Another Colorado Mountain Town Copes With Impacts Of Growing Recreation Pressure On Wildlife
Outside of Steamboat Springs, Colorado, expanding trails and intensity of use are impacting how elk use the landscape and may be causing their numbers to fall.
A bull elk in the mountains near Steamboat Springs. Photo courtesy Colorado Department of Parks & Wildlife
NOTE: As Mountain Journal's reach and audience have grown, we've enjoyed hearing from readers in other mountain regions (in the West, Canada, Alaska and eastern reaches of the US) concerned about conservation issues shaping their communities. In the piece, below, Larry Desjardin, a longtime resident of Steamboat Springs, Colorado, shares the results of an analysis, based on US Forest Service data, that examines how growing level of outdoor recreation appear to be impacting elk.Steamboat is located in north-central Colorado. Besides holding a downhill ski town with a rich ranching heritage and plenty of public lands around it, Routt County has been place where radio-collared wildlife from the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem have wandered. In addition to being an expert in modular instrumentation technology, Desjardin is a conservationist, avid outdoor recreationist, sportsman and president of Keep Routt Wild. We believe the piece, below, is worthy of your attention, as fodder for discussion, because it allows for parallel comparison to corners of Greater Yellowstone and beyond dealing with similar questions.
by Larry Desjardin
We are blessed to live in Routt County, home of the Yampa River, Routt National Forest, Park Range, and the Flat Tops, Sarvis, and Mount Zirkel federal Wilderness areas. For many people, this is why we choose to live here, surrounded by wildlife, fish and fauna. Across Routt County, we all love the outdoors. But are we loving our wild places to death?
A recent study adds further evidence that we are doing so.
The study is a joint project between Rocky Mountain Wild and Keep Routt Wild quantifying the impacts from trail-based recreation on elk habitat in nearby areas of the Routt National Forest, and highlighted in a Feb. 24 Steamboat Pilot article. In full disclosure, I was one of the authors of the study, along with Steamboat Springs resident T.J. Thrasher and Rocky Mountain Wild Geographic Information System specialist Alison Gallensky.
The study was based on peer-reviewed research performed by the US Forest Service on elk behavior in the presence of recreational activity. Using radio-collared elk, the original researchers were able to quantify how elk avoided trails and recreationists in the presence of hikers, bikers, equestrians, and ATVs.
Our new analysis consisted of superimposing these same “disturbance bands” on roads and trails over the 124,000-acre analysis area just east of Steamboat Springs, an area that supports a great deal of recreation and is home to numerous species of wildlife. These disturbance bands show the distance from the trail that elk would actively avoid depending on the type of recreational activity. This avoidance is a form of habitat loss and compression.
For some national forest users, spring is "mud bogging" season on public lands. The Rocky Mountain Region of the US Forest Service shared this photograph of impacts caused by illegal ATV use. While physical damage to trails caused by users who enter closed areas or venture off trails is not uncommon, a growing concern among wildlife conservationists is the impacts of rising numbers of recreation users that fragment secure habitat and cause wildlife to flee areas where they want to be. The Forest Service put the following caption on the photo: "Mud bogging leaves lasting scars and may cause harmful impacts to fish and wildlife by destroying habitat (food, shelter, water and space)." Photo courtesy US Forest Service/Rocky Mountain Region
This graphic, used in the analysis by Desjardin, Thrasher and Gallensky, shows, at left, where elk congregate and in approximate numbers when confronting disturbance from ATVs. At right is the same area but when no recreation was allowed for a period of time. It serves as a baseline for pondering normal elk use in the habitat when recreationists are not present. The datapoints are themselves based on earlier peer-reviewed research.
The results indicate a great deal of habitat disturbance and loss from recreational use on trails and roads in the study area and it includes Buffalo Pass and Rabbit Ears Pass. Elk would avoid 60 percent of the landscape, over 74,000 acres when feeling recreation pressure. A flight response from elk could be initiated in over 88 percent of the landscape, nearly 110,000 acres. In only 12 percent of the landscape were elk considered undisturbed, a total of 14,000 acres out of 124,000.
Besides the quantitative results, the two-dimensional mapping showed that there were only a handful of undisturbed habitat islands, each separated significantly from the others by areas of human disturbance. This leads to habitat fragmentation and interferes with the natural movement and migration of elk.
