Entitled Recreation

The puritan tiger beetle lives its larval stage in the sediments of a small number of sites along the banks of the Connecticut River. They live in vertically oriented burrows, which may at any time be submerged by flooding. That's fine, they can handle it. In fact flooding is a key to the maintenance of the sandy substrate these beetles need, and the disruption of the flood cycle be dams is one of the reasons there are only a small number of sites that hold these species left. The puritan tiger beetle is a federally threatened at the federal level and endangered in both Massachusetts and Connecticut. I've never seen a puritan tiger beetle, though I've long adored the tiger beetles in general. They're quick, alien looking, and often brilliantly colored insects that pique the "shiny thing" impulse in my brain. Ellipsoptera puritana has a wonderfully patterned back of tan and brown that may have a green sheen, and reflects almost white in the right sun. It fits the sandy habitat they hunt. And with long, slim legs, hunt they do. Tiger beetles are active and effective predators. I'd love to see one of these animals in the wild, but it's a bit hard given there may be fewer than 1,000 left in New England. And in Massachusetts, their plight isn't just being progressed by the dams and flood control that started the process, but by default of their habitat being appealing to people. Because clean sand isn't terribly common on the banks of the Connecticut, the very remaining places that are suitable for puritan tiger beetles make for a pleasant beach day for recreators that are likely blissfully unaware and careless of the imperiled species whose larval burrows they trample underfoot. 

All along the Connecticut River,  recreation has other negative impacts on insects. Odonata species (dragonflies and damselflies) are notably vulnerable. Many species emerge at the river edges on calm days, crawling to the edge and anchoring in place to shed their nymphal shuck and take their winged form. They're sensitive at this time, as it takes time for their wings to harden before they can take off. Sometimes, the wake of a passing boat full of anglers, partiers, or other recreators drowns them before they ever get the chance to take off. These wakes wash the shorelines of the river on a daily basis, even within the slow no wake zones, which were established to protect marinas, not dragonflies. The corpses of these insects and others wash into the silty water, floating lopsided and slightly mangled.  That muddy, silty wash has it's own repercussions. In Idaho, wake boats are being shown to be at fault for water quality issues in Payette Lake. Scientists testing for phosphorous, which stimulates plant and algae growth, found that levels were stirred up more on average by boat wakes than by natural wave action from.¹ My good friend David Gallipoli has been battling for legislation to regulate wake boat use on Payette. It's striking, to David and others, that recreation is as stubborn and detrimental and adversary as it is. "Out of all the extraction industries in the west- mining, logging, drilling -recreation is actually becoming the larger issue in some cases," says David. Living in McCall, he's had a front row seat to the impacts of over-use on the lake. And traveling and recreating all over the mountain west, he's seen other damage and change as well. "Part of it is just education", he says, alluding to the fact that most resource users simply aren't aware of how their activities can cause damage. And who can blame them? It isn't exactly widely available information. 

In upland forests back home in Connecticut, other recreational vehicles are causing all sorts of trouble. ATVs, dirt bikes, and off-road vehicles aren't a rare sight in some larger state forests, and it seems to the riders on them have a taste for the disruptive. On a warm April day I was out to monitor endangered wildlife in some arid upland habitat. The area had a handful of trails frequented by off-roaders. Alongside the trail in one spot was a vernal pool, a spot where I'd observed spotted salamander eggs, wood frogs, marbled salamander larvae, and once even a spotted turtle. Not many years ago off-roaders had left the adjacent trail and taken to the pond, turning it into a muddy, worthless bowl drying in the late spring sun, killing many of the delicate critters that relied on it. I was happy to see that it hadn't been disturbed yet this year. While I was off the trail doing my round, I hear dirt bikes and ATVs pass a few time. On the hike out, I gave the pool a glance again. No disruption. But before I reached the end of my walk out, I came upon a pool in the existing trail. Deeply rutted off road trails create unnatural pooling, and because water is a premium resource in these arid uplands amphibians gravitate to these anthropogenic vernal pools. The riders had ripped through this pool, and sitting next to it was a spotted salamander egg mass, high and dry and left to die in the sun. It hadn't been long though and it was still wet, so carefully I picked it up, made the last strides to my vehicle, and drove that dirt road like a tree-hugging madman to the closest pool. A dozen or so unhatched salamander larvae may be a drop in the bucket, but we're fighting a war of attrition against amphibians and reptiles. So many die in the road year over year, and it's just a matter of time before they lose the battle. I wasn't going to let these ones go without a fight. Whether they actually hatched or not I don't know, but I tried. 

