Mountain Resorts

Ecology and the Law

Julia LeMense, Janet E. Milne

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317093879
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Derecho
• Subtopic: Jurisprudencia

Mountains are the home of significant ecological resources - wildlife habitat, higher elevation plant systems, steep slopes, delicate soils and water systems. These resources are subject to very visible and growing pressures, most of which are caused by the unique features of mountains. Using as case studies four mountain resorts in the US and Canada, this book analyzes the extent to which the law protects the ecological systems of mountains from the adverse impacts associated with the development, operation and expansion of resorts. In order to examine these issues, Mountain Resorts takes an interdisciplinary approach, with contributions from ecologists and lawyers who focus on ski-related activities, increasing four-season use of the mountains and expanding residential, commercial and recreational development at the mountains' base. Its analysis of an array of US and Canadian federal, state and local laws provides a multifaceted exploration of the intersection of ecology and the law at mountain resorts.

Chapter 1 The Landscape of This Book

Janet E. Milne¹

DOI: 10.4324/9781315596150-1

Over the course of hundreds of million years, the slow but extraordinary movement of tectonic plates formed the predecessors of the modern Adirondack, Laurentian, Green and White Mountain ranges in northeastern North America.² Thirteen thousand years ago, the glaciers of the last ice age began retreating, leaving the wear of their grinding force.³ The mountains slowly built their coverings of soil and trees and stood relatively unaltered by human activities until the late 1800s and early 1900s when some slopes were cleared for timber, only to return to trees again with the natural forces of regeneration by forest succession. Nevertheless, human use of these mountains continued throughout the twentieth century. People started using the slopes for downhill skiing in the 1930s,⁴ for the construction of second homes in the 1960s, and today for activities that span the four seasons of the year.

_______________

1 The author dedicates her work on this book to her father, George McLean Milne, who was inspired by and tended the landscape throughout his life, and her mother, Janet Odell Milne, who was a born editor.

2 See generally Bradford B. Van Diver, Roadside Geology of Vermont and New Hampshire 23–34 (1987); Natural Resources Canada, Geoscape Québec, geoscape.nrcan.gc.ca/Quebec/heritage_e.php (last visited Jan. 24, 2008).

3 Chet Raymo & Maureen E. Raymo, Written in Stone: A Geological History of the Northeastern United States 139 (1989).

4 Randall H. Bennett, The White Mountains: The Alps of New England 144 (2003).

Just as human activities on and around the mountains have evolved and diversified, so by necessity have the laws governing human activities in these ranges. Over the years, the United States and Canadian governments acquired large portions of these mountain terrains, gaining ownership control over their fate, and they enacted environmental regulations that attempted to mitigate the impact of human activities on the mountains. As ecological and environmental sciences have become more sophisticated, they increasingly have viewed each component of the environment as part of the ecosystem and analyzed how the functions of each component influence the health of the whole. But have environmental laws mirrored science’s evolution by also viewing the mountains as part of an ecosystem when they regulate human activities at mountain resorts? And can the law effectively use science to take an ecosystem perspective? These are the questions that lie at the heart of this book.⁵ The following chapters explore these questions as they focus on the ecology and law of four mountain resorts in northeastern United States and southeastern Canada—resorts at Loon Mountain in New Hampshire, Whiteface Mountain in New York, Killington and Pico in Vermont, and Mont Tremblant in Quebec.

_______________

5 See generally Richard O. Brooks, Ross Jones & Ross A. Virginia, Law and Ecology: The Rise of the Ecosystem Regime 26–32 (2002) (describing ecosystemic regimes as social institutions or clusters of institutions designed to govern ecosystems).

A Bird's Eye View of the Landscape of This Book

Who:

A diverse cast of resort operators, recreational users, local residents, environmental organizations, ecologists, lawyers, and governments at the local, state or provincial, and federal levels.

What:

Mountain resorts in their ecosystems.

Why:

A chance to determine whether we take an ecosystem perspective in evaluating and regulating human impacts on mountains, moving beyond the traditional approach to environmental protection.

Where:

Four mountain resorts in northeastern United States and southeastern Canada that serve as case studies.

When:

Looking at the state of science and the law now and possibilities for the future.

Before delving into the details of these mountain ecosystems and their legal regimes, it is perhaps useful to set these mountain resorts in the context of the evolution of snowy mountain resorts more generally, to consider why we chose these particular resorts, and to define what we mean by an ecosystem perspective. Just as the tectonic plates joined together to form the mountain ranges, our merging of the mountain resorts and the concept of an ecosystem perspective creates the landscape of this book.

