Can Recreation and Wildlife Conservation Coexist?
By Sidney Scarlett, Communications and Marketing Coordinator
This piece was also published in the “A Place for All” column in the Seeley Swan Pathfinder
Spend enough time on trails in the Northern Rockies and it becomes easy to believe that wildlife and recreation have reached some kind of truce.
A black bear emerges from the timber near a popular trailhead. Fresh elk tracks cross a mountain bike trail sometime before dawn. A moose browses a willow-lined creek bottom not far from a fishing access site. The animals are still here. The trails are busier than ever. From the surface, coexistence appears to be working.
But what if the story is more complicated than that?
A recently published study in Conservation Science and Practice explored that question in Wyoming’s Bridger-Teton National Forest. Over two and a half years, researchers Courtney Larson and her colleagues used trail cameras to monitor both wildlife and recreation activity across a heavily used trail network in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Their goal was not simply to determine whether wildlife occupied areas used by people, but to better understand how animals responded to human presence.
Elk, moose, black bears, mountain lions, deer, coyotes, foxes, and other species continued using many of the same landscapes frequented by hikers, cyclists, skiers, and dog walkers. At first glance, that might seem like encouraging news. If wildlife remain present despite increasing recreation, perhaps the impacts are minimal. The camera data, however, suggested otherwise.
Rather than abandoning these areas entirely, many species appeared to be changing their behavior. Elk showed some of the strongest responses, reducing their use of heavily recreated areas and shifting when they were active. Moose also adjusted their activity patterns, becoming more active during the quieter margins of the day.
Wildlife responses to recreation are often measured in absence. We tend to ask whether animals remain present on the landscape. But the more revealing question may be whether they are using the landscape in the same way they would if people were not present. Recreation does not always displace wildlife outright. More often, it reshapes behavior in ways that are easy for people to overlook.
An elk that avoids a heavily used trail corridor is still an elk on the landscape. A moose that delays movement until human activity subsides is still a moose occupying suitable habitat. Yet both animals are responding to a force that did not exist in these ecosystems for most of their evolutionary history.
The consequences of the behavioral shifts brought about by new forms of anthropogenic pressures remain an active area of research. Scientists are still trying to understand what happens when animals become more nocturnal, alter movement routes, avoid preferred habitats, or compress feeding and travel into narrower windows of time. The impacts may differ between species and seasons. Some may be relatively minor. Others may carry costs that only become apparent over longer periods. What is becoming increasingly clear is that wildlife often absorb the burden of coexistence in ways we rarely notice.
That realization arrives at an interesting moment for us here in the Northern Rockies.
Outdoor recreation has become one of the defining features of life across our region. Trails that once saw light seasonal use now attract visitors throughout much of the year. Advances in gear and technology allow people to travel farther, faster, and later into the day. Places once known primarily to local residents can quickly become destinations through a social media post or online recommendation.
None of this is inherently negative. In fact, a strong connection to the outdoors remains one of conservation’s greatest assets. People who spend time in wild places are often the same people who support habitat protection, volunteer for restoration projects, advocate for public lands, and contribute to conservation organizations.
Most of us have experienced the quiet satisfaction of seeing wildlife while hiking, fishing, hunting, or simply exploring public lands. Those encounters help define life in the Northern Rockies. They remind us that we share these landscapes with something larger than ourselves.
The challenge is not recreation itself. The challenge is learning how to recreate in ways that leave room for wildlife.
This spring, Vital Ground completed the protection of the 160-acre Falls Creek property near Troy, MT before transferring the land to the Kootenai National Forest. The project protects habitat used by grizzly bears, elk, deer, and numerous other species while ensuring the property remains part of the public landscape, complete with hiking trails providing access to the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness.
On its surface, a conservation project in northwestern Montana may seem unrelated to a recreation study conducted in Wyoming. Yet both point toward the same underlying question: What do wildlife need in a landscape increasingly shared with people?
One answer appears to be options.
When animals have access to large, connected landscapes, they retain the flexibility to respond to disturbance. They can move around areas of concentrated human activity, can access seasonal habitats, and can shift movement routes when conditions change. Connectivity allows wildlife to adapt without becoming trapped in isolated fragments of habitat.
As those options disappear, sustainable coexistence becomes more difficult.
This is one reason conservationists place so much emphasis on protecting connected landscapes rather than isolated parcels. Habitat is not simply a place where wildlife exists. It is the space that allows wildlife to move, adjust, and respond to an ever-changing world.
The authors of the Greater Yellowstone study are careful not to draw simplistic conclusions. They do not argue that recreation and wildlife are fundamentally incompatible. Nor do they suggest that every trail represents a conservation problem. Instead, they advocate for thoughtful management, continued monitoring, visitor education, and a precautionary approach to protecting sensitive habitats and seasons.
That seems like a reasonable lesson for all of us.
Whether we’re hiking a favorite trail, floating a river, hunting in the fall, or exploring a new corner of public land, our presence becomes part of the ecological story unfolding around us. We may not see the effects directly. In many cases, wildlife have become remarkably adept at avoiding us without ever leaving the landscape.
But sharing a place is not the same thing as leaving it unchanged.
The elk moving through a drainage at dawn, the moose browsing a willow flat at first light, the bear crossing a trail long after the last hiker has returned home—these animals are still finding ways to live alongside us. The question facing conservationists, land managers, and recreationists alike is whether we will leave enough room for them to keep doing so.
In a region defined by both its wildness and its outdoor traditions, that may be one of the most important forms of stewardship we can practice.
Work Cited
Larson, Courtney L., Trevor D.S. Bloom, Ashley Egan, Tim Farris, Kate Gersh, Linda Merigliano, Chris Owen, Renee Seidler and Hilary Turner. “Neighbors to Nature: A Case Study of Recreation-Wildlife Co-Existence in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.” Conservation Science and Practice, vol. 8, no. 5, 2026, e70263. DOI: 10.1111/csp2.70263.