Balancing Recreation and Wildlife in the Adirondack High Peaks: Report to the Waterman Fund

Protected areas are commonly established with a dual mandate to provide public access for outdoor recreation, education, and other human activities while also protecting plant and animal species, habitats, and ecological processes. Outdoor recreation has many human health and economic benefits; it also influences people’s political and financial support for land and wildlife conservation. Outdoor recreation is often assumed to be compatible with species protection and is permitted in most protected areas globally. However, a growing body of research demonstrates that outdoor recreation can negatively impact plant and animal communities in several ways including declines in species abundance, occupancy, or density, changes in spatial or temporal habitat use, reduced reproductive success, and behavioral effects such as flight and increased vigilance. The Waterman Fund supported our research to investigate bird and mammal community characteristics and their relationship to recreational use intensity on High Peaks trails and alpine areas. Our objectives were to (1) inform future High Peaks management policies for trail use and recreation management using scientifically supported information by (2) applying existing data to investigate the relationship between recreation visitation and the composition and structure of bird and mammal communities in the High Peaks, to determine which species may be most sensitive to disturbance by recreation and in which locations.

This report describes our investigation of the relationship between recreation visitation and the composition and structure of bird and mammal communities in the Adirondack High Peaks and the broader Northeast. This effort was part of a multidisciplinary socioecological study conducted in partnership with the Wildlife Conservation Society and supported by the National Science Foundation.