‘Success Isn’t More People’ : Rocky Mountain National Park: Where Yesterday Coexists With Today

For those who live along the Front Range of the Colorado Rockies, Rocky Mountain National Park is “almost a suburban park,” said Glen Kaye, chief naturalist for the U.S. Park Service.

It is a couple of hours from Denver, through some of the state’s best scenery.

A plaque inside the headquarters describes the 75-year-old park’s international and scientific importance. This is one of UNESCO’s “biosphere preserves.” For the last 15 years, the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization has worked to identify a network of types of ecosystems “devoted to conservation of nature and scientific research.”

The point is to provide “a standard against which the effects of man’s impact on his environment can be measured.”

Alpine Tundra

Here, conservationists hope to keep intact the 83,000 acres of alpine tundra found in the highest reaches of the park’s 265,000 acres.

Streams of cars, trucks and campers--bearing license plates of Arizona, Michigan, Nebraska and Wisconsin, among others--flow through the gates of Rocky Mountain National Park on a typical day.

The number of park visitors peaked at 3.1 million in 1978. The 1984 total was 3 million.

The number of people who visit in summer has not changed much in the last 10 years, but more and more come in the spring and fall, Kaye said.

Admission is $2 per vehicle. Park Service workers figure that it takes about 15 seconds to say hello, collect the money and wave a vehicle through the gates.

Even at 15 seconds, it does not take long for lines to form during summer. It is not uncommon to see a tired tourist give up the wait, U-turn on the highway and drive away.

Kaye and the others who work at “Rocky,” as the park is called, do not mind being crossed off an itinerary.

At a place where so much energy goes into getting things back the way they used to be, Kaye said, “Success isn’t more people.”

Rocky’s plants are found in three zones. Below 9,000 feet, montane forests feature ponderosa pines. From 9,000 to 11,000 feet, there are subalpine forests with fir and Engleman spruce. Above 11,000 feet is the alpine tundra.

In winter, winds whip up to 200 m.p.h. Temperatures plunge to minus-40 degrees. The wind-chill factor can be minus-100.

The park is not too far north, but parts of it are very high. The summit of Longs Peak is 14,255 feet above sea level. It is the altitude that provides the severe surroundings always found with tundra.

Tundra is a world in miniature, with a growing season just six to eight weeks a year. Flowers bloom in intricate, brilliantly colored variety, but a visitor must stoop to see what is there.

Alpine clover, alpine avens, arctic gentian--”There are plants growing here you would have in northern Canada or Siberia,” Kaye said.

Much of what the world understands about tundra plant life comes from research done in this park 20 years ago.

“We have a policy that we are trying to restore (the park) to conditions prior to the arrival of the first European explorers in the 1830s,” Kaye said.

Before changes are made to do that, the Park Service considers whether it is financially or physically possible.

There is a meadow of timothy planted in the 1870s that is not going to be removed “because it’s become naturalized,” Kaye said.

Otters Return

River otters--hunted out of the state when their pelts were fashionable during the last century--were reintroduced along the Colorado River eight years ago. The otters thrived and, a few years ago, some were spotted on this side of the Continental Divide.

Once miners bragged of landing 500 fish a day. They were the native greenback cutthroat trout, a species once feared extinct because of competition from imported German brown and Eastern brook trout.

A few years ago, someone noticed some cutthroats in an isolated pool outside the park. A few remote lakes now have been treated to remove the brown and brook trout, then cutthroats were stocked.

Today, with barbless hooks, it is possible to catch a native cutthroat trout in Rocky Mountain National Park. The fish must be returned to the water. The maximum fine for keeping one is $5,000.

Moose were never plentiful in Colorado, and they were gone too, until a few years ago, when 40 were released in the northwest corner of the park. They have done so well that Colorado wildlife officials last fall issued six moose-hunting permits.

Peregrine falcons may become another of Rocky’s success stories. Forty-five of the endangered birds have been released here over the last seven years.

Workers must be careful not to let the rare birds identify with humans. It is imperative that the falcons learn to survive in the wild.

