A new study published in Conservation Science and Practice shows that recreators and wildlife can coexist on Jackson’s popular trails. The findings could inform ongoing discussions about whether to expand pathways and trails around the county.
Over the course of two years, 27 cameras set up around the Cache-Game Creek trail system collected nearly 2 million photos on the Bridger-Teton National Forest near town. The photos track the presence of hikers, cross country skiers and mountain bikers and how wildlife — especially deer, elk, moose and bears — react to their presence.
KHOL’s Jenna McMurtry sat down with one of the study’s primary authors, Courtney Larson, a researcher based in Lander with The Nature Conservancy. Jackson Hole Wildlife Foundation, Bridger-Teton National Forest, Friends of Pathways and Teton Raptor Center also contributed to the study.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. – Ed.
Jenna McMurtry: This study looks at the relationship between recreation and wildlife, but also targeted management of these areas that are close to highly trafficked trails. What were you hoping to learn from this research?
Courtney Larson: We wanted to get a robust view of what was happening with recreation and wildlife use in a place across seasons and for several years to get a solid dataset. We felt a lot of these kinds of studies that look at recreation and wildlife do more of a snapshot of sampling over the course of one summer. Those are really valuable and we need those. But, being able to look across seasons and across several years gives us a lot more confidence in the data and the patterns that we’re seeing.
JM: The report says you all took 1.89 million photos across 9,885 [camera] days and 27 cameras. How do you make sense of such a large dataset?
CL: We have a whole database of every single detection of a person or an animal from those photos tagged by its location and its date, so season and time of day.
You can do a lot with that, but the two main things that we looked at were spatial patterns of wildlife use and then temporal, so like daily activity patterns of wildlife.
We were able to divide our locations into areas that had low levels of human use and high levels of human use and see if the way that wildlife are behaving at those points is different. From that, we can infer that there could be some effect of people’s activity on the way that animals are using that space.
JM: What did the data tell you?
CL: We saw that in places where there was higher human use, we saw lower use by elk. That was especially true in the winter and spring seasons, which is when elk are using that area.
The interesting part, too, is that a big chunk of the area where we did this study is in a winter closure area for elk. There really should not have been a lot of people in these areas during the winter and spring. And yet, we still saw that the elk were responding to the limited level of human disturbance that was present during those seasons.
I think it emphasizes the importance of seasonal closures. [Elk] are sensitive so we need to be cognizant of our impacts, especially in those winter and spring seasons.
But, we actually saw some positive effects, basically overlap of high levels of human use and wildlife habitat use. The other species we didn’t really see a statistically significant effect, so we can conclude that this is an area that, despite its high levels of human use, it’s being used by a really diverse suite of wildlife as well.
That’s something that is really cool for people that are out there recreating to know. Despite all the people and dogs that are there, there’s still a really intact wildlife community that uses that area.
Even if you’re not seeing them while you’re out there recreating, they’re there using the trails and using the area. It might just be at a time of day when you’re not there or they’re good at hiding in plain sight.
JM: Is this a sign that, ‘Hey, maybe we’re doing okay? Maybe we’re balancing all three of those things, wildlife, humans and conservation’?
CL: I think it’s a really good sign that we saw this intact wildlife community using this [area] alongside all of the human use. It definitely speaks to the habitat value that this area has. It’s clearly providing really excellent resources for wildlife.
At the same time, we don’t know what the wildlife use of this area was like a few decades ago, before recreation really took off in the way that it has.
JM: On the flip side, we know that elk are the most impacted from the results of this study. What types of recreation did the study find is most impactful on wildlife?
CL: We did see stronger responses to hiking or foot traffic activities than mountain biking, which is somewhat surprising. I feel like the previous scientific research on this is really mixed.
A lot of people expect that mountain biking will have a stronger impact because of the speed. People are just going a lot faster, covering more ground.
I hope that our findings are not held up to say mountain biking has no impact because I don’t think that’s true. I think all activities have some level of impact.
