PINEDALE — The Green River Valley Program of the Jackson Hole Land Trust announced Oct. 7 that the Looney family has placed a permanent conservation easement on Wild Horse Ranch. Located 7.5 miles southwest of Boulder along the New Fork River, the 233-acre working ranch sits entirely within the Sublette Antelope Migration Corridor and protects a critical segment of the New Fork pronghorn bottleneck.
The Wild Horse Ranch provides yearlong range for moose and pronghorn, and crucial winter range for moose, pronghorn and mule deer. The landscape of the ranch is made of upland sagebrush, wetland, riparian and riverine habitat along the New Fork River. This section of the river is designated as a Yellow Ribbon Stream of regional importance, which means there is an estimated 50-300 pounds of sportfish per mile. The easement protects 1.3 miles of the river and 104 acres of designated wetlands. Sixty acres of the southern land lies within the Daniel Sage-Grouse Core Area. The area also is home to house sagebrush sparrow and golden eagles — two of Wyoming’s Species of Greatest Conservation Need.
The designation of the Sublette Antelope Migration Corridor was announced June 26. This marked the first antelope migration corridor designated under the Wyoming Mule Deer and Antelope Migration Corridor Protection Executive Order. Within the migration corridor, there are 12 designated bottlenecks, which means they are relatively small, but they are critically important as a high volume of pronghorn go through this narrow area.
The Wyoming Game and Fish Department’s 2025 Sublette Antelope Biological Risk and Opportunity Assessment highlighted one of the threats of this pronghorn bottleneck was habitat fragmentation. One of the important opportunities to mitigate that threat is for landowners to voluntarily implement conservation easements on their property. This conservation easement is not impacting agricultural production for the Looney family, it simply prevents the land from being subdivided. The location within the migration corridor elevates their property as a priority for conservation work to be done.
“This is a great example of landowners doing voluntary conservation work,” said Jill Randall, Game and Fish migration coordinator based in the Pinedale Region. “This is a win-win situation to meet the goals and objectives of the landowners, and great outcomes for wildlife.”
The Wild Horse Ranch conservation easement was made possible through the Wyoming Wildlife and Natural Resource Trust, The WYldlife Fund, Wyoming Governor’s Big Game License Coalition, North American Pronghorn Foundation, Sublette County Sage-Grouse Local Working Group, Ducks Unlimited, Bryant Foundation, Heart of the Rockies Initiative and Knobloch Family Foundation.
— WGFD —
