Wyoming’s ‘Path of the Pronghorn’ is a signature away from protections sought for a quarter century

By

MIKE KOSHMRL/WyoFile

From afar, conservation biologist Joel Berger has tracked Wyoming’s long-lasting attempt to designate a migration corridor used by pronghorn that seasonally trek upwards of 150 miles from Interstate 80 all the way to Grand Teton National Park. In the early 2000s, Berger, then a Jackson Hole resident, was among the loudest voices urging land and wildlife managers to take steps to ensure that pronghorn could continue moving across a fragmented landscape that was on the front end of the Pinedale Anticline and Jonah field natural gas boom. In 2003, Berger authored a paper provocatively titled, “Is it acceptable to let a species go extinct in a national park?” That came at a time when then-Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal was wary about protecting the southern reaches of the corridor — a hesitation shared by Sublette County elected officials and the Bureau of Land Management. Safeguards for the migrating pronghorn stalled except in the northern portion of the corridor, where in 2008 the U.S. Forest Service protected some 47,000 acres via a Bridger-Teton National Forest plan amendment.

Very slowly, times changed. A continued push to conserve the perilous passages animals encounter along a route dubbed the Path of the Pronghorn overcame inertia and skepticism.