One glance at the busy bookshelves and coffee tables in Rick and Heather Knight's
home tells the visitor that they are up to something big.
The books and the stacks of articles range from scholarly histories and professional
papers on conservation biology to environmental journalism and humorous cowboy
stories, but the theme is the same: the American West, big.
In fact, the scale
of the Knights' professional and personal focus is neatly summarized in
the title of one of Rick Knight's own books: "Stewardship Across
Boundaries."
And as the title suggests, much of this focus could be called unorthodox.
Still, it is not a coincidence that one of their favorite authors is the late
Wallace Stegner, award-winning novelist, essayist, historian and iconic dean
of the region. Like Stegner, the Knights are passionately devoted to the West,
to its history, its wildlife and its wide open spaces.
And also like Stegner, both are actively dedicated to creating, in the words
of the famous author, "a society to match the scenery." It hasn't
been easy.
We found out – Heather
Knight
"We live in a take, take, take world," said Rick Knight. "Even
recreation
is a form of taking, though most people don't think of it that way. What
we need to do instead is give, and that means becoming involved in a place-based
conservation effort."
Which is exactly what the Knights have done. In their case, the 'place' is
the mix of private and public land that stretches north from Fort Collins,
Colo., to the Wyoming border – the last significant block of relatively
unfragmented land left along Colorado's Front Range.
Considering what has happened to the land from Fort Collins south to Colorado
Springs and beyond – gone to subdivisions at the rate of an acre per hour – the
Knights believe the only hope for their community is through a collaborative
effort that unites ranchers, farmers, conservationists, scientists and local
officials.
"There is no other way," said Heather Knight. "Either we link
arms
to protect this precious landscape, or we're going to lose it forever."
Becoming Native
United in their goal, each has chosen different paths of action. Heather
works for The Nature Conservancy as director of the Laramie Foothills Mountains
to Plains Project, which aims to conserve the private land in the "danger
zone" through a combination of conservation easements, tax incentives,
land purchases and stewardship initiatives.
"Heather is the keystone in an incredible community effort," said
her husband. "No
one I know works harder, or has had more success."
Rick Knight has been a professor of wildlife biology for 19
years at nearby Colorado State University and has eight books and 110 peer-reviewed
articles under his belt, most of them focused on land use and conservation.
He has sat on numerous boards, including the Society for Conservation Biology,
and
remains involved in active research, not to mention his full-time teaching
duties.
Ironically, neither Rick or Heather Knight are native to the West, which
doesn't make them any less "western" than many other worried residents, including
Wallace Stegner, who was born in Iowa. In fact, like the novelist, their experience
in "becoming western" has provided rich material for their careers
as well as their concerns.
Rick Knight was "born on wheels," as he put it. His father, a Navy
scientist and world authority on mosquito-borne diseases, moved the family
from Maryland, where Rick was born, to Florida, then to Egypt and beyond,
meeting career demands.
In addition to cultivating a desire for life-long learning (there are five
doctorate degrees
in Knight's family), his father's agrarian roots also had a profound
impact on the future biologist. "I grew up with a healthy respect for rural
people," said Knight, "which only grew stronger as I got older."
After a tour in Vietnam as a Marine himself (a platoon commander in the DMZ),
Knight returned to the States to pick up his education. A master's degree
in wildlife biology at the University of Washington was followed shortly
by a Ph.D.
from the
University of Wisconsin at Madison, the stomping ground of another of Knight's
heroes, Aldo Leopold. An offer of a faculty position at CSU and a move to
Fort Collins came next.
Through the years of traveling, studying, writing and teaching, a common
thread to Knight's work emerged: Knowledge, to be relevant, needs to be place-based
and applicable to the real world. This has frequently set him at odds with
his
colleagues, especially in academia, who often are reluctant to bridge theory
and practice.
"There is no reason for our teaching or our research to be esoteric," said
Knight," it needs to be relevant. And considering the world's conservation
problems, what could be more important than teaching, service, and research
that benefits both human and natural communities?"
