From what I've heard from chatting with the merchants, some people might have, but I can't blame them for thinking everything was dead considering where this place comes out. [They're bang in the middle of heavily infected Wilde that it took a huge effort to clear through to even build the Outpost, and that's ignoring the literal poison trees they had to find ways around on the route.] Though at the same time, a couple of the merchants were selling stuff they seemed to know was thieved from the surface, so it's possible some of them know there's still something up there. Or at least did when we showed up to build the Northern Outpost.

[Considering most of the actual valuable items seemed to match what had been mentioned as going missing at that time. He doubts they only started sending the animals up recently, but it might've been only recently they were getting anything particularly useful out of it.]