County letter would ask Interior to drop full-length Moose-Wilson pathway

The Moose-Wilson corridor, the wetland-laced strip of Grand Teton National Park between Moose and the Granite Canyon entrance, would get a separated multiuse pathway along its full length under a National Park Service amendment dated August 14, 2026. On Monday, the Teton County Board of County Commissioners will consider a draft letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. The letter says: "We ask the Department to reconsider the corridor-length pathway decision" (draft letter). It also asks the department to meet with the board before further implementation. The letter notes that the amendment itself acknowledges the 2016 analysis found "increased wildlife disturbance, habitat loss, and fragmentation from a second human-use corridor," along with harm to vegetation, historic character and archeological sites (draft letter). The Park Service says it reopened the decision to follow Executive Order 14314 on recreational access. The county's position is that its proposed mitigation does not resolve the problem.

The letter attaches the board's January 2016 comments, written when the county was a cooperating agency on the original plan. Those comments stated that "we do not support a separate pathway along the entire corridor" (2016 comment letter). Instead, commissioners proposed traffic calming and short, 5-foot uphill bicycle climbing lanes hugging the road. Their reasoning was that such lanes would "minimize habitat fragmentation, reduce the likelihood of surprising a bear" (2016 comment letter). The county database shows no other action on this item. The 2016 argument about bears and slow uphill speeds still applies, and nothing in the amendment, as the letter summarizes it, shows it was tested.