One reason Knight is drawn to applied ecology is the sense of urgency he
feels about his adopted home.
"Given the rate of loss of private ranch and forest lands in the West," he
said, "what we accomplish in the next 10 years will be critical in how
the West looks and for the long-term survival of much of the region's natural
heritage."
A Longer Road
Heather Knight traveled more miles, and in less time, than her husband did
to get to Colorado, which might explain why, despite nearly 14 years of steady
work on land management issues, she is not ready to call herself a native.
Another
reason might be because a remnant of her Australian accent identifies her
as "exotic" still.
Although Knight grew up in Sydney, she had family farming roots, which is
why when she attended college (the first in her working class family to do
so)
she gravitated toward the "applied" side of her ecological studies. Desiring
to be outside as much as possible, and needing a paycheck, she worked every summer
in the field doing biological research, which also allowed her to exercise another
passion – long-distance running.
After a post-graduation stint in the recreation industry at Alice Springs,
Knight headed to Brisbane where she earned a graduate degree in science education.
A
teaching job was followed by more graduate research, this time focused on
the of impact tourist helicopter overflights on the marine wildlife of the
Great
Barrier Reef, which the data demonstrated to be substantial.
Birds were another passion. In 1990, she accepted an invitation to deliver
a paper at the International Ornithological Congress in New Zealand, where
she
met an exuberant American wildlife professor from Colorado, also there to
report on recent research. Five days after making introductions, Rick Knight
proposed.
"Fort Collins was a total shock," she recalled. "All the snow,
and no humidity. The first time I went for a run I got a nosebleed. And it
felt like
I had a heart attack, because of the elevation."
Employing a runner's dedication and energy, she applied herself to the
study of her new home. She volunteered for The Nature Conservancy, and
was quickly promoted to a full-time position at the Conservancy's nearby
Phantom Canyon Preserve.
The 400,000-acre Laramie Foothills
At the time, the conservancy was going
through significant changes, including a
transition to a community-based model of conservation. Another change was
the realization
that effective ecological protection meant working at the landscape scale.
Both
of these changes resulted in a decision to 1) hire from within the community;
and 2) begin a collaborative process that could engage the wide variety of
landowners and interested parties in a landscape.
"We found out that if conservation were only about money, it would be
easy," she
recalled. "But it's mainly about relationships and working across
boundaries with neighbors, especially if you want the results to be longer-lasting."
Her work took her into the homes of local ranchers and farmers where her
diplomatic skill helped her win their trust. She listened, too, to what
the community
said it needed. For example, she turned her prodigious energy to the creation
of a
local weed cooperative, needed in order to combat one of the West's most
intractable challenges – the cancerous spread of non-native weeds.
"Weeds are the third-biggest threat to biodiversity in the West," said
Knight, "so
it's got to be taken seriously. And the thing about weeds is that it requires
cooperation across fencelines. A single landowner can't do it alone."
Through countless meetings, and endless cups of coffee, Heather marshaled
the weed cooperative into existence. To her surprise, her accent was not
a liability.
"I'm an alien too," she said with her easy smile, "but
I'm
not invasive or noxious, I hope."
Success
All the trust-building and hard work over 14 years is about to pay off,
hopefully, as the community finds itself on the brink of a major success.
It involves the 400,000-acre Laramie Foothills, a biologically rich transition
zone that stretches from shortgrass prairie in the east to alpine mountains
on the west.
Notably, more than 70 percent of this landscape is privately owned, predominated
by a few remaining ranch families, and nearly all of it is threatened from
contagious subdivisions to the south. In the mid 1990s, The Nature Conservancy
decided that
this
22-by-25-mile
block of land was a top conservation priority.
One reason was a deep concern for wildlife. Rick Knight often points out
that most western mountain ranges run north-south, which means most wildlife
migrations
are east-west, as they move from summer to winter pastures and back again.
When ranches constitute the critical "in between" lands, the
migrations are unobstructed. But when subdivisions move in, wildlife migration
routes
are severed, often to deleterious effect.
