Incorporating Ecology into Land Use Planning: The Songbirdsʹ Case for Clustered Development

Throughout the American West, private open lands are being converted to a human-dominated residential landscape. This conversion is the foremost threat to wildlife habitat. Pitkin County, Colorado, home to the City of Aspen, is an internationally known example of this land use change. In this article, we describe patterns of development in Pitkin County from the late 1800s through the 1990s. Using field data, we estimate the overall loss of songbird habitat due to two types of residential development, clustered and dispersed, and then examine the types of vegetation most affected. From these data we demonstrate that clustered development, in contrast to dispersed development, can reduce the impact of exurban residential development on wildlife habitat.