Ecological Causes and Consequences of Demographic Change in the New West

Rural areas in the American West are undergoing a dramatic transition in demography, economics, and ecosystems. Long known as the “Wild” West, the region has been characterized by low human population densities and vast tracts of unsettled or undeveloped land (Wilkinson 1993, Power 1998). For most of the 1900s, the population of many rural areas in the West grew very slowly or even decreased. Because local economies were based on natural resource industries such as mining, logging, farming, and ranching, many residents of the region considered conservation strategies on public lands detrimental to local economic development. Efforts to establish nature reserves and to preserve public lands from commercial development were seen as restricting the use of vital natural resources. In recent decades, parts of that Wild West have given way to the “New” West (Riebsame et al. 1997). People from throughout the United States have been migrating to the Rocky Mountains and the inland West. With a population growth rate of 25.4%, the mountain West was the fastest-growing region of the country during the 1990s. Surprisingly, rapid population increases are occurring not only in urban areas such as Denver and Salt Lake City but also in rural counties, many of which are gaining population even faster than urban areas (Theobald 2000). Some 67% of the counties in the Rocky Mountains grew faster than the national average during the 1990s (Beyers and Nelson 2000). Consequently, small cities such as Bozeman, Montana, and Moab, Utah, are beginning to experience traffic congestion and sprawl.