"Up and down the Front Range, the land is being broken into smaller and
smaller
pieces," said Heather Knight. "We all understood that the Laramie
Foothills was our last, best chance to protect critical wildlife migration
corridors."
One of Heather Knight's main tasks was to reassure private landowners that
the word "work" would remain a part of "working landscapes" – something
that was met with skepticism initially.
"There was a trust issue," said Knight. "Fortunately, being
a foreigner, I genuinely wanted and needed to learn as much as possible.
So I asked if I could come to their place and learn. I was also willing to admit
mistakes.
Both of
these created a different kind of conversation with the landowners here."
Over time, she helped place 15,000 acres under conservation easements,
through both The Nature Conservancy and a local land trust, thus protecting
the land
from
development
in
perpetuity. She also worked hard to get local governments more actively
involved, assisted
by new tax laws that allowed for the purchase of open space.
"There's nothing more satisfying than seeing a diverse community
come together
for a shared larger goal," said Knight. "Now we have families
involved who absolutely stayed away in the beginning. It takes time, but
the payoff
in terms of conservation is bigger."
"Just
as historically we overgrazed,
– Rick Knight
Today, there is a very real possibility that the Laramie
Foothills will be protected as an intact, working landscape.
Knight and friends have placed
a large proposal
in front of Great Outdoor Colorado, a state agency that uses lottery
money to protect open space, to put all the pieces together;
55,000 acres of private
land
would be protected, 65 percent by easement and the rest by purchase.
Money for
additional protection would be leveraged with The Nature Conservancy,
county, and city money, protecting
another
20,000 acres of private land from development.
Many fingers are crossed. If funded, the Laramie Foothills project could
set a big precedent for the West.
"A skepticism about community-based collaboration I hear all the time
centers
on how long it takes," said Knight. "But it's the only way
to get large-scale conservation done. And as my mother liked to say, patience
is a virtue."
But perhaps most important to Knight was the trust and cooperation of
the landowning families that she earned.
"It was incredibly hard," said Knight. "All the families are
under incredible pressure, including pressure from internal conflict. But
it was such a joy to work with them all these years, and I just hope and pray
we can finish
the job."
For The Birds
Rick Knight has a bit of the Man From La Mancha in him. That's because,
like the famous Don, this professor of wildlife biology tends to charge
at many of the West's sturdiest windmills.
Take the issue of recreation on public land, for instance. Most environmentalists
and many federal managers now tout recreation as the "highest and best
use" of our public lands. Recreation is also promoted as the principle
economic hope for many rural communities, especially as the number of day-visits
to our national forests and parks continue to rise – to more than
1 billion
per year at last count.
"Thus, whether on foot, by horse, motorcycle, mountain bike, ski or snowmobile,"
wrote
Knight in a recent article, "people will increasingly enter our public
lands to seek spiritual elevation, aesthetic enjoyment, the companionship of
family and friends, exercise, or just to escape from the stress of our urbanized
cementscapes. That is the present and more of it will be in our future." [1]
"Isn't this ok?," he continued. "Hasn't this been
the struggle that has defined the environmental movement for almost a
century? Out with the damaging extractive uses of logging, mining and livestock
grazing and in with the more environmentally friendly and benign pursuits of
outdoor
recreation."
Now comes the charge at the windmill.
To Knight, this shift may NOT be ok. "From where I stand, there appears
to be a certain degree of duplicity in our discussions to substitute amenity
uses for commodity uses."
That's because people are not asking two tough questions: whether recreation
is ecologically benign, and whether we can better manage recreation
than we did logging and grazing.
On the second question, Knight is not sanguine. Trends in tourism and
rural economic development, recreational equipment and off-road vehicle
sales,
and federal land
policy goals all point in one direction: up. In fact, Knight noted, the
number of people participating in wildlife-oriented recreational activities
is projected
to increase between 63 percent and 142 percent over the next 50 years.
This news
is
worrisome
to the biologist.
"Just as historically we overgrazed, overlogged, overmined and overdammed
our
public lands," he wrote, "today we are gathering together the
forces that may overrecreate these lands in the future."
