Current, future challenges focus for Rocky Mountain National Park

ESTES PARK - John Mack hopped out of his government-issue Ford Escape one sunny mid-November day, and confirmed that a lone wind-toppled tree between campsites at Glacier Basin Campground was a lodgepole pine killed by pine beetles.

Mack, natural resources branch chief at Rocky Mountain National Park, pointed to pockets of dead trees amid the lush green lodgepoles uphill of the campground.

The pine beetles, he said, are now eating their way into forests on the east side of the park after laying waste to forests on its west side.

Just more than five years before its 2015 centennial, Rocky Mountain National Park - nicknamed "Rocky" among park staff - is in a state of flux as climate change bears down on it, deferred maintenance projects rack up a price tag greater than $50 million and industry-tainted air quality becomes a primary concern among park biologists.

Change here is everywhere: New fences around stands of aspen and willow keep elk from destroying them.

New blacktop smooths the ride for tourists driving Trail Ridge and Bear Lake roads. Pika populations are disappearing in the park's newly-designated wilderness. The chemical composition of both tundra soil and mountain lake water is becoming more and more toxic for plants and animals because agricultural and industrial pollution deposit nitrogen in sensitive areas.

Yet, in the park's dense woodlands, amid the copper-hued desolation left in the wake of the spreading pine beetle, young pines are beginning to sprout, providing hope that the forest may soon begin to recover.

For those who love Rocky's trees, Mack said, the towering lodgepoles won't fully return anytime soon. But there is hope.

"Obviously people will remember the big trees, and we won't get there," he said. "It'll take decades to get there."

Glacier Basin Campground is the postcard example of change at Rocky Mountain National Park.

Closed since 2008, the campground has seen half of its trees - many killed by the pine beetle - shorn to the ground, exposing once-sheltered campsites to full sunlight and sweeping views of Trail Ridge and snow-clad peaks to the north.

The other half of the campground remains shaded under a dense stand of young healthy-looking lodgepoles, each one sprayed with a chemical to keep the pine beetle at bay.

Elsewhere in the campground, crews are constructing new restrooms bankrolled by the park's $20 entrance fee, one of the greatest financial engines maintaining the park's buildings and roadways.

Cost of doing business

Rocky's entrance fee is among the highest in the country, though some national parks charge $25 per vehicle. The fee is a vital part of what keeps the park's visitor centers, public restrooms and roads in good shape.

There has been no lack of road construction projects at the park in recent years, each one taking a large chunk out of the park's more than $80 million worth of deferred maintenance projects, park superintendent Vaughn Baker said. Once the road projects are complete, about $50 million in maintenance projects remain for park managers to deal with.

It's a staggering figure considering deferred maintenance projects in other Colorado national parks amount to far less.

Mesa Verde National Park, which has a plethora of buildings dating to the 1930s and earlier, has a maintenance backlog currently stacking up to $5.8 million. Tiny Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park has a backlog of $4.7 million.

Each year Rocky Mountain National Park receives between $6 million and $8 million in congressional appropriations and entrance fees earmarked specifically for maintenance projects, Baker said. If that level of funding continues, the backlog of maintenance on more than 800 buildings, trails and campgrounds will be gone in about a decade.

"We've got a ways to go," Baker said.

There's a lot to do: Trails that have hardly been touched in 75 years need to be reconstructed in places to allow for proper drainage and prevent erosion. Historic buildings need to be maintained, and old sewer lines must be replaced.

Crowd control

The crowds must be dealt with.

The park is considering the potential for a surge in visitors over the next two decades, when an additional 2 million people flocking from Front Range cities are projected to visit annually, Baker said.

"At what point do you say enough is enough?" he said. "In some areas (other parks) have limited access to a particular part of the park because of the fragility of the resources. We haven't come to that here yet. We haven't established a threshold."

He said Yosemite National Park is considering a limit to the number of cars allowed in Yosemite Valley to prevent uncontrolled numbers of tourists from harming park resources.

Though the crowds visiting Rocky Mountain National Park's 265,000 acres peaked in 1999 when 3.18 million people arrived at the gates, the number has hovered between 2.7 million and 3 million for years, according to Park Service statistics.

"Rocky is relatively small for the number of visitors it gets," said David Nimkin of the National Parks Conservation Association. "Because it is an 'urban' park, because it is fragile, it is being managed and fairing quite well. Some of the larger parks, the numbers of people that visit those parks is in areas that are substantially larger."

Yellowstone National Park, for example, last year saw 3 million visitors spread over about 2 million acres.

A wilderness in flux

As the crowds of visitors continue to line up at the entrance stations at Rocky Mountain National Park, the wild backcountry many of them come to explore may be changing as rapidly as the bark beetle is spreading.

Of the five populations of pika - a tiny rabbit-like mammal that lives and chirps amid alpine talus slopes - known in the park, two low-elevation populations disappeared this year, said Ben Bobowski, the park's chief of resource stewardship.

The health of pikas in Colorado has long been known as a possible indicator of the impact of climate change, but it's premature to say whether climate change is behind the pika's disappearance, he said.

"It's difficult to say it's a cause and effect," he said. "But it certainly seems that it's one indicator of change."

Park biologists' observations next summer will provide more clues, he said.

A plethora of other ecological issues pose serious challenges to park managers, particularly air quality and nitrogen deposition.

Ultimately, though, the park is battling many unknowns with climate change and other environmental issues, Bobowski said.

One of those unknowns is the future of the park's glaciers.

Unlike most other mountain parks across the West, Rocky Mountain National Park's glaciers aren't rapidly melting - yet.

Many of the park's glaciers are tucked away in shady nooks where sub-freezing temperatures most of the year keep them from dripping away.

"We haven't seen anything dramatic as of yet attributed to climate change," Bobowski said. But, "we're preparing for them to retreat."

Cause for celebration

Despite the ecological and other challenges the park must face in the coming years, celebration is on the minds of park officials who see one of the park's greatest milestones on the horizon.

Rocky Mountain National Park turns 95 in a few months and park officials are already preparing for a centennial celebration in 2015. It will follow several other Colorado parks that will have thrown centennial celebrations by then, including Mesa Verde National Park and Colorado National Monument.

"We're just starting to think about that," Baker said. "Probably the biggest challenge there is in 2015, we'd like to make sure Rocky Mountain is still relevant to Colorado and the people of the nation."

Sixty percent of the park's visitors are local, he said.

With junior ranger and other education programs, the park will try to find ways to pique the interest of kids, ensuring that the park is relevant to all generations of Coloradans, young and old, he said.

"For the centennial, that's our biggest challenge," he said.

This story written by Bobby Magill, Fort Collins Coloradoan.