, a range of
other reserves and some of the best
wilderness areas in
south-eastern Australia.
During the 1989 World Heritage
nomination process, the World
Heritage Committee did
not agree to some Aboriginal values
being considered as World Heritage.
Only those identified in the 1982
nomination are recognized. When the
area was
denominated in 1989, ICOMOS advised
that further work was required to
determine the
status of the area. This work was
specified in the 1992 and 1999
management plans for
the TWWHA.
This body of work has produced a
greatly increased number of places
with cultural values.
These total 746 Aboriginal sites
(307 new sites) and approximately
400 European historic
sites. It has also allowed a richer,
deeper and more intensive
interpretation of the layered
evidence in the landscape to be
considered. No dramatic new
discoveries have been made
so as to alter the description of
cultural heritage in the 1989
nomination, but the new
information allows for consideration
of new interpretations in accordance
with the new
World Heritage categories for
cultural landscapes and modified
cultural criteria. There
are sites identified in the TWWHA
which would add weight to the
existing values
identified as being of outstanding
universal value. These sites meet
World Heritage
cultural criteria (iii), (v) and
(vi) but represent a fuller
appreciation of the values rather
than just being related to aspects
of archaeological significance of a
culture
that has disappeared.
Human occupation for 36,000 years is
however denied by the naming of the
place as
wilderness. More particularly, since
rising sea levels separated Tasmania
from the
mainland about 12,000 years ago,
Tasmanian Aboriginal culture has
survived one of the
longest-known periods of geographic
and cultural isolation affecting a
society.
Archaeological surveys since 1982
have revealed occupation sites along
the coastlines, at
the mouths of the retreating
glaciers in the Central Highlands,
and along pathways linking
plain and mountains.
15 The attached case study has been
entirely extracted from: Tasmania
Wilderness World Heritage Area,
Volume III, appendices B-G and
References, January 1994, published
by the "Department of Environment
and Land Management" of Tasmania,
Australia.
13
The TWWHA contains cultural
landscapes and some of these contain
outstanding
universal values worthy of World
Heritage listing.
1. For Aborigines the whole
area is a cultural landscape and
this belief could be sustained
in a case for it as an
associative cultural landscape
in accordance with World Heritage
category 39 (iii). The beauty of its
,,superlative natural phenomena also
contributes to
this categorization.
2. Within the TWWHA there are
areas that could be categorized as
relict cultural
landscapes in accordance with
World Heritage category 39 (ii), and
these relate
especially to European land-use
practices which have now ceased. The
uniquely
Tasmanian interaction of humans to
the natural resource resulted in
these distinctive
landscapes:
(a) the pining landscapes of the
Gordon-Macquarie Harbor � Raglan
Range which
illustrate the range of techniques
used in this resource exploitation
from the convict era of
the early 1800s to the 1940s;
(b) the hunting and snaring
landscapes of montane grasslands on
the Central Plateau,
although it could be argued that
they also illustrate both
transference of European
ecological knowledge and European
adaptation to Aboriginal seasonal
exploitation of
native fauna through the
reintroduction of traditional
Aboriginal burning practices to the
north-western mountain grasslands.
3. Fire has been the agent
maintaining a complex distribution
of disclimax vegetation,
which can be considered as a
continuing landscape category for
large areas within the
TWWHA, especially the buttongrass
plains/sedge land which comprise 53%
of the
vegetation in the TWWHA (Jackson,
1999, p. 3). Fire not only produces
a successional
mosaic but causes extinction of
communities and this level of
displacement appears to
demand a time span of human-induced
fire sufficiently long enough to
affect soil fertility.
The palaeontological record in
Tasmania shows a twofold increase in
open vegetation
relative to closed forest during the
last glacial cycle. Eucalypt forest
increased relative to
rainforest, and charcoal increased
relative to woody vegetation, and
these changes
occurred through a variety of
climates (Jackson, 1999, p. 1).
However, the most recent
studies indicate that the noticeable
increase in fire activity about
40,000 years ago, when
there was no major climate change,
is considered most likely to
indicate Aboriginal
burning. This accelerated existing
trends rather than creating a
wholesale landscape
change, but it is difficult to
separate the effects of climate and
human-induced burning
subsequently until the European era
(Kershaw et al., 2002, p. 3).
At the time of European settlement
there were extensive buttongrass
plains throughout
south-western Tasmania.
Ecologically, it is unlikely that
such extensive plains would
have persisted for more than about
250 to 1,000 years without
human-mediated fires.
Aborigines were seasonally active
burning patches of land in the early
1800s and
14
creating open country across which
Europeans moved swiftly in the 1820s
in the
midlands. However, there is
considerable anecdotal evidence for
major changes in the
fire regime of south-western
Tasmania since the removal of the
Aborigines in the 1830s
resulting in major wide-ranging,
landscape-scale fires in the 1890s
and 1930s.
