Western Nature Writers

An Interview with David M. Armstrong

By Jenny Shank, 6-27-08

David M. Armstrong is a Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado and the author of several books, including the recently published third edition of Rocky Mountain Mammals (University of Colorado Press, $19.95), a guide to the mammals of this region and those in Rocky Mountain National Park in particular.  Packed with photos and facts, the book is worth its weight to lug on a backpacking trip.  I recently interviewed Professor Armstrong via email about the best way to spot mammals in the wild, the projected fate of the pika, changes he’s observed in Rocky Mountain National Park, the dearth of Bigfoot sightings there, and how we should “honor [our] cousin,” the montane vole.

New West: How did you first become interested in the mammals of this region?

David M. Armstrong: I grew up in Greeley and worked at Boy Scout Camps in Glen Haven and Red Feather Lakes. Usually I was involved with “nature hikes,” and I think my interest in mammals probably was solidified at this time. Also, at CSU I had a wonderful professor for “Mammalogy,” Dr. Bob Lechleitner. His enthusiasm for knowing the lives of native mammals was infectious.

NW: For how long have you been studying the animals in Rocky Mountain National Park?

DMA: Off and on informally as a visitor since I was a kid in the 1950s, and in recent decades as a frequent fieldtrip and workshop leader in the Park. Although I have done fieldwork for decades near the National Park on all sides, in a variety of habitats, my formal research in the National Park per se has been limited to an intensive three-year study of impacts on small mammals and their habitats of the Lawn Lake Flood of 1982.

NW: Have you noticed any changes in the park over the years?

DMA: The fauna of any place is a dynamic phenomenon, a “work-in-progress,” and changes are sometimes subtle. Obvious changes in recent decades have been the substantial increase in the number of elk in the National Park and vicinity, ups and downs in numbers (hence visibility) of bighorn sheep and beaver, the increase in the number of black bears in recent years, the establishment of moose in the National Park (from introduced population in North Park).

Slightly more subtle is the expansion of the non-native fox squirrel into “Rocky,” certainly associated with increased density of permanent residents in the Estes Valley with their suburban landscaping, irrigation, etc. And other species of the foothills may be expected in the National Park as climate change (mostly warming) continues and habitats and species of the foothills are forced to move upslope. We should keep an eye on the east side of the National Park, in the Big Thompson drainage in particular, the vicinity of Lumpy Ridge and McGraw Ranch. It’s there that we should expect to see the foothills species first.

NW: What changes have you made to this edition of Rocky Mountain Mammals?

DMA: The major change in this edition is, of course, the design of the book and the art program, with color photos of most species. This substantial upgrade is thanks to the work of John Gunn and colleagues with the Rocky Mountain Nature Association and the University Press of Colorado.

NW: What was your research process for this book?  Did it involve much field study?

DMA: This book relies a great deal on the work of Park personnel and visitors and their records and reports on file with Park Headquarters. My own work in the Park is mostly the casual observations of a frequent visitor, my own observations often supplemented by those of the groups of amateur naturalists with whom I am privileged to explore “Rocky.”

NW: Do you have a particular hiking route through Rocky Mountain National Park that you would recommend for people who would like to see some mammals?

DMA: Wherever you are is the best place to be, with eyes and ears wide open to sights, sounds of mammals or their sign, Mammals mostly are “smart” so they avoid people—with the obviously exception of chipmunks and ground squirrels, which are attracted to our ill-informed generosity (deliberate or not). The love handouts and picnic scraps.

NW: What is the best way to observe mammals in the wild?

DMA: Actually seeing most larger and/or nocturnal mammals is a matter of great good fortune. Mostly, I’d recommend paying attention wherever we are, especially to subtle signs: tracks, scat, runways, food remains, hair snagged on bushes. With these clues we can know who was here and what they were doing.

NW: I like your primate chapter, which includes only humans.  So I take it you’ve never spotted a Sasquatch in Rocky Mountain National Park?

