Authors: Dan-Rakedzon, Nitzan; Lissovsky , Nurit;Shwartz , Assaf ;

Urbanization threatens biodiversity and also separates people from the experience of nature. This alienation from nature, also known as “extinction of experience”, represents a major concern due to the connections between nature health, well-being, affinity for nature, and conservation support. Protected areas (PAs), which host unique biodiversity and landscapes, have a great potential to provide high quality nature experiences, but to date research on nature experience in PA is scarce. We explored how nature experience is considered in the design and management of PAs. We conducted landscape architectural analysis of planning documents and semi-structured interviews with landscape architects and managers of 12 highly visited PAs that contain waterscapes in Israel. Our results indicate that the experience of nature was not one of the themes considered important when designing and managing PAs. Instead, the discourse focused on reducing the conflicts between nature conservation and development, notably, promoting design and management solutions that restrict visitors’ activity in PAs. These results highlight that attempts to protect nature in PAs may contributes to the growing alienation of people from nature. This has implications for practitioners related to finding solutions that adequately balance providing opportunities for meaningful nature experience and biodiversity conservation in PAs.