F8 Magazine – Featured Photographer

I was contacted by F8 Magazine (an online photo magazine from Spain) late in 2010; they had found my work on Photoshelter and had perused my online portfolio and liked what they saw. So, they sent me some interview questions and asked for some of my favorite images and they put together a great spread in their second issue, just released in mid-February. Following are the layout and interview, but to see it all as it was intended to be seen, see the online magazine.

Hi Chris. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
I was born in Connecticut and grew up along the New England coast. I received a degree in neuroscience and worked for a number of years as a researcher in that field, first with patients with schizophrenia and then, literally, slicing monkey brains in a study of Parkinson’s disease. It was in that basement laboratory, under fluorescent lights, slicing frozen monkey brains eight hours a day, that I decided to pursue photography. It was not a terribly difficult choice. Of course, it has been a bit more difficult to succeed as a photographer than it was to take that first step and apply to graduate school for photography.

What or who got you started in photography? Is there any formal training in your background?
I’m not entirely sure what my initial attachment to photography was. In college I was interested in art and photography, as a way to balance my life while studying neuroscience. I ended up with a second degree in art and art history, of which two photography classes were a requirement. The professor I had for that initial photography class would become a great mentor, friend, and influence on my work.

But, most important to my development as a visual storyteller, and the most influential and life-changing work I’ve been a part of came from one of my first “projects.” While I was still working in the neuroscience field, I was in a relationship with someone who was diagnosed with leukemia. I immediately started documenting her life, treatment, and recovery, and our life together. I had only known her for eight weeks, and we spent the next four years together. The camera became a part of both of our lives, as much a method for dealing with the circumstances as it was a tool for documenting our shared experience; I documented as many intimate moments as I could. See a gallery of images here. It wasn’t until later that I discovered Eugene Richards’ work “Exploding Into Life.”

Still, time spent slicing brains ultimately led me to seek a degree in the field. That’s how I ended up at the University of Texas at Austin for their master’s program in photojournalism. There, I became devoted to environmental issues, particularly water, and worked on a number of conservation-focused projects.

After graduating, I worked as a freelance daily assignment photographer for about a year, before I took a position as creative director of the American Mountaineering Museum. I was also the museum’s curator once it opened. This exposed me to great photography, old and new, as well as the feats of mountaineers around the world.

From there I diversified and started doing more adventure photography to complement the documentary and conservation photography that had come before. Now, I enjoy the balance of working on difficult, environmental and social issues with the delight of photographing the beauty and ferocity of nature.

How long have you been taking photographs professionally?
I’ve worked on personal projects for years, but only in the past 12 months or so have I had the experience, determination, and time to pursue photography professionally. Even still, it’s probably more accurate to call me an aspiring professional. I have certainly wanted to be a “professional” for much longer, but my methodical nature has always held me back. It’s a difficult business to pursue–there is not a singular path like there is when you’re a doctor or a research scientist, the world I came from. I suppose I didn’t have the confidence or knowledge to forge ahead unguided.

How do you describe your photographic style?
For the most part, I consider myself a conservationist as much as I consider myself a photographer. My passions are equally the preservation of wilderness, wildlife, and nature, and visual storytelling that aids in that preservation. That being said, I am also still fascinated by health issues.

As far as my style is concerned, it seems to be a reflection of the natural subject matter I’m photographing. It seems to be minimalist in nature; at least, it is in my mind, and that’s what I strive for. I am drawn to the “quiet” work of William Albert Allard, Sam Abell, and W. Eugene Smith. That is not to say I try to mimic their style, though I am fascinated by the balance of delicacy and complexity that they achieve in their best images.

I wouldn’t be surprised if my style further evolved over the years. Certainly, different styles lend themselves better to certain subject matter. The beauty of nature, for example, can effectively be captured in a minimalist aesthetic. Cancer? That’s not as easy. There, the style might often be about juxtaposition and irony, struggle or survival. It’s not as easy, nor necessarily appropriate, to depict those emotions in a simple, graphic composition.

If you could give someone just five tips on this type of photography, what would they be?
1) Stare. This includes climbing high (or flying high), getting dirty while lying on the ground, and finding new angles everywhere in between, all the while observing and analyzing the scene.

