Private land supports Yellowstone wildlife

The migratory Wyoming elk spotted by visitors to Yellowstone National Park each summer spend much of their lives dozens of miles to the east, where the landscape tends to be privately owned and at risk of development. Recent research by Dr. Laura Gigliotti, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, published in the journal Biological Conservation, demonstrates the elk’s vulnerability: More than 36% of all the mapped elk habitat in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem lacks even basic zoning.

As momentum builds for private land conservation to support elk and other migratory wildlife, given the sky-high interest in real estate development in the Bighorn Basin and a recent influx in state and federal funding for conservation and habitat protection, the accredited Jackson Hole Land Trust and partners recently launched Park County Open Lands, a regional program that will work with private landowners to protect the region’s spectacular landscapes and important wildlife habitat. Park County Open Lands hired a local director, Alex Few, to join the Jackson Hole Land Trust staff team in the coming months.

“On a landscape scale, Park County functions as part of the greater Northwest Wyoming area, with wildlife species migrating in and out of our iconic national parks,” said Max Ludington, president of the Jackson Hole Land Trust. “But as far as communities go, this area is proudly unique and a world away from Jackson Hole. That’s why local leadership in the form of our new staff director and an active advisory council will be essential to the success of this program.”