Background

Why do we have national park visitor centres in Norway? We need to go back at least 17 years to find the explanation for this.

Plans for national park visitor centres in Norway were mentioned in White Paper no. 62 (1991-92) that dealt with national parks and other large protected areas in Norway. This document stresses that providing information on national parks is an important task, and points out that:
"....an effort should be made to take in all the most important national parks, either with their own centre or through regional centres that provide information on several national parks".

13 parks have been selected
On the basis of this White Paper, the Ministry of the Environment set about in 1995 to arrange for national park visitor centres in association with 13 existing or future national parks in the course of ten years. The intention was to allocate funding through the national budget to plan, set up and run the centres. The Directorate for Nature Management (DN) was made responsible for implementing government policy in this sphere.

Funding and guidelines
A specialitem was set up on the 1997 budget to provide government grants for this work. In the same year, the environmental authorities drew up an authorisation scheme and guidelines for national park visitor centres, partly based on an evaluation in 1995 of the way the environmental authorities cooperated with existing nature information centres. The guidelines give the background and status for this work, mention priorities for future centres, and summarise the requirements for receiving authorisation and applying for grants.

The authorisation scheme is intended to quality assure national park visitor centres The Directorate for Nature Management (DN) enters into an authorisation agreement with the individual centre in response to a recommendation from the County Governor concerned. To become authorised, the facility must meet a set of criteria regarding content and activity, profile, location, funding of operations, purpose, target group, expertise and service. The agreement has to be renewed every five years.

Agreements with six existing natural history information centres were entered into in 1997, and eight new centres have been established and authorised in the past ten years. All the planned national park visitor centres are therefore up and running. For the moment, there are no plans to have more than these 14 centres.

Rights and obligations
Authorisation as a national park visitor centre involves both rights and obligations. The centre may, for example, market itself as a "national park visitor centre" and use the related logo and graphic profile. It also has the right to receive an annual grant from the above-mentioned item on the budget, and can apply for funding to help pay for special information measures and to improve expertise. Obligations which the centre takes upon itself include always having to meet requirements and guidelines that are in force and to report annually to DN on its activity, financial situation and operative aspects.

Background

Policy and guidelines