2) Be patient. The most effective composition is not always obvious; the most effective photograph may take you 100 attempts to get exactly what you want. Don’t settle for anything less.

3) Be intelligent and thoughtful and respectful. Know your subject before you begin photographing, then allow the subject to lead you to what you should be learning more about. Be open minded so that new observations are put to good use in framing the story, rather than ignored because of any preconceived notions of what the story “should” be that you might have started with.

4) Experiment. Forget what you learned and try a new approach. Perhaps that’s creating an abstract world from something familiar, or distilling something highly complex to a graphic essence.

5) Stare some more. Find something better, or different, or unique, and know that you’re the only one that is creating the work, and the audience’s reaction to it is often unpredictable. Don’t make photographs that you think people will like; make photographs you like.

You are the editor and director of photography and design of Trail & Timberline magazine, published by the Colorado Mountain Club since 1918. Tell us, what is the focus of the magazine and how does it expand your ability as a photographer?
Trail & Timberline is a reflection of the Colorado Mountain Club, so its focus is conservation, education, and recreation, specifically related to Colorado’s mountains and mountaineering. Ideally, there is a mixture of each of those things in every issue (see some samples here).

I am a staff of one: editor, photographer, writer, and designer. Besides being very rewarding, challenging, and fun, working on all parts of the magazine helps me to understand the packaging of photography and visual stories, which in turn makes me think about these things when I’m in the field. It makes me a better photographer, and a better journalist. Of course, there are certainly times when I’d like to be collaborating with a dynamic and creative staff; I’d like the pressure that would come with delivering for a photo editor. But, I have the challenge of balancing all of those roles simultaneously. It’s a very satisfying feeling when it all comes together.

What are the typical preparations that need to be made before a shoot? (Both in terms of camera equipment and researching the location itself / weather etc.)
Nothing beats spending time with your subject, whether that subject is a person or a place.

As far as equipment is concerned, I’m a minimalist. I carry three lenses most of the time; I never use a flash. I am often trying to capture nature, so I feel as if introducing unnatural light would be absurd. If my battery is charged, then I am ready to go.

As far as adventure photography is concerned, there are certain precautions that I take, particularly in the winter when there is the risk of avalanche. Checking the avalanche data regularly throughout the winter is just a habit now. Thankfully, in Colorado there is a great website for this.

Likewise, weather is a concern in slot canyons. If there is any chance of rain, it’s not a wise idea to be wandering around in a giant funnel of rock. Having patience and waiting for stable conditions is just a part of exploring that world.

Will you ever feel like your work is completed?
That is a very difficult question to answer. Certainly, there are times when I feel like nothing can change the environmental catastrophes that seem to be raging around us. There are times when I feel like all of my efforts to tell visual stories won’t change the overwhelming momentum that they’re up against.

So, I suppose my answer would be “no.” I don’t think my work will ever be completed because I don’t think there will be a time when conservation doesn’t need the help of story telling. In a more general sense, my work as a story teller won’t be finished because there will always be stories to tell.

I just hope that along the way I can contribute to the preservation of a particular landscape, or change the behavior of people, or excite and inspire someone through my work.

What’s the most inspiring location you’ve visited so far?
I seem to be fascinated by any new place I go, and tend to be inspired everywhere I go, whether that’s a delicate shortgrass prairie on the Great Plains, a lush estuary on the Gulf Coast of Texas, or the jagged drama of the Swiss Alps. That being said, I can’t remember ever being as awestruck as when I recently trekked the length of the Haute Route, from Chamonix, France, to Zermatt, Switzerland. It’s not the most remote area, or the least populated, but there’s no denying that it’s gorgeous (see images from the Haute Route).

But perhaps the most inspiring place I’ve been is southern Utah. It’s like no place else on Earth. I’ve been countless times to explore the canyons, formations, alcoves, ancient dwellings, mesas, and mountains, and I’ve never been disappointed (see images of Utah). It is always inspiring to be present among such a unique landscape, with a palpable feeling of quiet around any corner. The forms, the shapes, the experiences you can only have in a place where time is evident in every rock around you, and you are perceptibly small in a vast spread of geologic time. As may be evident, it helps me to think and makes me philosophical. And the scenery never ceases to amaze me, or inspire me.