Not So Benign
It is the answer to the first question, however, that most distresses
Knight. Recent research, including his own and that of his students,
suggests that
the ecological effects of recreation are far from benign.
In one study, for example, the second leading cause of the decline of
threatened species on public lands was recreation, right behind dams
and other types
of water development.
Recreationists, noted Knight, have various deleterious effects: They
modify vegetation and soil with their activity; their presence can cause
the abandonment
of preferred
wildlife feeding sites; and the stress they cause on wild animals can
change reproduction
rates, or even cause death.
"Recreation simplifies communities of plants and animals," Knight
wrote. "It results in increased numbers of human-adapted species and
reduced numbers of species whose evolutionary history and ecological requirements
puts
them at odds
with people."
Scott Miller, one of Knight's graduate students, divided the learned
responses of wildlife to humans into three categories: 1) avoidance – when humans
are perceived as a threat, wildlife may abandon their usual habitat; 2) attraction – human
rewards, often in the form of food, can alter a wild animal's natural behavior;
and 3) habituation – repeated exposure to humans can also cause animals
to become less "wild." [2]
"Many believed that nonconsumptive outdoor recreation was an environmentally
Benign
activity," wrote Miller. "Increasing evidence, however, indicates
that these activities are, in fact, not Benign On the contrary, data
suggest that outdoor recreation can affect wildlife individuals, populations,
and
communities."
Just how adversely recreation affects wildlife is still a matter of research. "Our
knowledge is still rudimentary," noted Miller. "We can only speculate
that increased mortality, reduced productivity, and displacement of individuals
(all documented, at least anecdotally) will result in decreased populations."
Rick Knight summed up their research this way: "Regretfully, this
new American West with its robust tourism-dependent economy will result
in an altered
natural
heritage. Rather than seeing more species that have figured prominently
in our imagination of the West, we will see fewer."
Land Use
Recently, and in perhaps his most quixotic adventure to date, Knight
has tackled the politically volatile question of biodiversity and land
use in
the West.
Under traditional thinking, biodiversity – the quantity and richness of
species in a given area – is always highest in protected areas, such
as national parks and wildlife refuges, especially when compared to working
ranches
or exurban (low density) housing developments.
As a consequence of this thinking,
the traditional response by conservation groups and others to threats
to biodiversity has been to increase the size and number of acres in
nonconsumptive
use (other
than recreation).
However, the results of a study led by another of Knight's students,
Jeremy Maestas, challenges this conventional line of thought. [3]
As far as they could determine, no study had actually been done comparing
biodiversity between protected areas, ranches and exurban developments.
This was important
for another reason: An emerging, alternative trend in the conservation
movement is to work with ranchers to keep their land intact, and in agriculture,
through
conservation easements and other tools, rather than see the private property
broken into ranchettes.
"This emerging trend to biodiversity protection has some untested assumptions,"
they
wrote. "It assumes that biodiversity on ranches is no different than
that found on protected areas, or at least that biodiversity is better
served on
ranches than on exurban developments."
This trend also conflicts with the argument made by many environmentalists
that livestock gazing is the most destructive land use in the West today,
as well
as the principal threat to the region's biodiversity.
Knight and company decided to test these assumptions scientifically.
Results
The study site was a blend of public and private land northwest of Fort
Collins. The team sampled plant and animal communities by selecting points
randomly
across the landscape for study. Particular attention was paid to songbird
populations.
They found densities of native plants and animals higher on ranches and
protected areas than in exurban developments. Human-adapted bird species,
for example,
reached their highest densities in the exurban areas. Dog and cat populations
were very high in these areas as well, while coyotes were rarely seen.
This is significant because dogs and cats, which the authors call "subsidized
predators," have a major impact on wildlife.
"House cats have been implicated in the decline and extinction of scrub-breeding
songbirds in two studies in California," the authors noted. Dogs are known
to harass and kill wildlife. "Research has shown that they can extend
the zone of human influence and contribute to the annual mortality of some
species."
