The Wyoming Game and Fish Department proposed the same plan in September, trimming off 270,000-plus acres, but that proved unpopular largely because it emanated from the livestock industry<\/a>. Later that month, the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission reversed course<\/a>, adding the two segments back.\u00a0<\/p>\n Now Gordon, who\u2019s appointed all the sitting Game and Fish commissioners, has trumped their proposal to designate the corridor in full. Under Wyoming\u2019s migration policy, it\u2019s ultimately the governor who decides whether a route gets designated.\u00a0<\/p>\n This is the first test of the state\u2019s migration policy, and it\u2019s been a bumpy road that illustrates the difficulty of protecting energy-rich landscapes for wildlife\u2019s sake.<\/p>\n Gordon was not available for an interview on Thursday afternoon.<\/p>\n Game and Fish Commissioner Ken Roberts said it was a \u201ctough\u201d issue, but that he respected the decision.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t take it personally,\u201d Roberts told WyoFile. \u201cWe\u2019re just part of the equation. I\u2019m happy we got the eight [segments].\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Wyoming Stock Growers Association Executive Vice President Jim Magagna<\/a>, whose ranch is adjacent to the off-again segments, said that he was pleased. Although he first pushed the idea of trimming<\/a> the pronghorn herd\u2019s \u201cEast of Farson\u201d and Red Desert segments, the plan was later adopted by the Game and Fish Department as its own. At the time, wildlife managers explained their support for leaving off the two segments because there were no \u201cmigration bottlenecks\u201d<\/a> there and threats to the habitat were relatively limited.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t buy that they did it just because I asked for it,\u201d Magagna told WyoFile. \u201cI think they did it because they did the review, and said that the science justified taking that approach.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Notably, threats to habitat within the dropped segments may soon change. The Bureau of Land Management currently has a protective \u201carea of critical environmental concern\u201d in place overlapping much of the \u201cEast of Farson\u201d segment, but the resource management plan there is being revised on a tight timeline<\/a>. Concurrently, the oil and gas industry has shown significant interest in leasing ground in the area<\/a>, including an especially ecologically valuable swath of the sagebrush-steppe biome known as the Golden Triangle<\/a>.<\/p>\n Wildlife advocacy groups in Wyoming had mixed reactions to Gordon\u2019s announcement. Craig Benjamin, who directs the Wyoming Wildlife Federation, said that he appreciated the governor\u2019s decision to pursue the next step in the migration designation process.<\/p>\n \u201cWith pronghorn populations down roughly 40% and facing growing pressures on the landscape, it\u2019s important that we work together to designate as much of the corridor as feasible to keep this migration intact,\u201d Benjamin said in a text message.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Wyoming Outdoor Council\u2019s Meghan Riley struck a starkly different tone: \u201cThis decision subverts the will of the people and direction from the [Wyoming Game and Fish Commission] to the detriment of thousands of pronghorn in the Sublette Herd that will now be excluded from this process.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe are deeply disappointed with this decision,\u201d she added, \u201cbut remain committed to seeing designation advance for the remaining segments of the migration corridor.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Retired Game and Fish biologist Rich Guenzel was also disheartened by the news, calling it a \u201cpolitical decision\u201d that ignores the herd\u2019s biological needs.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI would respectfully disagree with the governor on his assessment,\u201d said Guenzel, who personally endowed a pronghorn-specific conservation fund<\/a>. \u201cI don\u2019t know his rationale, other than they\u2019re not biological.\u201d<\/p>\n Efforts to protect the remaining eight segments of the Sublette Pronghorn Herd\u2019s migration paths still face some hurdles.\u00a0<\/p>\n Gordon will soon appoint a \u201clocal working group\u201d consisting of two representatives of the agriculture industry, two \u201cindustrial users\u201d (oil, gas, mining and renewable), two representatives for wildlife, conservation and hunting and a single rep for motorized recreation. Applications to the group are being accepted through Dec. 31<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe local working group is ultimately charged with reviewing the Game and Fish\u2019s risk assessment, corridor components, potential impacts to socio-economic conditions of the region, conservation opportunities, highway projects, and other factors appropriate to the potential designation,\u201d a press release from Gordon stated.\u00a0<\/p>\n After the working group\u2019s deliberations, the decision will swing back to Gordon. If he designates the corridor, it\u2019d be the first since Wyoming\u2019s migration policy was revamped in 2019<\/a>, but he can also kick it back to Game and Fish for refinement or reject it.\u00a0<\/p>\n On the federal level, there have been efforts to protect the Sublette Pronghorn Herd\u2019s migration paths for a quarter century. In 2008, the Bridger-Teton National Forest amended its forest plan, protecting that portion, and the route earned publicity<\/a> and was given the moniker \u201cthe Path of the Pronghorn.\u201d But its southernmost stretches, which cut through mostly Bureau of Land Management property, ran into political pressure<\/a> and have remained unprotected ever since.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On-again, off-again plans to protect habitat used by about 5,000 pronghorn that migrate through the Red Desert and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":343773,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[79,201],"class_list":{"0":"post-343772","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=343772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343772\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/343773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=343772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=343772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=343772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/IMG_8762.jpg\")
Game and Fish Commissioner Ken Roberts discusses pronghorn during a September 2025 meeting in Lander. (Mike Koshmrl\/WyoFile)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Revised-Sublette-Pronghorn-map.jpg\")
The Wyoming Game and Fish Department\u2019s plan to not designate two southeast segments of the Sublette Pronghorn Herd\u2019s migration corridor, illustrated in this map, was denied by its commission at a September 2025 meeting in Lander. (WGFD)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Brimeyer-with-pronghorn-in-1998.jpg\")
Doug Brimeyer, left, converses with Hall Sawyer during a 1998 pronghorn capture operation in Grand Teton National Park. The migratory animals are part of the broader Sublette Herd. (Mark Gocke\/Wyoming Game and Fish Department)<\/p>\n