Unfortunately, much of this iconic landscape remains unprotected. And the threats to it only increase with time. This is especially true of places like White Canyon. To think that places like this exist nowhere else on Earth, yet remain unprotected from vehicles, development, oil and gas extraction, is alarming. I couldn’t imagine a world without them in their pristine state. That’s why I work with organizations like the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance to help them educate people to the threats these iconic landscapes face.

What kind of impression do you hope to leave upon others who see your photographs?
I believe all I can hope to do is make people think. A photograph doesn’t bring about change by itself. A person has to use that photograph, or be used by that photograph, in order for action to take place. And the first action is always thought.

The Power to Protect: Citizen Conservation – PART 2

Nose to the Ground
As a kid, Marty Colón spent his days studying tracks in the tacky sands of Lake Michigan’s shore. He would find a track, identify the animal that made it, then follow its path up and down the beach.

That’s a pretty great childhood.

Essentially, Marty is still following the tracks of his childhood. Now, however, he’s tracking mammals big and small and teaching others the rewards of observing the signs, scats, and tracks beneath their feet.

There are stories imprinted in the soil. While you’re sleeping, when you’re not around, when you’re at work in the city, animals are roaming the woods, riverbanks, and alpine tundra. If you never see these animals, it doesn’t mean they don’t exist—or that you can’t unravel the mystery of their behavior.

Tracking offers an extension to what we see. With a bit of patience, an investigative method, and dirt on your knees, you can figure out what animal it was that went down the trail before you.

Marty has been teaching tracking skills for 30 years. He’s honed his method to three simple steps. Follow them (and take a tracking class or two) and you will not only be able to follow the animal’s tracks, you’ll be able to see an entirely new world of behavior that wasn’t apparent before.

1) Collecting Track Level Evidence
As the name implies, track level evidence is on the ground—not in a book, and not in your brain. When you come across a track, be careful not to guess, thinking you are familiar with the print. Be careful not to exclude certain species based on your presumed familiarity with its habitat and range. When I took a class with Marty, we found a black bear track in Prospect Park. Yup, in the middle of Wheat Ridge.

There are four pieces of evidence that you will want to look for—and write down in a notebook. First, count the number of digits. In Colorado, that can be four, five, or two (technically, the ungulates—things like deer and elk—have a hoof made of two clouts).

After you’ve determined the number of digits, you’ll want to decide whether they are long and slender like fingers, or short and stubby like your big toe. If you can see any claws, note whether they’ve made a fine point near the tip of the digit (indicative of claws that are curved at a 90-degre angle and good for climbing) or are a bit thicker (like a dog’s claws, which are your general purpose claw—not built exclusively for climbing or digging). If you see the indication of a long, thick claw that extends well beyond the end of the digit, you’ve probably found the track of a digger—things like skunks, badgers, and wolverines.

Finally, make note (in fact, make a sketch) of the shape of the interdigital pad, the surface that sits behind the digits—it can look heart-shaped, bean-shaped, and sometimes like the heel of a human.

2) Determining Family
If you know the number of digits in a track, you can start to hone in on the family of your animal. Four digits? It’s very likely to be from the dog, cat, or rabbit family. Or it could be from the rodent family, whose animals have four front digits and five in the rear.

Five digits? It will have to be from the raccoon, opossum, shrew, bear, or weasel family (things like wolverine, sea otter, badger, skunk, marten, and ferret). Again, rodents have five digits on their rear feet so you could have yourself a rodent track.

Two digits? That’s a bit easier; you’ve found a track from the deer family: bison, moose, elk, bighorn sheep, mountain goat, caribou, mule and white-tailed deer, or pronghorn.

If you know the structure and function of those digits, you can eliminate even further. Are they long, finger-like digits that would be good for grasping and climbing? Think of raccoons and squirrels. Are they short and blunt, general purpose toes? Think dogs, cats, and bears.

