Evaluating large events held in national park Holding Events in national parks is growing in popularity. Often, a national park hosts a variety of small-scale events to serve local communities, including hiking, cycling games. Whether the large events, such as concerts and Olympics games, should be held in national park become a frequently discussed topic as politicians and key stakeholders of parks wish for more economic exploitation today. It is considered that although major events might bring considerable financial benefits, they seem to do more harm in the long run. This essay is going to argue this point by addressing negative environmental impacts and the economic sustainability issues, as opposed to the short time benefits.
To begin with, it is unavoidable that holding large events would exert negative influences on the natural environment. Mega events require advanced facilitates and huge flows of people. However, there are in inadequate facilitates and infrastructure in national park normally. Some parks are in the arid, or seasonally-arid climates and have fragile landscapes. Therefore, large area of event venues and various roads construction are necessary and the damage to ecosystem may occur at any time. Kuziak (cited in Williams, 2011, p.4) stated :“The environmental consequences of these Games included: soil erosion, avalanches and rock slides, contamination of lakes and rivers, depletion of clean water sources, air pollution, habitat destruction for non-human species, and, ultimately, depletion of non-human species.”
Furthermore, the sustainability of holding mega events remain unsolved. There are two problems associated with holding events in the wild area. First, the facilitates are difficult to reuse unless events are held constantly. In the reality, many events keep moving and it is not guarantee the next location are happen to be the park. Secondly, few event operators and managers are interested in the high cost of initial investment and maintenance. As The Economist (Anonymous, 1993) pointed out, after a decade opened to visitors, the repair cost of a third of roads in Yosemite National Park is estimated to reached 1.5 billion dollars. As a result, major event is unlikely to happen frequently in national park and economic benefits would appeared to be unsustainable. Admittedly, there are great economic benefits from events in the short time. It is acknowledge that large events play an important role in creating more job opportunities and higher tourist revenues, especially in the low tourist season. Arguably, mega events can create significant multiplier income effects to all of the relevant tourism