A Joint Statement from:
- The Teton Climbers’ Coalition
- The Teton Backcountry Alliance
- Access Fund
- The American Alpine Club
- Winter Wildlands Alliance
Ecosystem stewardship and access for backcountry winter recreationists are core principles to our organizations’ missions. Meeting the first objective sometimes requires making compromises on the second. Following from these principles, we recognize that the Teton Bighorn Sheep (TBHS) population is critically low, and action is needed to allow the TBHS population to recover to a level that insures its long-term sustainability. We also recognize the significant role Teton backcountry winter travel plays in the social, spiritual, and physical well-being of our community members, and fully support winter backcountry recreation in a manner that is compatible with the conservation of TBHS and other wildlife.
During the past year, the TBHS Working Group, with support from Teton Backcountry Alliance and Winter Wildlands Alliance, facilitated a collaborative process to document perspectives on bighorn sheep and winter recreation. That process resulted in the release of recommendations for seasonal closures along with other management actions to protect bighorn sheep on critical winter range while minimizing impacts on recreational access. Subsequent to the report’s release, agencies gathered additional input from a small group of experienced Teton backcountry skiers and climbers to refine the Working Group’s recommended closure maps, and recently released voluntary closures for the winter of 2021-2022.
We strongly encourage all Teton winter backcountry travelers to help protect bighorn sheep by observing these closures.
This spring the Park Service, Forest Service, and Wyoming Game and Fish Department will review this winter’s voluntary closures and initiate process to determine a longer-term management strategy for bighorn sheep and winter recreation. As a way of contributing to that process, we ask winter backcountry skiers and climbers to share their perspectives on this topic through an on-line survey that will ask about spatially explicit knowledge of the closure areas and recommendations for winter visitor management that contribute to sheep conservation. As a part of the interview, we ask for ideas on how best to advance the state of knowledge on TBHS ecology, and how citizen science can contribute to this process. We anticipate the on-line survey going live in the coming weeks.
Our organizations encourage all winter travelers to remember that stewardship of the Teton ecosystem, including TBHS, is our collective responsibility. We are encouraged by the many members of our backcountry community who now serve as stewards of the Teton ecosystem and are working towards sustaining our mountain environments for future generations.