Although people like to travel out west, as tourists, to visit the Rocky Mountain Region, too many visitors can actually be an environmental hazard to this region. Let’s discuss some measures that could be taken to help resolve this problem.
With all the people visiting the Rocky Mountain region each year, there are, like all things else, good that comes from it, and bad that comes from it. The good news is that there are literally millions of people that want to see the natural wonders of the American west, including the beauty of the Rocky Mountains themselves. This allows for money to be made through tourism, people wanting to pay to get into national parks and other natural view areas, and paying for hotel rooms and restaurants. But, the large amount of people also has some bad news associated with it – there can be many drawbacks. The drawbacks will be quickly discussed, which are the problems associated with human impact in the Rocky Mountain region, and talk about ways and means to minimize these negative human impacts.
The first thing that needs to be discussed is the large number of human visitors that go out to the Rocky Mountain area as tourists to see the great beauty that exists out west. The creation of our national park system was to allow us to have some areas left in their natural states preserved for future generation, which, of course, also means that they should be allowed to be visited by those future generations, including us. The problem, though, is that there tends to be some problems associated with all these visitors. They tend to wear down the footpaths that they are meant to travel on, when hiking, causing increased erosion to that area. They tend to frequently wander from their intended walking paths leading to the trampling of some other vegetation and more erosion. Barricades are also put in place, intended to provide safety to tourists, so that they don’t traverse any dangerous areas that can lead to their death. You’ve probably heard the recent story of the three people that died going over the waterfall at Yosemite National Park (find article here). They tend to leave trash behind, like empty water bottles or other food wrappers, leading to a trashy look to those places.
What are some ways to decrease these kinds of human impacts? We can create footpaths that are more permanent, perhaps made of concrete or natural rock that decreases erosion due to trampling. We can change up the footpaths every 1-3 years in order to let the trampled paths regrow with natural vegetation again. In areas where people tend to wander from the proper trails, put up a fence or barricade, and educate people as to why it is not desired that they wander from the footpaths. It would also help to just regularly remind people to throw their trash away in trash bins instead of on the ground, as well as perhaps providing more trash bins in places where people tend to throw their trash.
The large amounts of visitors each year also means that people use the means at their disposal to travel to those locations in the Rocky Mountains. What means are used? Usually this means the automobile, or some other motorized vehicles, including motor homes, motorcycles, trucks, or whatever. These motorized vehicles tend to emit some kind of air pollution that, if not controlled, can help to foul up the air. Fortunately the amount of air pollution caused by these motorized vehicles is not as much as what they have in the Los Angeles area that leads to smog-overcast days, but it is enough to be measurable. How can we decrease this? By making motorized vehicles friendlier to the environment by reducing the amount of pollutants that are emitted from them. We’ve done a lot in recent years with automobiles and large trucks, which have had a considerable effect on reducing air pollution. Perhaps we can do more?
Human development out west, in the Rocky Mountain region can eat up large amounts of natural vegetation and the habitats of wild animals. Much of the development out west, including the building of cities, is focused around the sector of the economy known as tourism, and includes vacation homes, resorts, hotels, the homes of residents that cater to people in the tourism industry, as well as the amenities that cater to them. As the cities in this region grow, they tend to eat up more and more land, eliminating the possibility of forest or natural scrub lands in places that were formerly natural habitat. This means that the habitat regions of different wild animals, such as deer, elk, mountain goats, mountain lions, and bears, have to change, that is, their domain boundaries have to change, based on preferred human use of that land. Add to these things the fact that many pieces of flatter land between mountains will be used as cattle grazing land by private land owners who see wild animals who come onto their land as a threat to their herd of cattle, eating their livestock, or causing disease in them, which gives them cause to kill these wild animals – this tends to decrease their numbers, and decrease their natural habitats even more.
We can mitigate this problem by controlling the size of our cities, our metropolitan areas, perhaps following the same process of urban control techniques as are practiced in certain Canadian cities such as Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg, and Toronto, which are denser and more compact than American cities, where they limit new developments to lands that are immediately adjacent to past development to eliminate checkerboard development patterns, can have a metro-wide governance controlling development and land-use, instead of the numerous city and suburban governments that compete with each other, can provide high-rise apartment and condominium buildings to allow for residential areas that use less land and intrude less into natural habitat, and so forth. As for cattle grazing lands, perhaps we can require that the owners of those lands put up barbed wire fences that are even higher than they are now in order to better keep wild animals out of their land, and better keep the cattle in, thereby eliminating the problem of wild animals intruding into private grazing lands and creating the nuisance that motivates ranchers to want to kill them to protect their livestock.
Another problem faced in the Rocky Mountain region because there are so many visitors who want to camp out and be outdoors, is the fact that this increases the amount of campfires that are created, which, if not controlled properly, or put out properly, can lead to forest fires. Add to this the fact that there are a lot of people who still smoke, and many don’t discard their cigarette butts in a proper place, instead choosing to throw it by the wayside – if still lit when thrown by the wayside, can also lead to a forest fire. It has happened in the past many times, and will most likely happen again. This can cause a devastating impact on this beautiful region of our country, leading to billions of dollars in property damage, loss of life, the destruction of the habitats of wild animals, as well as the destruction of those wild animals themselves if they can’t escape.
Of course, over the course of the past century or so, our natural resources agencies have practiced the technique of fire retardation, which, contrary to its philosophy, causes undergrowth to grow thick, and increases the likelihood of a forest fire later. The idea now is that if we would just let natural low-level fires occur in the minimal undergrowth below the tree canopies, it would eliminate the possibility of that undergrowth becoming thick and high enough to become a stepping stone to lifting those fires to the forest canopies. This has led to an increase in the frequency and intensity of forest fires. Those low level fires in the past kept that undergrowth to a minimum, thus greatly reducing the possibility of the immense size of forest fires that we have today, and make them more manageable, easier to control and stop. Perhaps if we started to do this again, first by manually reducing the undergrowth, and then regularly having low level fires to keep that undergrowth to a minimum, we could do a lot to minimize forest fires again. In the meantime, we need to educate all campers in this mountainous region as to how to have a responsible campfire, including how to properly quench their fires. We also need to get smokers to understand the importance of properly discarding cigarette butts so as to minimize the possibility of forest fires. This would help to protect natural habitats from being destroyed by high-intensity forest fires.
Another complaint that environmentalists have made is the high number of sightseeing planes and helicopters that circle above the beautiful natural domains of our national parks, causing, in their estimation, noise pollution. Why would you want to listen to the hum of an aircraft, or the chopping sound made by helicopter blades, when you should be able to hear the calm breeze blow by you, or the sound of birds chirping, or some distant loon making its call? This sentiment is easily understood, but it can also be argued that a person that is sightseeing by plane or helicopter is causing less impact to the land than someone who is walking a footpath, walking off of trails, and littering, and so, it is argued, that this type of sightseeing should stay.
So, there are many ways that visitors to the Rocky Mountain region can have a negative impact, through increased human traffic on footpaths, people straying off of footpaths, littering, motorized vehicles, human development and cattle ranges, forest fires, and so on. Are there means to mitigate these negative impacts? Yes! We can do a whole lot more than what we are doing now in order to minimize these negative impacts?
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