Wyoming pronghorn migration corridor advances amid concerns about harm to gas industry

“I almost see it as a defensive move for us,” said Commissioner John Masterson of Casper.

Several speakers representing western Wyoming’s oil and gas industry suggested the commission delay approving the measure until the Bureau of Land Management finishes with new sage grouse and resource planning efforts in the region.

The corridor moves through the Pinedale Anticline Project Area, a natural gas development in Sublette County spread across more than 197,000 acres, as well as the 30,000-acre Jonah Field farther south. The Jonah Field contains more than 2,400 producing wells while the Pinedale project has 3,500.

Jasmine Allison, of PureWest Energy, a natural gas operator in the Pinedale area, said her company is already overburdened with regulations on its 2,000-acre development. Designating a 165-mile long pronghorn migration path across five counties from southwest to northwest Wyoming through the Pinedale Anticline may add to them, she said.

“We do believe that there are enough provisions in place already to support this Sublette antelope herd in the area,” she told the commission.

Wyoming Game and Fish has the “ability to control the timeline” to assess what the BLM does, said Director Brian Nesvik. When weighing the risks, the state is better off leading than following on the issue, he added.

In public comments collected at three public meetings in the region, and from online comments, WGFD said 90% favored establishing the migration corridor.

Slow process

Protecting the pronghorn migration route from industrial development, fences, roads and housing has been on Wyoming Game and Fish Department’s radar for decades.

Rich Guenzel, a retired WGFD wildlife biologist, worked with and studied pronghorn beginning in 1978. He said the migration route was first acknowledged 100 years ago and called the Sublette herd one of the largest and most significant pronghorn populations in the state, if not the “whole planet.”

“This is not new information,” said Nick Dobric of the Wilderness Society, comparing the issue’s repeated consideration to the movie “Groundhog Day,” where the main character must relive the same day over and over again.

In advocating to protect the corridor this time around, Guenzel said, “There are more threats today than we’ve seen before.”

With so many development pressures conspiring against pronghorns, Guenzel said the prairie speedsters are less resilient in responding to disease outbreaks and harsh winters like the ones that decimated the population last winter. Estimates are the region's herds declined from around 43,000 animals to 24,000 from 2022 to 2023. Maintaining the status quo under such conditions, Guenzel said, will not help the population recover. Especially as threats are predicted to continue to grow.

“It’s easier to maintain habitat integrity than to restore it,” said Meghan Riley, of the Wyoming Outdoor Council.

Data collected

Guenzel’s WGFD successors, in partnership with researchers at the University of Wyoming, have gathered a tremendous amount of information on the Sublette pronghorns. Jill Randall, WGFD’s big game migration coordinator, touted the agency’s database from 10 years of GPS collared pronghorns as “world class.”

“Even though we’re in this great wide-open space, there is a lot of fragmentation that has occurred,” Randall said. “Hopefully, identification of this corridor will help ensure maintenance” of the route.

From its GPS data of collared pronghorns, WGFD has identified the many barriers to the pronghorn’s annual migration — which takes the farthest-traveling animals from sagebrush prairies in the southwest to Grand Teton National Park in the northwest — as they pursue the most nutritious vegetation to eat. In 2008, the U.S. Forest Service recognized the uniqueness of the migration and protected a section of the corridor through the Upper Green River and Gros Ventre River drainages in the Bridger-Teton National Forest as the Path of the Pronghorn.

Due to recognition of the migration route, Randall said there has been a lot of positive actions taken, including rebuilding 750 miles of fence to make them wildlife friendly, constructing highway crossings to avoid wildlife-vehicle collisions, weed treatment to eliminate invasive grasses that are a fire hazard and outcompete native species, and establishing conservation easements to protect private lands from development.

Executive order

Despite the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission’s decision to continue pursuing designation of the migration corridor, a final decision could be years off.

“This process is still going to take a while, which it should,” said Commissioner Rusty Bell of Gillette.

The next step for WGFD is to “draft a biological risk assessment in collaboration with local government, stakeholders and affected landowners,” the agency said. “The public will have the opportunity to comment on the assessment. Once completed, the commission will be asked to vote on whether to recommend a formal designation to the governor.”

That assessment will divide the route into sections and examine things like the density of roads and fences to evaluate risks and opportunities for each segment.

The governor has the final say about whether to designate the corridor through an executive order. The order has already outlined what it won’t do, which includes: not applying regulations to private land, not affecting federal grazing permits or access to public land, not deterring energy development or other permits, and not affecting any existing recreation.

More than 60 projects have been reviewed along the migration corridor since the executive order was created and all were able to “proceed in some fashion,” according to Will Schultz, WGFD supervisor of the habitat protection program.

Angi Bruce, deputy director of External Affairs for WGFD, told the commission the executive order is very specific enabling the governor to find a way to authorize continued development.

WGFD has identified suburban expansion and demand for renewable energy resources as “the most concerning threats to the functionality of the corridor.” Zach Key, of SOS Well Services in LeBarge, said houses are a bigger concern than oil and gas development since homes are permanent and when natural gas wells dry up they will be reclaimed.

An executive order recognizing the migration route could provide access to federal and nonprofit funds for more work along the route, conservation group speakers noted.

“In Wyoming we have something really special here, and this process will help us keep that,” Dobric said.