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Play takes an increasing toll on the backcountry
by Will Sands
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| A makeshift bike plate from a
recent race lies discarded along a trail in Horse
Gulch recently. Local land managers
say increased recreational use of public lands
is beginning to take a toll./Photo by Todd Newcomer. |
by Will Sands
Heavy impacts are hitting the backcountry and the usual sources – mining
and logging – are not the culprits. Instead, the damage is coming
in the forms of fire rings, expanding roads and trails, and empty energy
bar wrappers and the like, all inflicted by growing recreational use.
While the situation is not dire locally in the San Juan Mountains, land
managers and conservationists are feeling the increasing burden of recreation.
The public lands surrounding Durango have two distinctions. First,
they are vast, comprising more than 40 percent of La Plata County. Second,
they are relatively isolated from major urban centers. In recent history,
these two factors have resulted in relatively pristine National Forest
and Bureau of Land Management lands.
However, local land managers say that this trend is
shifting. As a result of increased numbers of locals
recreating along with jumps in tourist traffic, the local back yard
is no longer as plush as it used to be.
Resource extraction
Richard Speegle, recreation program leader with the Columbine Ranger
District, commented, “In the old days, the conflicts were between
logging and the environment and mining and the environment. Nowadays,
people are talking about problems with recreation and the environment.”
This metaphor of tapping a resource is an accurate one, according to
Mark Pearson, executive director of San Juan Citizens Alliance. And
as with traditional development, recreation appears to be tapping the
resource out, he said.
“Historically, there’s been a tendency to exploit resources
to the maximum extent possible,” he said. “It seems like
we’re on that path again with recreation. We don’t seem
to want to think about what the long-term consequences will be of exploiting
this resource.”
Ann Bond, spokeswoman for the San Juan Public Lands Center, argued
that more and more people in the backcountry are exhausting the recreation
resource. “Part of it has to do with an increase in population
near public lands,” she said. ”Another part of it is that
we have a healthy tourist economy and a greater influx of visitors.”
Bond noted that users ranging from bird watchers to jeepers often forget
that they have impacts when they venture into the forest. “Every
single one of us has an impact,” she said. “There is no
such thing as passive recreation. Even if you’re just a hiker,
you have significant impacts on the habitat.”
Managing wild places
Rose Chilcoat, program director with Great Old Broads
for Wilderness, a locally based, national conservation
group, agreed that numbers are the culprit. “Anytime you have
overuse of an area, you’re going to be degrading it,” she
said. “And
sometimes you have to control the number of people
who have that experience. At some point, the agencies
are going to have to actively manage wilderness, which seems like
an oxymoron.”
There are a number of areas within the San Juan National Forest that
could see increased management in the near future, according to Bond.
In particular, she referenced Chicago Basin, where proximity to several
14,000-foot peaks has led to impacts to the designated wilderness area.
As a result, users can expect heightened regulation in the coming year. “During
the summer, we joke that there are probably more people in Chicago Basin
than there are on the main street of Durango,” she said. “How’s
that for getting away from it all?”
Bond also pointed to Engineer Mountain and the Haflin Creek Trail as
two local areas where growing recreation numbers have had negative effects.
Getting the motors in line
Speegle added that managing motorized use in the vicinity of Silverton
has been one of the biggest challenges for the Forest Service. “We
have a tremendous amount of motorized use in the Alpine Loop area,” Speegle
said. “Four or five years ago, the majority of that use was with
jeeps. Now, we’ve seen a shift and the majority of use is on ATVs,
and we’re having difficulty keeping that use on designated roads.”
Pearson argued that motorized use is most problematic because it allows
users to penetrate deeper and deeper into the backcountry. “It
doesn’t seem like the influx of hikers and backpackers extends
that deeply into the backcountry,” he said. “Motorized vehicles
conquer the barrier of distance.”
Speegle said that a growth in downhill mountain biking has also been
problematic for local land managers.
“There are a lot of pirate trails being made for downhill mountain
biking all over the forest,” he said. “The trails are straight
down and real erosion problems. We’re trying to figure out how
you build a sustainable downhill mountain biking trail, but we’re
coming up empty.”
Speegle pointed to the Durango Mountain Resort development as indication
that the problem could get significantly worse in north La Plata County. “DMR
is going to have 1,600 new homes, and we’ll have another town
that’ll be larger than Silverton,” he said. “That
will put year-round pressure on the forest up there.”
Recognizing an impact
As impacts grow, land mangers are hamstrung by a lack of enforcement
funding. As a result, the responsibility goes back on the user, and
land managers and conservationists are asking backcountry users to recognize
they cause impacts and to try to minimize them.
“Recreationists don’t always believe that they have an
impact and people don’t want to compromise their fun for environmental
resource protection,” Pearson said. “It’s hard to
imagine that just walking on a trail could be an impact. But enough
people walking on a trail at the right time of year could have serious
consequences.”
By way of solution, Ronni Egan, Great Old Broads’ executive director,
suggested, “It doesn’t mean people can’t recreate,
it just means people may not be able to be so selfish in their expectations
of public lands.”
Egan’s counterpart Chilcoat added, “People’s desire
to do what they want to needs to be weighed against the realities of
the future. If everyone continues to contribute to the degradation,
there’s not going to be anything left to recreate in.”
An immense landscape
However, there is also agreement that the San Juans are better off
than most mountainous areas. Once again, the combination of vastness
and remoteness has kept local public lands pristine relative to their
Front Range counterparts. Bill Manning, executive director of the local
trails advocacy group Trails 2000, commented that so far recreation
has just scratched the surface of local public lands.
“We do see a lot of recreation, but I don’t believe that
recreation and conservation are currently at odds locally,” he
said. “Mother Nature recovers quite nicely, and I think locally
the impacts from recreation have been relatively small.”
He added that with just under half of La Plata County being designated
as public lands, people have plenty of places to play. “We have
this immense public landscape to recreate in,” Manning said. “I
don’t get the sense that we’re there or even close.”
However, Pearson said he sees a more immediate threat, pointing to
the recent development boom in La Plata County and a rapidly growing
local population.
“We’re fortunate in that we’re still a long way
from giant population centers,” he concluded. “That has
been our saving grace over time. With growing population, that may not
be the case in the future.”
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