Despite extensive logging during the late 1800s and a great fire in 1903, Camel's Hump continues to support a significant population of red spruce ("Picea rubens"). Starting in the 1960s, Hub Vogelmann and his graduate students from the University of Vermont observed an extensive decline in the red spruce population on the west slope of Camel's Hump. Vogelmann's 1982 landmark paper “Catastrophe on Camel’s Hump” identified the cause of the decline to be acid rain. Similarly the Forest Decline Project at the University of Vermont published a study in 1991 that again cited acid rain as the culprit.