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Jackson Hole’s busiest trails may feel, to some residents and visitors, like a place where wildlife gets crowded out, but a new study led by Courtney Larson and collaborators has found evidence consistent with coexistence in the area. The research focused on nonmotorized trails near the Bridger-Teton National Forest and wildlife refuge, where recreators regularly encounter wildlife including moose, wolves, mountain lions and grizzly bears.
Larson, a conservation scientist with The Nature Conservancy, said the project began with a question about whether the near-town trail network had been overrun by recreation use. “People think of that area as like a sacrifice zone,” Larson told WyoFile, explaining that the team wanted to test that idea against wildlife behavior seen in the field.
To do that, the collaborators set up remote cameras along 27 locations adjacent to nonmotorized trails inside a 36-square-mile area south and east of Jackson. The study—called “Neighbors to Nature: Cache Creek Study”—started six years ago as a joint effort involving The Nature Conservancy, Bridger-Teton National Forest, the Jackson Hole Wildlife Foundation, Friends of Pathways and the Teton Raptor Center.
The team drew its conclusions by analyzing 1.9 million images, including roughly 310,000 photos of humans, 54,000 detections of domestic dogs and 8,300 photos of wild mammals. In those data, Larson said the researchers found limited evidence of wildlife avoidance. “Overall, we didn’t find a lot of significant avoidance,” Larson said, adding that wildlife species used the area “despite really high recreation.”
The publication of the results in April in the journal Conservation Science and Practice comes amid planning work for the Bridger-Teton National Forest, which is revising its forest plan that is 36 years old. Recreation is expected to be a central issue in that planning effort, according to the study collaborators.
The researchers reported differences across species. They said elk appeared to be the most sensitive to disruptions: faced with high human use, elk were more active in the mornings and evenings, and the animals also avoided areas with lots of recreation. Moose, by contrast, did not avoid habitat altogether but adjusted the time of day they used highly trafficked areas, while mule deer, black bear, coyote, skunk and mountain lion did not significantly alter their habitat use due to recreation.
The study also compared wildlife responses to the type of human activity. The analysis of remote camera images showed that foot traffic—hiking, skiing and snowshoeing—produced more negative wildlife responses than did cycling or the presence of domestic dogs. Larson said the patterns for recreation type were “mixed, and kind of confusing,” and she described the challenge of interpreting camera-based behavior because the cameras show use during a limited time span and do not measure distance from trails.
Larson emphasized limitations of the data, including that the cameras captured activity during a 2.5-year “snapshot in time” when the trails were already established. She said: “This area has been used really heavily for recreation for a long time,” and the study therefore did not show how much the animals might have changed from earlier periods when recreational use was lower. “I don’t want it to be portrayed as, ‘We have no impact, recreation and wildlife are totally fine,’” Larson added.
The results were also intended to provide a baseline for future management discussions. Linda Merigliano, a retired Bridger-Teton recreation specialist and a collaborator on the study, said the team hoped the findings would help others build metrics for wildlife-recreation coexistence into the forest plan process. “We really wanted this to serve as a baseline,” Merigliano said, describing the use of the data as the forest plan is updated.
Merigliano said the Cache Creek area—an area she described as resilient and influenced by its setting along the Gros Ventre Wilderness and the National Elk Refuge—should not be understood as a sacrifice zone. “The beloved Cache Creek area (it’s even the subject of a book ) ‘is not a sacrifice zone,’” Merigliano said, adding that coexistence still requires active management such as seasonal closures and rules that encourage visitors to stay on trails.
The study area includes more than 50 miles of trails that extend from Snow King Mountain and reach through the Cache Creek drainage, down to Game Creek, with its western boundary along U.S. Highway 89. In a note of caution alongside the overall finding of limited avoidance, collaborators said the data point toward nuanced species responses and the need for continued management rather than a conclusion that recreation has no effects.