Next, the shape of the interdigital pad tells you even more. Based on it’s shape, you can further refine your search.

3) Determining Species
Now you’re ready to take the final step and unravel the mystery. Here, you can use a series of gross filters to eliminate species within each possible family. First, look at size. Using a tracking field guide, you can determine if the track is near in size to the average track for a particular species. Too big or too small and you can eliminate that animal from your list of suspects. Be sure not to measure claws—or overshoot your evidence. That is, don’t eliminate an animal unless you’re absolutely sure. In the end, you may not have enough evidence to narrow it down to only one species.

Marty’s guide of choice? Falcon Guide’s Scats and Tracks series. There’s one specific to the Rocky Mountains that’s small enough to carry each time you head into the outdoors.

Power in Numbers
Certainly, this brief overview isn’t enough to turn you into an expert tracker, or a citizen scientist. But we all possess what it takes to start as a citizen naturalist. And perhaps  this lesson will inspire you to learn more. With a bit of training and a sound method, the skill of tracking (and scat and sign identification) can make every landscape come alive in a new way.

Still, you may be thinking that these simple observations are just that: simple. But, over time and in large quantities, the information that citizens collect can tell us a lot about the changes taking place in a landscape and its viability as suitable habitat. No, they won’t replace raw data, scientific inquiry, or thorough research, but they can wholeheartedly supplement it. And they give us a role in preserving and protecting Colorado’s wild places and wild things. That’s quite a powerful feeling.

Read the first part of The Power to Protect: Citizen Conservation.

The Power to Protect: Citizen Conservation – PART 1

When you’re out hiking, do you ever see wildlife tracks? Ever see (or step in) elk scat? Chances are, you see them all the time. Ever roamed through a wildlife corridor? Hiked amongst the habitat of an endangered species? Chances are, you’ve probably done this, too, whether you’ve known it or not.

Now, what if you could put your passion for the outdoors to good use for Colorado’s roaming wild things? All it takes is something you’ve already got: two eyes and two feet.

Everyday citizens, especially those who often find themselves out on the trails of our state, have the power to make a difference in protecting our land, and the animals who call it home. The success of many conservation efforts is based on being able to document and monitor the threats within a particular landscape, and gauge any changes that result from the efforts. Increasingly, conservation professionals are looking to volunteers as important components to successful conservation programs.

There are a wide range of skill sets and training requirements for conservation volunteers, depending on the needs of the program. Some of these have specialized technical classes in areas like wildlife tracking or habitat and species identification; you might hear this referred to as “citizen science.”

However, one of the most underutilized volunteer skills is the simple power of observation. Citizen naturalist programs that rely more on this natural world experience and less on the specialized training of citizen science are equally powerful for furthering conservation. Either way, anyone who spends time in the outdoors can benefit from knowing more about what they’re seeing around them. And Colorado—and its wildlife—will benefit, too.

Finding Signs
Each place we hike in is a bit different, in terms of the species of wildlife we might see, the intended use of the land, the condition it is in, and the threats it may be facing—or may face in the future. Perhaps the corridor falls on National Forest land, and is managed for multiple uses like recreation and timber production. Perhaps the area is known to be prime habitat for a threatened or endangered species.

By keeping a few simple questions in mind when you’re hiking, you’ll be able to help scientists and land managers better understand the landscape and how wildlife use the area. If the corridor happens to be near a major highway, like Herman Gulch, then your visit will help you to understand the importance of landscape connectivity.

Keep in mind questions that help tell the overall story of the conditions and suitability of the area for wildlife: Which animals did you observe and where?

People are not the only ones that think with their stomachs. How about food for wildlife? Did you see plants for foraging or prey species?

Water is usually an important feature of a wildlife corridor. Did you see good sources of flowing water or perhaps snow pack in the hills?

The climate of Colorado is changing; colder, longer winters used to be a natural control of the native bark beetles in our forests. Did you see large stands of trees with reddish-orange needles, or stands of dead trees?

The answers to these questions will indicate how the area’s multiple uses are being managed, and how habitat fragmentation can affect various wildlife species.