Off-roading directly kills fauna, but that's far from it's only impact. It causes erosion, facilitates the spread of invasive plants, crushed out native ones, and can contribute to pollution. I've seen off-roaders in Connecticut run right up the center of a beautiful spring creek containing brook trout, slimy sculpin, and tiger spike-tail dragonflies. I've watched them rip up gravel bars and cross riffles on rivers that were part of the Atlantic salmon restoration project. I've seen new, unauthorized paths pop up in just a weeks time, right through land that timber rattlesnakes still inhabit, often going just feet within vital geologic structures, or crossing frequent travel routes. Beyond anecdotal examples such as these, this is a well studied topic. Texas biologist Richard B. Taylor compiled a review of literature of the subject, and it's a short and concise indictment on unmitigated off road vehicle use. The studies cited are thorough, from plant impacts ( "Hall (1980) concluded that ORVs reduce perennial and annual plant cover and density, and the overall above ground biomass. The degree of loss is dependent on the intensity of use, although the terms moderate and heavy use are relative and may vary from site to site")², to direct pollution ("Oil has been observed on the gravel beds of the Nueces River and many vehicles frequently ford areas deep enough to dislodge or wash off engine fluids into the river."), to wildlife health and stress ("Havlick (2002), cites numerous investigations that indicate wildlife including birds, reptiles, and large ungulates respond to disturbance with accelerated heart rate and metabolic function, and suffer from increased levels of stress"). This isn't just a recreational vehicle problem though, even mountain bikers or on-foot hikers can have significant negative ecological impacts. How do we justify these negative impacts? Is it really worth threatening endangered species and sensitive habitat just to have fun? 

I'm not immune to this in my own recreation. Fisherman sometimes love the resources we use for recreation to death, and I myself am guilty. We often demand more of fisheries than they can easily give- numbers, diversity, time... fisheries have capacities, and we over fill them. Angler hours, or the time spent by fisherman on a given fishery, are increasing in many places, and it often shows in the quality of the fishing. We've long taken the approach of replacing or inflating fish populations artificially rather than accepting what natural reproduction will provide, to sometimes disastrous ends. Thinking we can bolster wild numbers by making fish in concrete raceways just doesn't meet the evolutionary standard, as generations of fish are made to survive better and better in the hatchery, while wild fish evolve to better and better survive in actual waterways. One of many studies on the efficacy of hatcheries on fish populations focused on the Cowichan River, and the survival of chinook salmon in general was studied, both wild and hatchery raised. The study was performed not to see if the hatchery was working, but because it wasn't. "The hatchery on the Cowichan River has not only been unable to increase the abundance, it has also not been able to sustain the abundances that existed at the time the program started."³ It was a post mortem, of sorts... they were looking to figure out what went wrong. This wasn't an isolated event, either. Time and time again, hatchery programs fail to do what nature could do on its own, or are simply an extremely expensive way to keep fisherman believing that fish will always be there. It saddened me deeply to see that in recent days, as it becomes clearer and clearer that the Chesapeake striped bass spawning stock is failing to produce enough fish to support a strong coastwide fishery, that many anglers have started to push for hatchery supplementation. We are failing the striped bass, and adding more of our own creation will not save the fishery. But people continue to beat up the species, hesitant to adopt less damaging tackle as treble hooks become a clearer contributor to mortality, and unwilling to give them a break when and where they're most sensitive. Are we that entitled? Do we need to fish everything to extirpation? Do we need to ride four wheelers every place we see? Do we need so badly to have fun on the lake that our boat wakes cause a toxic algae bloom? Are we really willing to trample endangered beetles just to enjoy a beach day? These seem to be a very easy list of things to simply avoid doing for the sake of healthy, bio diverse ecosystems. If we can't actually see that the value of those species and habitats exceeds the value of just having some fun... I'm not sure that's a society I want to take part in. I find that despicable. We need to be accountable in our interactions with the natural world, and aware of the fact that every action has and impact. We need to lessen that impact as much as we can, especially when that impact comes from something as expendable as activities like boating, fishing, hiking, skiing, rock climbing, or off-roading. Even as a guide and someone who makes their living off of outdoor recreation, I realize that this is expendable. My job should not exist if it is doing so much harm as to be unsustainable. I do everything in my power to keep it sustainable, and I think my viewpoint on how it is or isn't is a fairly realistic one. I won't leave with remorse if it becomes clear that it isn't possible without undue damage, either, at least not for my own financial situation. My remorse would be for the resources I selfishly damaged in the name of having fun. We aren't entitled to unmitigated recreation at the cost of species and habitats, we are privileged to have access to wild places at all in a world where they are increasingly rare and degraded.

¹ Wakes Worse Than Weather , Max Silverson, McCall Star News. July 18 2024

² The Effects of Off-Road Vehicles on Ecosystems,  Richard B. Taylor, Texas Parks and Wildlife

³Wild chinook salmon survive better than hatchery salmon in a period of poor production, Beamish, R.J., Sweeting, R.M., Neville, C.M. et al.  Environ Biol Fish 94, 135–148 (2012). 

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