Fencing project under way to aid pronghorn
By Cory Hatch, Jackson Hole, Wyo.
September 4, 2008
A five-year project meant to help protect the pronghorn migration route from Sublette County to Grand Teton National Park is under way after the completion of a fencing inventory late last month.
Organized by the Green River Valley Land Trust, the project seeks to improve 500 miles of fence during the next five years. The inventory looked at the location, type and condition of fences on 150 properties from the Bridger-Teton National Forest boundary south to Trapper’s Point, an important pronghorn bottleneck north of Pinedale. The group hopes to improve 100 miles of fences before the snow falls.
Improvements will help wildlife get over or under the fencing so it can migrate more freely.
According to Green River Valley Land Trust Executive Director Lara Ryan, an energy company called Enercrest has “adopted” the first mile of fence at a cost of $25,000. Enercrest also performed the inventory. The $25,000 will cover the labor and materials for each mile. Improvements for the entire 500 miles of fence are expected to cost $10.7 million.
“We created what’s called the Adopt-a-Mile program, and the goal was to encourage individuals, groups of friends, businesses, families and others to have a means of getting involved,” Ryan said. “There are lots of ways to get involved.”
Ryan said smaller donations or donations of labor are also appreciated.
The effort is funded by a $1 million grant from the Jonah Interagency Office; it was announced by Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne this summer. A private individual has also donated $50,000 to the effort.
Ryan said the project is meant to be a collaboration between agencies, companies and individuals, including the Green River Valley Land Trust, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, Enercrest, the Bureau of Land Management, the Natural Resource Conservation Service, Bridger-Teton National Forest, Grand Teton National Park and others.
Bridger-Teton officials say they hope to start an inventory of fences in the rest of the pronghorn path in 2009.
For more than 5,800 years, pronghorn have traveled 350 miles from summer range in Grand Teton National Park to winter range as far south as Rock Springs and back. In the spring, between 300 and 400 pronghorn travel at high speeds, up to 50 mph when fleeing predators, past Pinedale and into their summer range in the foothills and on the flats north of Jackson.