More surprising was another conclusion.
"More species of native plants were found on ranches than on the other
two land
uses," they wrote. "The dominant non-native plant, cheatgrass,
was more prevalent in terms of cover on the protected areas and exurban
development
than on ranches."
Ranches supported greater biodiversity than exurban development, they
determined, for three reasons: Ranches had less human-adapted wildlife
species, greater
numbers of native wildlife species, and more native plant species than
exurban developments.
"Our results," they concluded, "support the emerging strategy
for
biodiversity protection being implemented by environmental NGOs."
There was one more conclusion.
"Our study found that biodiversity was at least as well served on ranches
as it
was on protected areas."
They noted that most protected areas lie at higher elevations and on
the least productive soils. Additionally, many critical riparian areas,
which
were homesteaded
historically, lie on the lands of private ranches.
"Our results combined with this information suggest that we will not be
able to sustain native biodiversity in the Mountain West by relying merely on
protected
areas," they concluded. "Future conservation efforts to protect
this region's natural heritage will require closer attention being paid
to the
role of private lands."
Home
Author Wallace Stegner once called the American West the "native home of
hope." Few individuals in the region understand this optimism better
than Rick and Heather Knight. At the same time, few understand the challenges
to
hope better than they do.
"It's easy to despair," said Rick Knight, "but being
involved in community-based initiatives is the best antidote for pessimism
I can think
of."
Knight finds solace and inspiration in his students. "I have been so blessed," he
said. "Every one of my graduate students is working in conservation
today. I love teaching. It's what keeps me going."
Knight recently led an effort to create a new, interdisciplinary department
within CSU called "Forest, Rangeland, and Watershed Stewardship." Its
goal is to integrate what had been disparate disciplines and focus the
coursework on applied research and management. It is the first department
of its kind
in
the nation.
"There was real resistance to the word "stewardship" within
the university," Knight
said. "Many academics still believe in the ivory tower. But the truth
is, if we don't do something in the real world, we're going to lose most
of what we love."
Following his own advice, Knight recently joined the Board of the Colorado
Cattleman's Land Trust, an industry-led group dedicated to preserving
ranching through the
purchase of conservation easements and other emerging tools. He also
serves on the Science Advisory Team for the Malpai Borderlands Groups,
cooperative
a community-based
effort based in southeastern Arizona.
"At the end of the day, all of us who live in the West should pause and
consider
how fortunate we are," said Knight. "It reminds me of E.B. White's
quote ‘I rise every morning torn between a desire to save or savor
the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.' "
Whatever happens, there is little doubt that the energetic Knights, who
are as comfortable in cowboys hats and on horses as they are facilitating
meetings
or
lecturing students, will continue to live their lives with as much gusto
as possible. At work or at play, they are determined to fulfill Stegner's
instructions
to "create a society to match the scenery."
"What I've learned," said Heather Knight, "is that home
is not
a place where people live, it's a place where people care, about the land,
each other, and a shared future."
Citations:
[1] This information is based on an article by Rick Knight
in ‘Outdoor
Recreation: Promise and Peril in the New West: a Conference / June 1998' published
by CSU. A condensed version can be found in the Quivira Coalition's June
1999 (vol. 2 no. 4) newsletter.
[2] "Environmental Impacts: the Dark Side of Outdoor Recreation," by
Scott Miller, published in ‘Outdoor Recreation: Promise and Peril in
the New West: a Conference / June 1998' and reprinted in the Quivira Coalition's
June 1999 (vol. 2 no. 4) newsletter.
[3] Quotes are from "Holy Cow! Biodiversity on Ranches, Developments, and
Protected Areas in the ‘New West'" by Jeremy Maestas, Richard
Knight, and Wendell Gilgert, in the Quivira Coalition's January 2002 (vol.
5 no. 1) newsletter.
Additional information can be found in “Ranching West of the 100th
Meridian: Culture, Ecology, and Economics / edited by Rick Knight, Wendell
Gilgert, and Ed Marston. Island Press, 2002. |
Courtney
White writes