DMA: I suppose I should have mentioned these persistent stories, but someone might have taken it seriously. I don’t know of any “reports” from Rocky per se, but Grand County is the source of plenty of Big Foot stories, as well “documented” on the internet. (Don’t you love it?) As for the science of Sasquatch, it’s modest (to be generous).

NW: You write that humans “allow the egocentric pressures of a burdensome humanity to obscure our basic ‘animality.’” How do you suggest people express or acknowledge this animality?

DMA: Did I really write that? If so, it’s a failure of the editorial process.  My bias is that acknowledging our real, evolutionary kinship with the rest of the living world is step one toward being a responsible participate in the Biosphere. Knowledge can lead to understanding, appreciation, and eventually humble accommodation and hence conservation.

NW: One of my favorite mammals to observe is the pika.  Is the pika doomed because of climate change?

DMA: “Doomed” may be too strong a word, I think, because pika habitat is more extensive and more continuous here in the Southern Rockies than on the smaller, isolated “sky island” mountain ranges in the Southwest or the Great Basin. Still, there’s little question that the alpine range of the pika will be diminished as “life zones” move upslope. Further, what is now more-or-less continuous habitat will be fragmented to some extent and on those fragments pikas will be more susceptible to local extinction and as the fragments become more isolated re-colonization will be more difficult. In short, seeing your favorite mammal is going to get more difficult over the coming decades, I suspect. (At least it will demand more wonderful hikes of greater duration.)

NW: Is there a lesser-known or underappreciated mammal in the book that you’d like to point out?

DMA: That’s a hard question. Most of the mammalian fauna—bats, shrews, mice and rats—is underappreciated, perhaps because we appreciate what we can actually encounter. I suppose I’d recommend that people appreciate not just charismatic megamammals but the smaller forms and the best way to get acquainted with them is to know their sign.

How about investing an afternoon on hands and knees in a mountain meadow, gently uncovering the runway of a montane vole (or in an aspen grove the runway of a long-tailed vole) beneath the yellowed thatch of last season’s grasses? With luck you’ll discover the nest, or stored food, or a mouse itself. Look, don’t touch, but know that there’s a whole lot of life going on at our feet at a scale we could easily—but unfortunately—ignore. Those mice and we share a common ancestor just 70 million years ago or so. Honor your cousins.

NW: What animal have you been the happiest or most surprised to observe in the wild?  (For me it was a reddish-furred marten I spotted running through the woods once near Brainard Lake.):

DMA: Congratulations. Any day you get to see a pine marten is definitely a day well spent. (And it does make you wonder how many have been watching you! I distinctly recall being followed by a marten—I on a trail, it in the trees—in the Upper Williams Fork country. I may have been scaring up prey for it, but I may simply have been a curiosity.

In Rocky per se, surprise comes to mind—the surprise of a moose rising out of Sprague Lake in Glacier Basin to greet me and a band of eager young birders from the Colorado Bird Observatory whom I was trying to convince of the wonders of mammals. Turns out moose are very tall (and they can be very dangerous)! We conversed loudly with each other (and the moose) and backed slowly up the boardwalk until it eventually returned to snacking on pondweed.

NW: What are your views on the urban deer population that we have in Boulder?

DMA: We create lots of habitat—in the form of our irrigated urban landscape plantings—for shrub-eating deer. Further, as generally dangerous animals we tend to keep predators away, so we’re providing prey animals with more-or-less safe haven.

NW: A mountain lion was recently shot in Chicago.  Do you think the mountain lion population is increasing, or are the existing animals being forced further east because of increasing development?

DMA: That’s way beyond anything I know. I’d check with the Illinois Natural History Survey at the University of Illinois for authoritative insight. Chicago is, of course, in the natural range of cougars (the most widespread of American mammals, ranging from the Yukon to the Southern Cone of South America). In recent years there are increasing numbers of observations in the Great Plains states and the Midwest (and also in northeastern Colorado). So…interesting, but not surprising, and capturing the animal to transport to wilderness in Illinois or Wisconsin probably was out of the question.

NW: Do people in Florida, as you mention in the book, really call gophers salamanders?

DMA: I know that only from the literature. Never been to Florida to ask a native.

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