by Mike Koshmrl, WyoFile
PINEDALE—Mike Schmid told Wyoming Game and Fish commissioners that pronghorn populations remained in good shape throughout the intensive-drilling era 20 years ago in the Green River Basin’s “mega fields” — some of the largest natural gas fields the industry has ever known.
And for that reason, the industryman could not get behind the idea of classifying 2.8 million acres of the region as a designated migration corridor for the Sublette Pronghorn Herd.
“As somebody that’s been in the business my entire life, it’s hard for me to support this,” said Schmid, who was ousted from his post on the commission he addressed three years ago. “I just don’t see the need for it.”
Several others tied to industry urged inaction, or adding contingencies, at the Tuesday meeting in Pinedale. Colin McKee, with the Petroleum Association of Wyoming, expressed worries that if the state moves forward with designating the route, it could lead to more rigid protections — and more rigid regulations — from the federal government.
“Then it gets to a place where we don’t have as much control,” McKee told commissioners over Zoom.
But on Tuesday, Wyoming officials broke from a long track record of heeding industry concerns. Five years after the state agency slammed the brakes on designating the Sublette Pronghorn Herd migration path, it reversed course. In a 7-0 vote, the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission opted to pursue establishing protections that could help hold the line of a migratory pronghorn population biologist say is at “high risk” of being lost.
“Today’s an exciting day,” Jill Randall, Game and Fish’s big game migration coordinator, said at the onset of the discussion.
Randall outlined how 415 GPS-collared animals studied over 20 years helped inform the agency’s recommendation to designate the Sublette Pronghorn Herd’s web of migrations, which tread from Interstate 80 to Jackson Hole and have gained national notoriety since the long-distance passageway was discovered more than a quarter century ago. She presented a map that showed huge gashes in the landscape where subdivisions, energy development and other human activities have fragmented the sagebrush sea the pronghorn need to travel through to survive.
“For example, last winter, it was very apparent to us that those individuals that had the ability to move south … had a higher likelihood of survival,” Randall said. “Connectivity to get them to those crucial winter ranges in severe winters is really essential.”
Game and Fish staff’s recommendation to move forward also engendered a chorus of support. Some 90% of the 300-plus comments that state agencies received advocated for protecting the pronghorn herd.
“Overwhelmingly, the public sentiment was in support of moving this process forward,” said Doug Brimeyer, Game and Fish’s deputy chief of wildlife.
Countering reluctant industry representatives, conservationists came out in support of the state agency.
“It’s a lot easier to maintain habitat integrity than it is to try to restore something after it’s been degraded,” said the Wyoming Outdoor Council’s Meghan Riley.
Nick Dobric, with the Wilderness Society, applauded the proposal: “We have something really special here,” he said. “A lot of other states, a lot of other communities really envy what we have for wildlife in Wyoming and this process will help us keep that.”
State officials didn’t dismiss industry’s concerns about the federal government meddling in migration issues.
“What if we don’t move the corridor forward? What does that say to our federal partners?” Game and Fish Deputy Director Angi Bruce said. “There’s a risk there, too. If we don’t do anything, the risk may be that they need to step in.”
The federal government, she said, “wants to have a piece of migration.”
Much of the consternation from industry reps who spoke stemmed from the Bureau of Land Management’s hot-button resource management plan for its Rock Springs region, which proposes “no surface occupancy” in the entirety of designated migration corridors — plus future corridors — as the “preferred” course of action. Wyoming officials, including Gov. Mark Gordon, have pressured the federal agency to defer to the state’s policy, which is much more permissive of development, especially outside of the most-constricted “bottleneck” areas.
Nevertheless, Wyoming’s policy is seen as one of the most robust actions by a western state to conserve wildlife migration.
Pursuing the Path of the Pronghorn designation will be the first time state officials take the policy for a spin since it was revamped nearly five years ago and put under the jurisdiction of the governor. A good deal of bureaucratic process — and several decision-making junctures — wait ahead.
“Does that allow us to pump the brakes? It looks like it does,” Game and Fish Commissioner Rusty Bell said about the process.
Game and Fish’s next step is to prepare a “biological risk assessment.” That document should be out to the public by late 2024, Brimeyer said. Gordon will also assemble a stakeholder group that will work over the state’s proposal. At the end of the process, which could drag for another year or more, Gordon will make the final decision.
This article was originally published by WyoFile and is republished here with permission. WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.
