The Future of Wildlife in Jackson Hole
In 2001, NRCC began building a community-based coalition of people and organizations committed to sustainable wildlife conservation in Jackson Hole. We sought to help a wide range of environmental stakeholders to achieve their goals, strengthen sense of community, and joint action, and maintain a high level of awareness and involvement in wildlife-related issues. Our project was designed to: educate people about the importance of wildlife to the character and health of the valley through community, education, and science-based activities, facilitate community engagement in wildlife conservation issues, and help the advocacy community become more effective.
Our most recent efforts have been focused on helping environmental stakeholders and policy makers address such threats as the potential for catastrophic disease outbreak in the elk population and artificial crowding on feedgrounds, address the lack of evaluation of cumulative threats, and manage conflict relating to the management of mountain lions and feeding of wildlife. By addressing these interrelated problems, this project attempted to make Jackson Hole a model for effective problem solving in wildlife conservation and democratic governance.
Sub-projects since the first meetings of this stakeholder group have been varied. Most recently, NRCC staff completed an advisory document, with funding from 1% for the Tetons, which compiled data about mule deer populations in Jackson Hole and assessed how to better integrate scientific data into the planning process. This report was well received by town and county planners, and hopefully will help guide planning decisions in the future. Making Science Relevant to Planning: A Case Study of Mule Deer in Jackson Hole can be downloaded here.