Why does this matter?
The impact of human development and recreation on Colorado’s elk herds has been a topic of intense interest in recent years. New studies are underway and involve tracking elk around Steamboat. The Roaring Fork and Eagle valleys elk herds have experienced a 50 percent reduction in their population since around the year 2000, much of it credited to increased human recreation. “It’s not like these elk walked up and over another hill to another unit,” says former Colorado Parks and Wildlife biologist Bill Andree. “They just don’t exist anymore. They’re dead.”
“Why?” asked the Backcountry Journal.
“Increased recreation,” Andree says. “Increased mountain biking and hiking and dog walking in the spring, summer and fall and increased skiing and fat biking and snowshoeing in the winter. Coupled with diminishing habitat, this could mean the end to the herd.”
“It’s not like these elk walked up and over another hill to another unit. They just don’t exist anymore. They’re dead.” —former Colorado Parks and Wildlife biologist Bill Andree
Locally, Routt County has seen the resident elk herd of General Management Unit-14 decline approximately 30 percent over the past 15 years. More worrying, the number of elk calves per cow is dropping the same amount, bringing into question whether the herd can remain viable at all. The drop cannot be blamed on wolves.
It’s not just an elk issue. Co-researcher T.J. Thrasher added, “While the study focused on elk, these disturbance bands can be a surrogate for many timid species who share the same habitat, such as dusky and ruffed grouse, mule deer, pronghorn, goshawks, and numerous other raptors. In this regard, we are using elk as a proxy species for the observation and protection of a wide range of species and habitat.”
Perhaps this is the price of progress. As tourism-oriented marketing campaigns bring in more and more visitors to fill our ever-increasing number of trails, the wildlife simply becomes collateral damage. We currently have over 500 miles of single-track bike trails according to the Steamboat Chamber of Commerce and are planning for more. But is this worth the cost? The results of the recent Routt County Master Plan survey indicate Routt County residents think otherwise.
"Perhaps this is the price of progress. As tourism-oriented marketing campaigns bring in more and more visitors to fill our ever-increasing number of trails, the wildlife simply becomes collateral damage. We currently have over 500 miles of single-track bike trails according to the Steamboat Chamber of Commerce and are planning for more." —Larry Desjardin
“The county needs to balance recreation use and conservation of public lands,” was the top choice of 925 respondents to the question. What was the statement of values that finished in last place? “Recreation is more important than conservation.”
When we speak of balancing recreation and conservation, the question becomes, “What is the balance point?” Another way of asking this is, ”When is enough enough?”
Indeed, how many trails do we have to build through elk calving areas before we say, enough is enough? How many roadless areas need to be shoveled and scraped before we say enough is enough? How much should we transform our wild areas into visitor-oriented amusement parks before we say enough is enough?
It will not serve the Yampa Valley well to fill our wildlands to their maximum human carrying capacity. As journalist and Mountain Journal founder Todd Wilkinson observed, speaking to emerging science related to the impacts of recreation on wildlife in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and other parts of the Rockies, “(That’s) why wildlife disappears. What takes courage, conviction and forward-thinking vision is consciously choosing not to blaze a trail out of respect for animals that have limited home ground to inhabit, and far fewer options to survive than we do to play.”
Routt County can choose our future. We can do comprehensive landscape-level recreation planning to protect our roadless and wild areas for future generations, and set a model for the entire Rocky Mountain West. Or we can witness the continuing loss of wildlife and wild places in Routt County.
The residents of Routt County are asking us to choose wisely.
Below are graphics that accompanied the analysis of recreation impacts on wildlife prepared by Larry Desjardin, T.J. Thrasher and Allison Gallensky. The areas in brown/tan show areas of elk displacement near trails based on a number of different recreation uses and what has been documented in wildlife studies. The top graphic illustrates the analysis of disturbance in known elk calving areas, and the one below shows elk disturbance on elk summer range on public lands. The town of Steamboat Springs and the Steamboat Ski Area is located roughly in the middle of both graphics.
About Larry Desjardin
Larry Desjardin is president of Keep Routt Wild and a resident of Steamboat Springs. Keep Routt Wild’s mission is to promote policies and practices for the benefit of conserving the Yampa Valley for future generations of outdoor enthusiasts by balancing opportunities for recreational development with the habitat needs of wildlife.