So, what do you do with this information once you’ve collected it? Well, always be sure to write things down and photograph or video animals, tracks, scat, rubbings, markings, and any other signs of wildlife behavior, corridor conditions, and impacts.

Then, you can turn to that great database in the sky: the internet. In fact, organizations like Witness for Wildlife are designed to help people document and record their observations; they even have field guides for known wildlife corridors online so that you can download them before you make your visit.

What are they hoping to collect? Not only are these organizations interested in what you’ve seen—everything from the animals you may have been lucky enough to see, to the conditions of the habitat—but they also want to know what your experience was like. Did the practice of observation change your perspective of corridor connectivity? Did you see solutions to any of the threats that might have existed?

You can find downloadable field guides to corridors across Colorado (and the country), learn more about corridor hikes in your area, and input your own observations at www.witnessforwildlife.org.

Of course, there’s always a next step. This one, however, is certainly not for everyone. But, if you feel like taking your powers of observation to a whole new level, with a little training you can turn your hikes into sleuthing excursions in the outdoors, a fusion of detective work, scientific inquiry, and, of course, walking in the woods.

Read the second part of The Power to Protect: Citizen Conservation.

San Juan-Canyonlands Proposed Wilderness

I’d do most anything to help protect Southern Utah. It’s serpentine canyons, abstract geology, and rich archaeological holdings are hard to surpass. So, when I approached the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance about how I could help their cause to establish new wilderness areas in and around Canyonlands National Park and San Juan County, I was delighted to know they were looking for images from some of the most threatened and most incredible portions of the proposed wilderness area. One of them was White Canyon. So I set out to immerse myself in its phenomenal twists, slots, and pools, if only for a week.

When I returned from my brief excursion, I immediately contacted SUWA and let them know I would be happy to donate some of my images for their work. “That’s excellent,” they said. “Can we download some tonight? We’re meeting with a Senator tomorrow to make a presentation to him on our wilderness proposal. Your images would really help us make the case for its protection.” It was an incredible feeling, actually, knowing that my work would play even a small role in the area’s eternal protection by passing before the eyes of someone who has the power to sponsor such a bill in Congress. “By all means,” I said. “Take as many images as you need.” Let’s hope that the wilderness proposal soon becomes wilderness reality.

Entering the narrows of White Canyon, Utah, part of the San Juan-Canyonlands proposed wilderness area.

White Canyon makes a gorgeous, serpentine cut through Cedar Mesa, near Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. It lies at the heart of the proposed Glen Canyon Wilderness, where the vast expanse of Paleozoic-era sandstone known as Nokai Dome eases its way to the upper reaches of Lake Powell in the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. This region also includes the soaring Wingate Cliffs of the Red Rock Plateau, Mancos Mesa, Moqui Canyon with its meandering stream, Red Canyon, and the serpentine side canyons of White Canyon. This is one of the most remote regions of the state, but it lacks protection and is threatened by increasing ORV use.

It is all part of the San Juan-Canyonlands region of Southeastern Utah is one of the most iconic landscapes recommended for protection in America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act, boasting dramatic geologic features wrought by elemental forces, as well as internationally significant cultural sites of the Ancestral Puebloans and the Mormon Pioneers. Adorned with buttes and arches, vast stretches of slickrock deposited over 250 million years ago, ancient pinyon-juniper forests and an artist’s pallet of red-hued sandstone, the San Juan-Canyonlands region has inspired explorers since the days of John Wesley Powell, and its wonders represent some of the greatest unprotected wilderness in the country.

See more photography at www.chriscasephoto.com.

As Thoughtful As Zahniser

This article first appeared in Trail & Timberline magazine, in an issue devoted entirely to the subject of wilderness. To see the entire magazine, including the below article, CLICK HERE.
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“The wilderness…is indeed intensely human, and perhaps after all it is the human association with the wilderness—so intense, so remote from the artificial distractions of all our machines and contrivances—that gives to these wildlands their supreme value and gives to their preservation for still other human beings the ultimate justification and imperative.”
– Howard Zahniser

We could learn a lot from Howard Zahniser, and not just about the value of wilderness. His name is not often mentioned alongside the likes of Muir and Leopold, but his legacy may be more profound. Without the Wilderness Act that he authored—uniting the most wild of places into a system of wilderness reserves—the world might still be grappling with “a sequence of overlapping emergencies, threats, and defense campaigns,” the battleground against which he rallied in 1951.

