Looking at wildlife a little too closely.....

My wife recently walked in on a bear ransacking our refrigerator. Jennie and the bear survived the incident just fine, though Jennie got an adrenaline rush and I fear for the bear. The bear has cost RMBL thousands of dollars and been in numerous cabins. John McPhee’s “Coming Into the Country” quotes Alaskans talk about living in bear country. They all have different responses, from shooting a threatening bear to accepting the threat as an inevitable part of cohabitation with the wild. Regardless of the strategy, however, it is clear that by living in bear country we are affecting them. Wild bears simply don’t learn how to open door handles and know how to grab a beer from a refrigerator (though they still struggle with twist-offs— but hey, so do I).

Many people think of Gothic as being wild. Compared to many places, it is. However, the area is still recovering from when it was clear cut in the mining days. And there are people, and associated impacts (many of which derive from the presence of RMBL), throughout the valley. It is many things, including untamed and beautiful. But it isn’t free of human impact.

I often get asked how scientists can study an ecosystem that is disturbed. It’s a great question and there is no single answer. Some scientists explicitly study disturbance. Others need to work in areas that are not disturbed and they go elsewhere— such as the Mexican Cut (a private reserve dedicated to research). There is no single answer to how disturbance affects research— we have many pollination biologists because the introduced honeybee doesn’t come up this high in elevation— other disturbances just don’t matter that much.

At the end of the day, there is no place on earth that is completely undisturbed by human impacts. But, it is good to have valleys like the one around Gothic where it is still possible for scientists to ask a range of questions in which the level of disturbance is small. And, RMBL has a responsibility, which we take very seriously, to limit our own impacts on the valley. Hopefully we can manage our presence to avoid putting too many bears in harm’s way.