Wildlife Advisory Committee Letter

DRIGGS — Teton County's Wildlife Advisory Committee asked county commissioners Sept. 14 to approve a letter urging the Teton Valley Parks and Recreation District to add wildlife protections to the recreation master plan the district is writing. The commissioners took no vote. Two of them questioned the letter's language on trail closures, setbacks, and new access points.

County Senior Planner Dan Leemon, who staffs the committee, presented the item. One committee member "was here. Unfortunately, she had to leave," Leemon told the board, and committee chair Kathy O'Neil had also left. He read a statement from member Renee Seidler: "I'm seeking approval from you of the letter that we wrote to the Teton County Recreation District."

The county's 2014 Recreation and Public Access Master Plan contains no wildlife policy. Seidler's statement said the district's new plan builds on it, which "leaves the county with two plans" and has confused committee members. Balancing wildlife and recreation is "a core guiding principle" of the county's comprehensive plan, the statement said, but the district "is not planning to include those policies, stipulations or guiding principles in the plan." It said the district's executive director and its consultant, Harmony Design, "encouraged us to bring our concerns forward."

The two-page letter, signed by O'Neil, describes the district's work as "a high-level inventory of current facilities and a needs assessment of recreation gaps" and "a foundational step towards a future master plan." It asks the district to "consider incorporating" safeguards in four areas: where new recreation infrastructure goes, baseline habitat data, seasonal closures and other adaptive management, and protections for rivers and streamside habitat.

The committee adopted the letter Sept. 9 and voted to send it to the commissioners first, requesting approval to submit it to the district. At that meeting, Seidler said, "We need to be careful about how we're sharing our opinion about what they're doing, because they don't have to abide or listen or whatever. They're very independent."

Idaho's recreation district law makes each district "a body politic and corporate" run by its own elected board of directors, and none of its sections gives a county a say over a district's plans. A separate state law, the Local Land Use Planning Act, under which counties write their comprehensive plans, says "local special purpose districts shall comply with all plans and ordinances adopted under this chapter unless otherwise provided by law."

Commissioner Ron James pointed to the letter's calls for seasonal closures and "strict physical setbacks." "Those words worry me," James said, and he asked who would decide when a trail closes and "what those setbacks are."

"Some of that gets done anyway," Commissioner Dan Powers said of the closures, pointing to a trail on the north side of Teton Canyon that stays closed until after Memorial Day. "Mostly it's the Forest Service making those decisions." The letter's recommendation to "avoid establishing new recreational access points in intact, largely unfragmented habitat" was "the one that really jumped out to me," he said. "I want to protect wildlife ... I want to make sure that, you know, people have ability to access public lands." Of access points, he said, "We seem to be losing them more than increasing them."

Leemon offered to take the commissioners' questions back to the committee. "I don't believe they're planning on wrapping this plan up till December," he said of the district. Chair Brad Wolfe told him to "get back to us on that."

What to watch: The Wildlife Advisory Committee's next regular meeting is Oct. 14 at 4 p.m. in the Commissioners' Meeting Room at the Teton County Courthouse in Driggs.

Commissioners Hold Off on Wildlife Advisory Committee Letter

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