A bottleneck in a wildlife migration route is created where landscape features, human development
and limited vegetation restrict animal movement. Already, western Wyoming's big-game herds must navigate an obstacle course of roads, fences, elk feedgrounds and homes along their ever-narrowing seasonal migration corridors. Industrial-scale oil and gas development in these bottlenecks, combined with other barriers, could prove insurmountable for big game, closing ancient migration paths for good.
Migration bottlenecks have been identified at Trapper's Point west of Pinedale, between Fremont Lake and Pinedale and at the Bridger-Teton National Forest boundary in the upper Green River area, where migrating pronghorn are squeezed through passages as narrow as fenced roadways.
Ancient Paths
Nearly 200 miles long, the migration route from Grand Teton National Park through the mountains to the Green River Basin and the Red Desert is the longest big-game corridor in the lower 48 states. This sagebrush sea was once one of the richest wildlife habitats in the world, hosting a remarkable array of species from bison and bighorn sheep to mule and white-tailed deer, elk, pronghorn, moose, raptors and sage grouse.
For millennia, native wildlife and their human hunters have wound their way through natural bottlenecks between the Green and New Fork Rivers, traveling between summer and winter ranges.
Archaeologists have identified thousands of artifacts showing that Native Americans took advantage of migration bottlenecks to hunt pronghorn, bison, elk and mule deer. Radiocarbon dates of charcoal at the Trapper's Point site indicate that the Sublette pronghorn herd may have migrated through and been hunted at this bottleneck for nearly 8,000 years.
Not Too Late
Despite protests from conservation groups, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has leased the majority of the Green River Basin for oil and gas development. Additional proposed leases in the basin, as well as ranchland subdivisions, will bring more fences and roads, further narrowing migration corridors. Oil and gas development in the popular Pinedale area has made it extremely vulnerable to rapid growth, especially since Sublette County has resisted land-use planning.
But it's not too late for the BLM to make the right choice by withdrawing more vital habitat areas from leasing in its Resource Management Plan for the Pinedale area. (See related story on page 8.) And it's not too late for Sublette County to create and implement land-use plans for ranches and other privately owned open space to help protect migration routes for America's last great wildlife herds. |
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