Potencialidades ecoturísticas dos parques estaduais de Minas Gerais

Abstract

The state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, detains an ample richness and diversity of natural resources, presenting elevated touristic potential. A large part of these scenic beauties is found in the Conservation Units, specifically in the Parks, being that public visitation is allowed in this category. The state presents thirty-eight State Parks, with only eight being open to visitation. With this scenery, the study had the objective of describing, analyzing and punctuating the current scenery of the state parks in Minas Gerais related to touristic use. A spreadsheet was elaborated with data made available by the official organ responsible for the Conservation Units – IEF and ICMBio. The grading was performed by the presence and absence of the tourism-oriented infrastructures, generating a touristic potential index (TPI) which ranges numerically from 0 to 1 for each park. This index was fed by the sum of the presence of attributes, graded with values differentiated according to the level of importance to the management of the park and the public use, judged by the researcher. The obtained results demonstrated that the majority of the state parks in Minas Gerais present issues in their infrastructure, management plan implementation and fund regularization, showing a deficient profile for the practice of ecotourism. The TPI was shown to be a useful tool for surveying the situation of park infrastructure, management and tourist visitation, in addition to being a means to divulge the situation of the parks in order to guide visitors in search for structural or administrative conditions, for the visitation, as well as to generate foment to public policies for the improvement of CU management.