Aborigines probably used
low-intensity fires mainly in spring
and autumn to flush out
game when hunting and to create
access tracks. The aim was to create
a large number of
small, recently burnt areas
surrounded by thicker vegetation
(Marsden-Smedley, 1998, pp.
15�19). The slow rate of vegetation
change in south-west Tasmania meant
that the
distribution of the majority of the
current vegetation and soil types
(especially peat
formation) shows the result of
long-term Aboriginal land-use
practices.
The co-existence of extensive areas
of button grass moorland in close
proximity to highly
fire-sensitive rainforest and alpine
heaths also supports the proposal
that the Aborigines
burnt the former when the wet forest
communities, especially those
containing coniferous
species such as King Billy, Huon and
pencil pines, were too wet to burn.
Given the time
period required for successional
processes and soil formation, these
communities must
have co-existed for thousands of
years. Therefore, the current
distribution of vegetation
and soils in this region should not
be described as natural and a better
description would
be a cultural landscape (Marsden-
Smedley, 1998, p. 25).
A more detailed examination of the
antiquity and characteristics of
seasonal migration of
hunter-gatherer societies in alpine
regions throughout the world is
required before the
case for the TWWHA is absolutely
confirmed. In comparative studies,
like should be
compared with like. The fire-effects
studies have already compared
similar ecosystems in
New Zealand, Chatham Islands and
Patagonia. However, further research
is required into
some aspects to allow a
comprehensive construction of the
case. For example, further
studies into seasonal movement for
resource exploitation between
coastal areas, valleys
and sub-alpine areas is required to
fill out the pattern emerging from
recent studies.
For areas of similar ecosystem-based
landscapes like the buttongrass
moorlands and the
montane grasslands, scientific
evidence now points to the need for
a different park-
burning regime to both maintain the
cultural landscape and to maintain
its biodiversity.
Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service
Aboriginal trainees are being
employed to assist in
this new work and this in turn
represents a restoration of cultural
practice in accordance
with the 1995 management plan. The
impact of the new burning regime
needs to be
monitored regularly to check that it
is achieving the desired
conservation objectives.
Cultural values are also
increasingly being interpreted to
the public at visitor centers,
historic convict sites and former
logging sites. Tourist numbers rose
from 453,000 in
1995 to 500,600 in 1999 (Lennon et
al., 2001, p. 79). Local people, the
Grining family,
who were displaced when the timber
industry ceased, now operate one of
the major
tourist boat services up the
Franklin River � the only way access
is permitted.
15
Conclusion
Effective management of outstanding
universal values in World Heritage
properties
requires a continual management
process that reassesses the values
of the place/landscape
and then adjusts on-site management
to conserve these new or updated
values. As the
second round of periodic reporting
for World Heritage properties is
about to occur, the
case of the Tasmanian Wilderness
World Heritage Area illustrates a
very good example
of effective values-based
management.
In terms of the general conclusions
that this paper is aiming at
satisfying, we can consider
Cultural Landscape as an important
and constitutional part of World
Heritage.
This latter is a very valuable
instrument of observation, retention
and pro-active
conservation of the heritage of our
past, as institutional to the
formation of continuity in
the future years to come and for the
future generations.
The challenge is on a daily basis,
but the results that have been
achieved by the
foundation of World Heritage List
are amazing, encouraging and full of
positive signs for
a better education on who we are,
where we come from and where we will
go.
16
References
JACKSON, W. D. 1999. The Tasmanian
legacy of man and fire. Papers
and Proceedings
of the Royal Society of
Tasmania, Vol. 133, No. 1, pp.
1�14.
KERSHAW, P.; CLARK, J. S.; GILL, A.
M.; DCOSTA, D. M. 2002. A history of
fire in
Australia. In: R. Bradstock, J.
Williams and M. Gill (eds.),
Flammable Australia, the
Fire Regimes and
Biodiversity of a Continent, pp.
3�26. Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press.
LENNON, J.; PEARSON, M.; MARSHALL,
D.; SULLIVAN, S.; MCCONVELL, P.;
NICOLLS, W.; JOHNSTON, D. 2001.
Natural and Cultural Heritage.
Australia State of
the Environment Report, 2001 Theme
Report. Canberra, Commonwealth
Scientific and
Industrial Research Organization.
MARSDEN-SMEDLEY, J. B. 1998. Changes
in southwestern Tasmanian fire
regimes
since the early 1800s. Papers
and Proceedings of the Royal
Society of Tasmania,
Vol. 132, pp. 15�29.
LENNON, J. Management Guidelines
for World Heritage Cultural
Landscapes. Report
to the World Heritage Centre.
Paris, UNESCO, December 2001.
����. Cultural Heritage
Values Update of the Tasmanian
Wilderness World Heritage Area.
Unpublished report to
the Department of Tourism, Parks,
Heritage and the Arts, Hobart,
Tasmania, September
2002.
THE GETTY CONSERVATION INSTITUTE.
Assessing the Values of Cultural
Heritage. Research report
edited by Marta de la Torre.
Los Angeles, Calif., The Getty
Conservation Institute, 2002
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