As far as human activities go, outdoor recreation has seemed relatively benign in its impacts compared with building a subdivision, oil-and-gas field, or shopping center. But researchers are beginning to understand that it’s causing distress to wildlife all over the country. The signs ordering bikers to stay out of Hartman Rocks were an early example of an uncomfortable realization: Our fun and the future of wildlife do not always align.
Over time, the tracts of land managed by federal agencies became massive playgrounds, used all the more during the coronavirus pandemic. BLM land clocked 81 million visits in 2022—a jump of 10 million from just three years before, and a 40 percent increase over 2012. Visits to national forests and wilderness areas, too, increased by 18 million from 2019 to 2020.
Most of these brushes, of people spooking bighorn sheep, elk, or deer, fall into the grizzly-bear category: Almost 60 percent of wildlife interactions with outdoor recreation are negative, according to a 2016 review of 274 scientific papers.
Loving it to death and landscapes of fear. Population pressures continue to mount and most humans are oblivious. A bad mix.