Mountain Resorts

Northern mountain resorts are inextricably linked to skiing, which began as a form of recreation in the late 1800s more in the style of what we now know as cross-country skiing. One account cites Norwegians using skis in 1868 to travel from Telemark to Oslo, Norway, for social purposes,⁶ and another acknowledges the Scandinavians’ role in bringing skiing to the United States, where the first ski club was formed in California in 1867 and the first ski team in Minnesota in 1886.⁷ Ski clubs sprang up in Europe in the late 1800s and international competitions started in the early 1900s, but alpine or downhill skiing did not appear at international competitions until after World War I.⁸ Among the people credited for the transition to modern downhill skiing were Mathias Zdarsky in Austria, who invented a type of stem turn and taught people to climb mountains and ski down in the late 1800s; Hannes Schneider, who started a ski school after World War I in St. Anton am Arlberg, Austria, where he taught his Arlberg method of skiing that used a system of turns and more sophisticated skiing equipment; and Sir Arnold Lunn, who invented the slalom race.⁹ In 1927, the Arlberg Ski Club sponsored the first alpine-only skiing competition (downhill and slalom),¹⁰ and the Arlberg technique crossed the Atlantic in the late 1920s, where college and urban ski clubs, such as the Dartmouth Outing Club and the Appalachian Mountain Club in Boston, took up the sport.¹¹ Nordic skiing and ski jumping competitions were held at the first Winter Olympic Games in 1924 in Chamonix, France, and subsequent games, including the 1932 Olympics in Lake Placid, New York. Alpine skiing made its Olympic debut in 1936 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany.¹²

_______________

6 Simon Hudson, Snow Business: A Study of the International Ski Industry 8 (2000).

7 Hal Clifford, Downhill Slide 9–10 (2002).

8 Annie Gilbert Coleman, Ski Style 43–4 (2004).

9 Id.

10 Id. at 44.

11 Id. at 50–52.

12 David Miller, Athens to Athens: The Official History of the Olympic Games and the IOC, 1884–2004, at 461, 466, 471, 483–84 (2003).

Not surprisingly, mountain resorts developed along with the interest in recreational skiing. The custom of winter mountain resorts reportedly started in 1866 when the owner of a hotel in St. Moritz invited his British summer guests to visit off-season to hike and climb,¹³ and skiing became an important addition over time. Although ski resorts generally did not have ski lifts until the 1930s, the Lauterbrunnen-Murren railway line carried skiers up into the Swiss Alps in the winter of 1910–1911,¹⁴ and following World War I ski resorts such as St. Anton, St. Moritz, and Davos flourished in Europe.¹⁵ The ski resorts were farming communities that developed skiing and tourism as additional lines of business, the ownership of which was spread among numerous farmers and entrepreneurs.¹⁶

_______________

13 Hudson, supra note 6, at 8.

14 Id. at 8–10.

15 Coleman, supra note 8, at 44–45.

16 Id. at 43; Hudson, supra note 6, at 32.

The first mechanized ski lift in the United States was a simple rope tow powered by a Model T Ford, erected in 1934 in a cow pasture in Woodstock, Vermont, just 20 miles from today’s Killington resort.¹⁷ In 1936, the Union Pacific Railroad took a more sophisticated approach in developing Sun Valley in Idaho. Then-chairman Averill Harriman strove to bring the European resort tradition to the United States, but he created a corporate-owned resort from scratch in the middle of the wilderness. It opened complete with a $1.5 million lodge, swimming pool, skating rink, Saks Fifth Avenue store, beauty treatments, Austrian ski instructors, and the first chairlift in the United States.¹⁸ Not all resorts in the United States were created with this style or flare, but it served as a harbinger for the character of American resorts of the future.

_______________

17 Ellen Lesser, Commemorative Album, Ame...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• 1 The Landscape of This Book
• Part I The Mountain Ecosystem
• Part II Loon Mountain, New Hampshire United States Federal Law and Mountain Resort Development in the National Forest
• Part III Whiteface Mountain Ski Center, New York Olympic Legacies and Adirondack Park Plans
• Part IV Killington Resort, Vermont Can a Mountain Ecosystem be Protected When the Law Protects its Parts? The Case of Act 250 and Killington Resort
• Part V Mont Tremblant, Quebec Canadian Law and the Ecological Footprint of a Four-Season Resort
• Part VI A Vision for the Mountains
• Index