The Path Forward for Colorado Wildlife Conservation in the Gunnison Basin

For anyone who cares about wildlife, the headline should have stopped you in your

tracks. It appeared in the Denver Post in October 2022 and read, “Colorado’s world-

class elk herd in bull’s-eye of outdoor recreation boom, report warns.”

The report in question was from the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnerships

(TRCP) and found that nearly 40% of the most important elk habitat statewide overlaps

with trails, resulting in elk potentially avoiding more than 8 million out of nearly 22 million

acres. In the backdrop of this concerning scenario is Colorado’s booming outdoor

recreation economy — and the tens of thousands of miles of mapped trails used by

hikers, mountain bikers, ATV riders and others.

TRCP’s analysis confirmed what many of us had known for years: the level of trail

development, let alone residential development, that we’ve seen in Colorado over the

last couple decades — and that we continue to see with no end in sight — is simply not

sustainable if we desire to maintain our ungulate herds and other wildlife species they

support.

Take, for instance, the Vail Valley’s elk herds, which have seen long-term population

declines, with numbers of animals roughly half of what they were in the early 2000s.

Habitat fragmentation from housing development and recreational disturbance are the

primary culprits. For communities elsewhere in Colorado — such as the Gunnison Basin

— where ungulate herds are still thriving, but that also are reliant on tourism and

recreation as an economic driver, the writing is on the wall: If we don’t enact safeguards

to protect our cherished wildlife resources, we will lose them. It’s only a matter of time.

What kind of safeguards you might ask? They could be many, including policies that

seek to preserve important migration corridors, wildlife-crossing initiatives, conservation

easements to protect important habitat, the list goes on. My message is less

prescriptive than it is a call to action.

Look, the biggest threat to wildlife populations today is habitat loss and fragmentation.

So if we’re serious about preserving our wildlife, we have to find ways to preserve

habitat — and that requires folks standing up for what matters, by supporting groups like

Gunnison Wildlife Association (GWA), by putting pressure on decision-makers when the

time is right, and by helping friends and neighbors better understand the problem and

the solutions.

GWA has a nearly 30-year history of fighting threats to our rich wildlife resources. Most

recently, we helped to get a proposal across that finish line that converts remaining

over-the-counter elk licenses in the northern Gunnison Basin to limited, or draw-only.

This change will bring myriad benefits for elk and hunters alike, including more proactive

and adaptive management so that we can respond quickly to threats, higher bull-cow

ratios, and less hunter crowding.

The threats to our wildlife are not going away. GWA is here to face those threats head-

on. We hope you’ll stand with us to preserve the health and sustainability of our public

lands and wildlife.

(Will Shoemaker is a professional communicator in wildlife and public lands conservation and former editor of the Gunnison Country Times. He serves as Vice President of External Affairs on the Gunnison Wildlife Association Board of Directors.)