“The wilderness that has come to us from the eternity of the past we have the boldness to project into the eternity of the future,” he wrote.

But to unite wilderness, he first had to unite opposing forces. His relentless promotion and justification for a wilderness bill was surpassed in significance only by his enduring pursuit of the broadest possible consensus around the bill. This may have been Zahniser’s greatest success. His dream was not to achieve any type of protection, but to forge a method of permanence, something he reasoned could only be achieved with respect and consideration for views unlike his own.

He searched for the virtues in the arguments of those who opposed wilderness, attempted to meet their objections with reason, and respected the integrity and sincerity of those on the other side of the wilderness line.

He did this not for himself but for wilderness. He genuinely yearned to reach some agreement whereby his interests and the interests of the opposition could be reconciled, for the benefit of wild places, wild things, and wild ideas.

It was his cloak of humility.

“Working to preserve in perpetuity is a great inspiration.
 We are not fighting a rear-guard action, we are facing a frontier.
 We are not slowing down a force that inevitably will destroy all the wilderness there is. We are generating another force, never to be wholly spent, that, renewed generation after generation, will be always effective in preserving wilderness.
 We are not fighting progress. We are making it.
We are not dealing with a vanishing wilderness.
 We are working for a wilderness forever.”

We want our Colorado to remain wild, like he wanted his wilderness to last forever. If you have no wild spaces in which to roam free, then how will you find yourself? If you can’t find calm in the singular tranquility of an alpine meadow, then what do you call serenity? If your views are muddied brown or your quiet shattered, then how will you ever think clearly?

Let us strive to be as thoughtful as Zahniser in whatever we do: meet opposition with wisdom, consider the opposition with admiration, stand true to our convictions and keep Colorado wild.

See more photography at www.chriscasephoto.com.

What’s Wilderness Worth?

This article first appeared in Trail & Timberline magazine, in an issue devoted entirely to the subject of wilderness. To see the entire magazine, including the below article, CLICK HERE.

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What’s wilderness worth? Listen to the eloquence of John Muir and Wallace Stegner; feel the passion of David Brower and study the methodical ethic of Aldo Leopold. Their words define wilderness. Yet, their thoughts never amounted to a sum value. Worth can—and in the case of wilderness, should—mean so much more.

Now, however, in an era of caustic debate falsely pitting land against man—landscape preservation against economic salvation—the answer to the question of what wilderness is worth has taken on new power.

“People opposed to wilderness began raising the economic question,” says John Loomis, a professor of agricultural and resource economics at Colorado State University. “Mining, timber, livestock grazing, even the chamber of commerce will say, ‘Oh my god, these are elitists that want wilderness.’”

So, after Loomis and other economists considered the question, we have wilderness economics—and can place a value on protected places, if we so feel the need.

Most of us know better than to rely on private enterprise to tell us the value—both tangible and intangible—of wilderness. The argument placed forth by extractive industries—that removal is the only use that yields wealth—is an epic lie. Theirs is a penchant for converting the natural wealth contained in the nation’s pristine forests, deserts, canyons, and mesas into a fleeting boon of corporate profit. It never lasts. Indeed, it can’t last.

Ultimately, the choice is not, and never has been, between mining (and money) and preservation (and poverty).

John Muir used powerful words to express the value of Yosemite Valley. Now, words aren't enough. Wilderness preservation has been positioned by some as the opponent of economy salvation, albeit falsely. Still,wilderness economics begs the question: How much would you pay to see a place like Yosemite last for eternity? How much would you pay to make sure your grandchild had a chance to witness mists rise from the valley floor?

As many people are now realizing— politicians, boards of tourism, and county commissioners alike—wilderness means money, too. And wilderness lasts.

As many of the early wilderness proponents—trained scientists—knew, wilderness protection was about far more than recreation. “There is economic value just by preserving it,” Loomis says, referring to those less tangible benefits that have for so long been ignored. “Economic valuation provides some balance to the environment versus people dichotomy, which is a false comparison.”