When the eggs hatch, the people keep out of sight. When the fledglings are transferred to nesting boxes perched on cliffs, they continue to get hidden help.

Frozen diced quail is relayed to the nests via long tubes those first few months. The tab for a helping hand the first summer: $5,000 a bird.

Endangered by DDT

Peregrine falcons are endangered because the use of DDT, absorbed through the falcons’ diet, so weakened their eggshells that few could survive. Each winter, the falcons who summer on the cliffs of Rocky migrate to Central America.

No diced quail there; the falcons must feast on wildlife. The wildlife feed on grain and other smaller creatures from the fields and forests. In Central America, it is not illegal to spray the fields and forests with DDT.

“We put political boundaries around parks, but we can’t put boundaries on the problems,” Kaye said.

Also considered in restoring Rocky is whether moving its inhabitants is politically feasible. Sometimes it’s not.

The Park Service has identified 57 mammals that either live here or once lived here.

Old Bison Skull Found

Early settlers in Estes Park, the town just east of Rocky, reported finding numerous bison skulls as they built their new homes. A few years ago, a climber found a woodland bison skull at the 12,000-foot level of a mountain at the park’s northern edge. Carbon dating showed it was 300 years old.

Bison will not be brought back, Kaye said, because “then we’d have to build enclosures.” Bison move surprisingly fast considering their size, and they tend to charge at those who stand and stare at them.

Among others that used to call this area home are grizzly bears and wolves.

Tragic Clashes

Grizzlies are not going to be reintroduced, Kaye said, noting the tragic clashes between humans and grizzlies in Yellowstone National Park, where there is 10 times the space.

Wolves, maybe.

“There haven’t been any here since the turn of the century,” Kaye said. Even now, though, talk of returning them quickly becomes “an emotional thing. Sheepmen in particular are opposed to it--even those who live 100 miles away.”

An experiment in reintroducing Canis lupus to Yellowstone could decide the wolf’s future at Rocky.

“Each wolf needs about 50 square miles of territory,” Kaye noted. “This park could only hold about eight.”

Haven’t Been Seen

Some on the 57-mammal list--wolverines or Canadian lynx, for example--may still live here, but no one has seen them in recent years.

“No verifiable sightings” is how Kaye put it.

“Human observation is notoriously unreliable,” he said. “People see a marmot near the trail and say it’s a wolverine.”

The park staff quadruples in summer, when the 80 permanent workers are joined by 250 to 300 seasonal employees. Another 50 to 100 put in long hours as volunteers.

‘Willing Audience’

On nature walks on summer days and each night at the park’s five campgrounds, naturalists talk about aspects of the park surrounding the campers. Kaye called it “a delightful kind of education . . . it’s a willing audience . . . it’s non-threatening . . . it’s not pass or fail.”

Sometimes the subject is safety. Five to 10 people die in accidents here each year. Hypothermia, white water, high altitude--all can claim the unprepared.

Sometimes the talks are aimed at what Kaye called “shaping outdoor ethics.”

“There’s very good peer pressure” along the trails, he said. “There’s far less littering than occurred 60 years ago.”

Better Off Now

In fact, he added, “This park today is ecologically better off than it was 50 years ago.”

Still, “Anytime you mix people and ecosystems, something has to give.”

Five years ago, when back-country camping first required permits here, permits for 60,000 nights were issued. Last year, the total was down to 45,000 nights.

“People want to go where others aren’t,” he said.

Highest Highway

Few of those who pay the $2 a car to enter the park see much of the tundra up close. There is some to be seen along U.S. 34, the nation’s highest continuous highway with Trail Ridge Road’s 12,183-foot summit.

Many of the park’s wonders require some walking and, Kaye said, “Very few people will hike very far.” Of the 3 million who came in 1984, just 600,000 hiked more than half a mile.

It does not matter to Kaye and his colleagues how far anyone wants to walk. Smaller doses of the beauty, the quiet and the grandeur often seem enough.

When people drive out the gates, the only thing that matters is “that they go away with the idea that any other use of these areas would be unthinkable.”