Wildlife advocates are worried future development near Stilson could cut off deer, moose and elk migration corridors — just after local officials invested millions of dollars to protect them.
“This whole corner of really important habitat has been way overdeveloped,” said Renee Seidler, a wildlife biologist and executive director of the Jackson Hole Wildlife Foundation. “It is really important to the animals moving through there, and we had better protect the last little bits.”
But Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, which wants to develop housing and day care facilities on its property at Stilson, argues that environmental watchdogs are too single-minded in their focus on wildlife. Teton County, meanwhile, is considering building ball fields and tennis and pickle ball courts on its Stilson land.
A soon-to-be-built transit center was located with wildlife in mind, resort President Mary Kate Buckley said, while housing and child care are critical needs and best situated close to public transit hubs like Stilson. Moreover, the location of housing and day care development hasn’t yet been determined, Buckley said.
“The wildlife advocates are all-or-nothing, and we would like to find a compromise that serves our wildlife as well as our community,” Buckley said. “We would certainly support wildlife corridors on both the east and the west side of Stilson. But not at the expense of trying to meet the needs of this community.”
The Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance, Greater Yellowstone Coalition, Jackson Hole Wildlife Foundation and Snake River Fund sent county commissioners a letter Thursday opposing day care and housing development at Stilson, worried about severing moose and elk migration routes that currently pass through the site.
“To hear that argument from the resort makes me really sad,” said Krasnow, the Alliance’s conservation director. “This is one of the few last places that has these migrating herds of big game. If we can’t maintain these migrations here, we’re not going to maintain them anywhere.”
Krasnow argued that the “nothing” alternative Buckley described no longer exists. The site is already developed with a gravel parking lot and bathrooms, and bordered to the east by public parks and the north by a subdivision that Jackson Hole Mountain Resort subdivided and sold in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The compromise Buckley outlined — developing housing and day care facilities with some considerations for wildlife — is not a compromise at all, Krasnow argued, but rather giving the resort everything it wants.
Allowing the future Stilson transit center to go forward, but stopping development of housing and day care is the true compromise, Krasnow argued.
The decision over what happens next at Stilson comes after Teton County residents spent years advocating for wildlife crossings in and around Stilson, which sits at one of the busiest intersections in Teton County, and one of the most traveled wildlife corridors in the developed areas of Jackson Hole. Just west of the Snake River, Stilson is used by moose all year and by elk as they migrate between their winter and summer ranges. Teton County and the Wyoming Department of Transportation are currently spending millions to build wildlife crossings and install fencing along the intersection of Highways 22 and 390, just southwest of Stilson. The intent is to keep animals from crossing the road and instead funnel them through underpasses that will protect them from speeding cars above.
But the Wyoming Game and Fish Department worries that already approved development at Stilson, the transit center, could keep animals from reaching the wildlife underpasses that were designed and built for them.
The department has not yet publicly weighed in on future development of housing and day care.
In a series of letters to Teton County, Game and Fish said the Stilson transit center, which was funded via a federal transportation grant and set for construction next summer, could sever wildlife migrations.
The project would convert the dirt Stilson lot into a paved parking lot with a building for commuters.
But that could keep elk and moose from traversing the lot, cause them to abandon a travel corridor east of Stilson, and keep them from accessing two already-built underpasses in the area, Game and Fish said.
County and resort officials said they positioned the transit center with Game and Fish’s comments in mind, namely by making the eastern corridor between pavement and eastern wildlife fencing as big as they could: 140 feet. But that’s only a fifth of what local research has shown that animals need to move, which is about 600 feet. Game and Fish criticized the size of the corridor in its written comments, saying that its size makes protecting open space to the west of the current parking lot more important, Game and Fish said.
There is currently between 400 and 600 feet of space between the gravel lot and the western property line.
But the resort and county are now eyeing housing, day care and tennis courts in that area.
“Ensuring continued wildlife movement through this area is important for population-level sustainability,” Cheyenne Stewart, Jackson Region Wildlife Management Coordinator, wrote in June comments. “While no single development will likely sever this connectivity completely, cumulative impacts from the various developments and uses that are occurring in the area are reaching a level of concern.
“Impacts to moose and elk could elevate from minor to major if disturbance levels of the transit center, parking lot, Beckley Parkway and pathway reach a threshold by which those species avoid the human disturbance,” she wrote. “If that avoidance were to extend to the WYDOT wildlife underpasses designed to funnel wildlife onto those properties, a critical north-south migration route could be compromised.”
Teton County has been taking public input on Stilson’s future in a survey that closes at 5 p.m. Friday. The county and resort also jointly held two open houses in November to gather input on potential future uses at the site.
Already, hundreds of people have responded to the online survey and their answers to some questions are public, displaying a split in public opinion. While 61% of respondents so far said they would support Jackson Hole Mountain Resort building housing at Stilson, 63% said they “agree” or “strongly agree” that “wildlife permeability should be prioritized over other development on Teton County property” at Stilson.
Source: JH News and Guide