But why has it taken so long for people to realize the sum value of wilderness? It may have to do with the complexity of economic valuation.

We can all see (and many of us take part in) the direct use benefits: things like hiking and hunting. Furthermore, the science community needs wilderness as a baseline for research and education. We all benefit from wilderness’ capacity to improve the resources most precious for life: air and water. These and other ecosystem services, as they are known, continue to gain prominence in the grand scheme of land protection, as we learn more about the benefits of carbon storage, nutrient cycling, and waste treatment provided by wilderness. Still, these things only constitute a portion of the total value of wilderness and wild landscapes.

The difficulty in understanding and calculating the sum value comes from things economists call passive-use values. They’re often broken into three categories: option values, bequest values, and existence values. The option value is akin to an insurance policy: people are willing to pay for more than their expected recreation benefits to maintain the option—for themselves or for their children—of visiting wildlands in the future. Similarly, the bequest value of wilderness protection represents what we would be willing to pay to bequest wildlands to our kids. Hardest to grasp, perhaps, is existence value, the notion that there is a psychological value a person enjoys from just knowing that a wilderness exists—regardless of whether the person will ever visit an area.

Politicians have tended to ignore the wilderness economics numbers. Preferring to cater to extractive priorities, they have chosen to view profit dollars through the short-term lens—that which is present and understandable—rather than employing more complex arithmetic to determine the economic value of a place over generations.

Yet, the figures for simple recreation—something that is tangible and profit-based—are stunning. In 1995, U.S. Forest Service economists measured the agency’s holdings and found that national forests generated $125 billion a year in economic activity. An astounding 75 percent of that figure was based on recreation economy. Timber and mining, by contrast, amounted to 15 percent. By 1995, it had become all too apparent that recreation, and not timber, was the Forest Service’s main product.

Furthermore, recently developed economic models have shown that public lands benefit more from quiet recreation—the hunting, fishing, hiking, and camping that take place so often in wilderness—than from motorized recreation. In Colorado’s Arapaho and Roosevelt national forests, for example, nonmotorized recreation provided 1,228 jobs and $37.8 million in income, compared with 244 jobs and $11.7 million for motorized recreation.

So, what does this all mean for a place like Colorado?

No case study may be more applicable than Kane County, Utah, which lies about 210 miles south of Salt Lake City. That’s because Kane County, home to much of the Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument, was once the site of one of Utah’s most intense wilderness battles. It started in 1996, when the Clinton administration designated the 1.7 million-acre monument. That made Bill Clinton in Kane County about as popular as George Bush in Berkeley.

Alarmist predictions of economic disaster coursed through the small town and county seat of Kanab after plans to open a coal mine on the monument’s grassy Kaiparowits Plateau were halted by the designation. Instead of visions of boom, there were omens of bust.

Contrary to the residents’ worst fears, the bust never came. Instead, economic findings suggest that Kane County began to thrive. A comparison of data from the four years prior to the monument’s creation (1992–1996) with data from the four years after showed that the unemployment rate in the county dropped by more than half, while labor income rose faster than it had in the pre-monument period. Per-job earnings, which fell 7 percent before the monument, rose 13 percent after it was created. Property values rose significantly, too (after seeing a decline in years leading up to the designation). And, on Main Street, the average wage per job went up.

With the fortunes of the county hitched to the well-being of the mining industry and, therefore, at the mercy of globally determined price trends, Kane County could have suffered a roller coaster economic ride.

Instead, there was a path to sustainable growth. It wasn’t from a short-term influx of coal mining revenues. Word migrated that the area had a new monument. Some started visiting; others moved their businesses to Kanab, population 4,500, or decided to retire in Kane County.

An influx of retirees spurred growth in health-care jobs. Recreation boomed, of course. And, services that cater to the traveler grew, too.

Best of all, the landscape that drew all of this attention is never going to pack up and leave the area.

It, like all federally designated wilderness areas, lives on like the words of Muir, Stegner, Brower, and Leopold: forever.

See more photography at www.chriscasephoto.com.