PINEDALE – Migrating mule deer might have an easier time moving through the narrow Fremont Lake “bottleneck” with a proposed seasonal closure of Forest Service land and trails around the lake’s outlet.

On June 26, about 20 or so people attended an open house hosted by Bridger-Teton National Forest (BTNF) and Wyoming Game and Fish staff at Rendezvous Pointe. Much of Fremont Lake’s landscape falls into BTNF’s Pinedale Ranger District.

The proposed seasonal recreation closure would occur for the full months of April and November, according to BTNF wildlife biologist Rusty Kaiser.

Many locals and visitors alike frequent these popular trails and meadows year-round, which are important to the Red Desert to Hoback Mule Deer Migration Route, designated by Game and Fish.

The quarter-mile bottleneck portion, where deer squeeze between residential development and Fremont Lake, has been recognized for decades as a problem area along the fall and springtime migration route, Kaiser said.

“The purpose is to minimize human disturbance during the spring and fall,” he explained.

One of the first wildlife projects he worked on when he began as a BLM biologist was a student’s study of the effects of people walking dogs on the mule deer herd.

People who attended the open house were enthusiastic about the proposed closures that will keep people, dogs and bikes out of the important habitat and migration “ground zero,” he added.

“We got nothing but support from those people,” Kaiser said. “In this community, wildlife, especially about migration, just gets overwhelming support. Because they know the true story, and the true story is so cool.”

Locals embrace wildlife migration routes as an essential part of Sublette history, with 4,000 to 5,000 animals moving up to the mountains and even into Hoback Basin in the spring and returning south in fall to lower elevations.

Mule deer have traveled that route for countless centuries, long before mountain bikers and hikers arrived.

The deer now swim a channel or walk below Fremont Lake’s dam structure at the outlet – a matter of 300 yards – in the BTNF. “They’ve just got nowhere else to go – they would have to swim across Fremont Lake or go through town.”

There is also BLM-managed land in with private homes and the BTNF.

Along the entire route, many landowners have converted to wildlife-friendly fencing for easier passage and Game and Fish closes its adjacent Luke Lynch Wildlife Habitat Management Area from Dec. 1 to May 1 for wintering wildlife.

“It has been a topic of conversation for decades,” Kaiser said of the bottleneck. At the open house, someone told him Winnebago wanted to build an RV park there, next to Lakeside Lodge’s marina, restaurant and cabins. Fortunately, it never happened, Kaiser said.

More recently, a group proposed a new mountain bike trail, but that would have brought more than recreationists, like another parking lot and public services.

“The past couple of years, we really started collaborating with Game and Fish because people were asking what we were going to do,” he said.

Any potential future development in that specific area would close up the route.

“If something (new) here severed that corridor, you won’t get it back,” he said. “If we aren’t preventative now to that route, it would be reactive and … this is an area where it now might work.”

If approved, the closure takes effect for two years, starting this Nov. 1-30, so biologists can assess effects and impacts and consider a longer term, he said.

The dirt road to the CCC Ponds parking lot, off Fremont Lake Road past Lakeside Lodge, is BTNF and would be part of the closure, along with Forest Service land on that side of the road to the Fremont Lake dam.

For more details, contact BTNF’s Rusty Kaiser at rusty.kaiser@usda.gov.

Check out page 5 of the July 13 Pinedale Roundup to read letters to the editor submitted by proponents of the proposed closure.