WYDOT: 5 lanes in elk range. Agency rejects commissioners’ plea for smaller highway upgrade from South Park Loop to Horse Creek. By Cara Froedge, Jackson Hole News and Guide.
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Dr. Ralph Maughan is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University. He was a Western Watersheds Project Board Member off and on for many years, and was also its President for several years. For a long time he produced Ralph Maughan’s Wolf Report. He was a founder of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. He and Jackie Johnson Maughan wrote three editions of “Hiking Idaho.” He also wrote “Beyond the Tetons” and “Backpacking Wyoming’s Teton and Washakie Wilderness.” He created and is the administrator of The Wildlife News.
Comments
This could be problematic for wildlife collisions.
They could build a big bridge…
An overpass would be better.
Unfortunately, WYDOT doesn’t care a hoot about Wyoming’s wildlife.
WYDOT is bureaucracy totally out of control and even more totally out of touch with reality. They truly answer to no one other than themselves – In other words they do as their little engineering minds see fit and to H@%% with everything else!
It’s always the same, “Chinese torture”…a drip at a time we destroy what makes special places special.
A number of people have died on this stretch the past few years, not to mention untold elk, deer, and moose (I saw newborn moose calf killed a few years back along the South Park Feedground. It seems to me like they could utilize the existing topography to make a few overpasses (or perhaps underpasses) along this stretch. Unfortunately WYDOT hasn’t been as progressive as MT DOT. Jackson’s working class commutes to Alpine on this stretch of road and it is quite busy and dangerous even without all the wildlife. There is no easy solution to this stretch of road.
It’s this stretch where even the most casual tourist understands Jackson is a city, not a town.
You’re right Jeff. WYDOT should build some wildlife crossings, and why shouldn’t that elk feedground be closed?
The fact that only high income people can live in Jackson inflicts all kinds of dangers on travelers, wildlife, and scenery as workers drive many miles daily from Star Valley and Victor, ID to work in Jackson.
If anyone wants to enjoy the trip over Teton Pass or up the Snake River Canyon from Alpine, WY avoid the commute hours!
Hey Ralph there are still some working class folks in Jackson. I teach at the high school and my wife in a nurse at the hospital. We have said numerous times if we had to drive the canyon from Alpine or the pass from Victor/Driggs we’d live somewhere else. I really thought WYDOT might do something innovative when they redid HWY 287 over Towgotee Pass, once again it seems like our state is behine the curve on innovation. As far as the feedground(s) closing…I won’t hold my breath.