Rocky Mountain Futures: An Ecological Perspective

By Jill Baron and Paul R. Ehrlich

The Rocky Mountain West is largely arid and steep, with ecological scars from past human use visible for hundreds of years. Just how damaging were the past 150 years of activity? How do current rates of disturbance compare with past mining, grazing, and water diversion activities? In the face of constant change, what constitutes a "natural" ecosystem? And can a high quality of life be achieved for both human and natural communities in this region.

Rocky Mountain Futures presents a comprehensive and wide-ranging examination of the ecological consequences of past, current, and future human activities in the Rocky Mountain region of the United States and Canada. The book brings together 32 leading ecologists, geographers, and other scientists and researchers to present an objective assessment of the cumulative effects of human activity on the region's ecological health and to consider changes wrought by past human use. This combined view of past and present reveals where Rocky Mountain ecosystems are heading, and the authors project what the future holds based upon current economic and social trends and the patterns that emerge from them. The book:

• examines the biogeographic and paleoenvironmental setting and historical climate that have shaped Rocky Mountain ecosystems
• traces the direct human influences on landscapes and ecosystems over the past 150 years
• explores the cumulative effects of past, present, and projected future human activities on tundra, subalpine and montane forests, valleys, grasslands, and waters
• offers case studies that illustrate specific examples of human influence and current efforts to restore the environment

Case studies focus on northern New Mexico; Summit County, Colorado; Flathead Valley, Montana; and Alberta, Canada. Among the contributors are Craig D. Allen, N. Thompson Hobbs, Linda L. Joyce, Robert E. Keane, David Schindler, Timothy R. Seastedt, David Theobald, Diana Tomback, William Travis, Cathy Whitlock, and Jack Stanford.

The United Nations has proclaimed 2002 as the International Year of Mountains to increase international awareness of the global importance of mountain ecosystems. The case-based multidisciplinary approach of this book constitutes an important new model for understanding the implications of land-use practices and economic activity on mountains, and will serve a vital role in improving decisionmaking both in the Rocky Mountains and in other parts of the world that face similar challenges.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Island Press
• Release date: Sep 26, 2012
• ISBN: 9781597263146

Paul R. Ehrlich

Paul R. Ehrlich is Bing Professor Emeritus of Population Studies in the Department of Biology of Stanford University, and is president of Stanford's Center for Conservation Biology.

Book preview

Cairns

CHAPTER 1

Transforming the Rockies: Human Forces, Settlement Patterns, and Ecosystem Effects

William R. Travis, David M. Theobald, and Daniel B. Fagre

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The current ecological condition of the Rocky Mountains can be viewed from two somewhat opposing perspectives. The first is that human occupation has had relatively little effect on the Rockies: large natural, if not pristine, areas remain, and the region’s open spaces provide wildlife habitat, majestic scenery, and a sense of wildness. Unlike the situation in, say, the Swiss Alps, where even high-elevation meadows have been mown and grazed intensively for as long as 500 years and many large mammals have been extirpated, most elements of Rocky Mountain landscapes and biota are reasonably unaltered. Even the presumption that Native Americans changed regional landscapes with deliberately set fires has been challenged by Baker and Ehle (2001) and others who think that most fires were lightning-caused or accidental ignitions.

The second view is that humans have dramatically transformed the Rockies, at least since Euro-American settlement in the mid- to late 1800s. The slaughter of vast buffalo herds, the clearing of timber for railroad ties, and even the removal of whole hillsides in hydraulic placer mining represented substantial transformation. Ranch, resort, and residential development marks the latest incarnation of this transformation. Numerous, complex layers of land use have left landscape legacies, some of which may be unrecognized or underappreciated in modern assessments (Wohl 2001).

Here we consider both perspectives because we are impressed with both the many effects of human use of the Rockies and the region’s remaining wild landscapes. Ironically, much of the recent population growth and development in the Rockies is driven by the region’s wild landscapes, which make the present widespread transformation seem all the more significant. It is, of course, the rapid clip of current human transformation—high population growth rates, pervasive rural residential development, and landscape fragmentation (Baron, Theobald, and Fagre 2000)—that worries ecologists and others concerned with Rocky Mountain ecosystems. So although we offer an overview of historical changes in the Rockies, especially since the 1800s, much of our attention here is on land uses, economies, and settlement patterns since the 1970s and on their future trends.

Making and Remaking the Rockies: Changing Human Geographies

The Rocky Mountain region is booming at the turn of the millennium, exhibiting some of highest population growth rates in the United States and Canada (figure 1.1). Two Rocky Mountain counties, Douglas in Colorado and Summit in Utah, grew faster than any others in the United States during the 1990s. The Rocky Mountain sections of even slower-growing states such as Montana and Wyoming grew at two to three times the national average in the 1990s. Population growth and land development go hand in hand, but the landscape effects of a given human population can vary tremendously, depending on how development is structured and which ecological settings are most