Wyoming’s Game and Fish commissioners reversed course from a plan that would’ve only protected a part of the world renowned Sublette pronghorn herd. The switch came after overwhelming public pushback.
Wildlife biologists, hunters, conservationists and a few cowboy hats peppered the room at the commission’s September meeting in Lander. The agenda allotted one hour for the migration route conversation, but it bled into four hours with passionate public comment from those like Brock Wahl. He’s the chairman of the North American Pronghorn Foundation.
“If we cannot conserve the Sublette pronghorn and their needs here in Wyoming, in what has historically been the largest pronghorn herd in Wyoming, and therefore the largest pronghorn herd in the world, with more data collected on it than any other pronghorn herd in the world, then what chance do we have to to advocate for pronghorn anywhere?” Wahl said.
The route spans from the Tetons to the Red Desert. The plan before commissioners to add protections has been in the works since 2023. It came after a Wyoming Game and Fish Department (WGFD) study showed the herd’s route was at “high risk” of being lost. Specifically, it pointed to housing and energy development, as well as a devastating winter that slashed the herd of about 40,000 members to a shocking 20,000.
The idea is to formally designate the herd’s migration route through Gov. Mark Gordon’s 2020 executive order. It’s a multi-step process intended to delineate pronghorn and mule deer corridors and potentially add protection from development, while also still allowing most energy development and agricultural uses to continue.
“Wherever possible, development, infrastructure, and use should occur outside of designated corridors. Inside corridors, state regulatory agencies should support the continued functionality of designated migration corridors by conditioning permits to avoid and minimize impacts from development or use allowed within the corridor,” according to the executive order.
The strictest protections would apply to bottlenecks sprinkled throughout the route, which account for about 1% of the total 2.6 million acres. Private parcels and preexisting land agreements would be excluded.
Despite the flexibility, the process has ruffled industry and ag stakeholders. The executive order has yet to successfully designate a migration route in the state.
The Sublette pronghorn herd is the farthest a route has made it in the formal process. Last year, it made it through the “identified” stage of the process, which officially delineates the corridor. The commission relied on 20 years of research from GPS collar data that shows about 75% of the herd is migratory, some traveling as long as 200 miles, which is also known as the “Path of the Pronghorn.”
The next possible step is the designation.
In the Lander meeting, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department (WGFD) recommended to the commissioners to add protections to some of it, but not the southern and eastern reaches. The route was split up into 10 segments, with protections proposed in the eight segments stretching from the Tetons to the Kemmerer area. The latest proposal nixed the Red Desert and areas east of Farson, saying there was a “lack of high use.”
“There was no bottlenecks and the threat levels were limited, so that to us precluded designation. The threats that are in those two segments are off-road use like ATV, ORV use on BLM [Bureau of Land Management] lands, fencing, invasive annual grasses and poor habitat quality,” said Martin Hicks, WGFD state deputy chief of wildlife.
Leaving out those two segments was the divisive point during the four-hour conversation in Lander.
“It's the same antelope. The antelope are everywhere there. They'll use, they'll intermix, whatever. Just because they're not on the map, coming down, doesn't mean they're not all there,” said Commissioner Kenneth Roberts. “I'm just kind of mystified why we wouldn't want to do all 10?”
Notably, Wyoming Stock Growers Association Executive Vice President Jim Magagna has a private ranch near the two segments that weren’t included in the proposal. WyoFile reported Magagna, who has longtime political clout in Wyoming, requested for the segments to be left out.
At the Lander meeting, energy lobbyists went a step further. They questioned why the state was even going through this process.
Pete Obermueller, president of the Petroleum Association of Wyoming, said it’s not because they don’t care about wildlife.
“The question of whether or not people support the health and functionality of pronghorn in Wyoming is an obvious one,” Obermueller said, attending the meeting via Zoom. “It's like asking if you support mom and apple pie – of course, we all do. There is no question about that.”
But he said the industry is already adhering to other wildlife and environmental stipulations in areas that overlap with the corridor. For example, the big game crucial winter range that limits activities from Nov. 15 to April 30, and sage grouse core areas prohibit surface use within 0.6 miles of leks. He said that Jonah Energy, a natural gas producer in the area, received a national award for its land reclamation last year.
Obermueller added he worries a Sublette pronghorn route designation could be used against industry in the courts by national conservation groups.
“They are looking to use something like this to try to force the BLM’s hand on leases and permits. It's not hypothetical. It's real, and in my position, I have to fight it every day,” Obermueller said.
But prior to the meeting, WGFD received 530 public comments on the proposal and only six didn’t recommend a designation. Common themes included calling the pronghorn “iconic” to Wyoming and a growing concern for the future of the herd with encroaching development.
That sentiment was echoed in about a dozen lengthy, passionate public testimonies in the Lander meeting. Most asked commissioners to designate the route in its entirety – all 10 segments.
“We can no longer claim that Wyoming has more pronghorn than people, and that is due far more than a single bad winter,” said Tom Christianson, a former WGFD sage grouse program coordinator. “Every time we make that [energy and development] balance and compromise decision, we move the fulcrum of that scale towards development. Because we're not usually making a decision that increases wildlife numbers. It is just an attempt to minimize the losses while allowing the development action to proceed.”
Ultimately, commissioners voted unanimously to designate the entire length of the Sublette pronghorn migration route. However, Commissioner Rusty Bell said he had reservations.
“The future is going to have an administration at some point that is going to use the designation to limit our industries. I just have no doubt about that, but I think that might be 20 years from now,” Bell said. “But at this point right now, I think the people want to see a designation, and I'm going to go along with what the people have said.”
Before it’s an official designation, a local working group will put in their two cents and the governor will have the final say.
