Winter trail push leans on ‘responsible recreation’—but where’s the wildlife map?

The winter range doesn’t get a vote when we market it. A new county-filed slide deck on “Sustainable, Responsible Winter Trail Recreation in Jackson Hole” lays out the Jackson Hole Nordic Alliance’s plan to grow awareness and participation in Nordic skiing, fat biking and snowshoeing—building a winter-trails “brand” around daily trail reports, GPS maps, grooming schedules, social media and visitor-facing outreach. Source: Presentation on Sustainable Winter Trail Recreation in Jackson Hole.

The presentation points to strong growth in winter trail use (including a reported 50% jump in program participation in 2021–22) and describes a multi-platform strategy: a trail-search website with 100+ GPS maps, grooming schedules for “30 trails (200 miles),” daily trail reports, and training “trail ambassadors” and front-line staff (concierges, visitor services, airport) to steer visitors. It repeatedly frames the goal as “responsible” recreation—education, messaging, and “Recreate Responsibly” style guidance.

What’s hard to find, at least in this deck, is the ecological backbone that would make “responsible” measurable: clear maps of winter wildlife concentration areas and seasonal closures, a commitment to route design that avoids critical winter range, and monitoring standards that trigger management changes when use spikes. If county and partners want to promote winter trails at scale, they should put habitat first—publish a wildlife-sensitivity layer alongside the GPS maps, spell out where grooming and fat-biking are off-limits, and show how compliance will be tracked and enforced when the next busy winter hits.