A lease to develop a 3-square-mile state-owned tract in the Absaroka Range foothills has been finalized without any mandatory measures to mitigate impacts on mule deer, which use “crucial” habitat that overlaps the site throughout the year.
The incursion into deer range and other designated wildlife habitat comes from the Wyoming State Shooting Complex, a subsidized public-private venture set in motion by successful 2023 legislation. Before a 12-member legislative task force voted in July 2024 to locate an event center, long-range targets and other infrastructure on the 1,956-acre property in Park County, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department issued a memo that effectively recommended the complex go elsewhere because of wildlife conflicts.
State wildlife officials, however, called the review “internal department correspondence” and not an “official project letter,” even though it was printed and signed on Game and Fish letterhead and addressed to an outside legislative task force.
Fifteen months later, the 75-year lease for the Wyoming State Shooting Complex was finalized by the State Board of Land Commissioners, which met last week in Cheyenne. In the intervening months, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department was never asked to complete a formal review of the project’s wildlife impacts, and so that assessment does not exist.
“We do rely on the permitting agency to request a formal environmental review,” Game and Fish Director Angi Bruce told WyoFile.
Alternatively, developers will often seek an environmental review, Bruce said. In the case of the Wyoming State Shooting Complex, the request came from neither party. In the Game and Fish director’s view, it’s not the state agency’s role to step in and formally vet a project’s wildlife impacts without a review being requested.
“We have not done that before,” Bruce said. “At the end of the day, this is a legislative action that passed and is now in state law. We’re going to respect that.”
The permitting agency for the Wyoming State Shooting Complex is the Wyoming Office of State Lands and Investments.
State land leases for extractive activities, like oil and gas drilling, typically trigger project reviews and standard wildlife-friendly stipulations, according to Cody Booth, the office’s lands management program supervisor.
On state lands administered by his office, there is a standard oil and gas stipulation for crucial big game winter range — like the Wyoming State Shooting Complex site, where it’s designated for mule deer. The stipulation states that developers “shall” avoid human activity in crucial range for big game species from Nov. 15 to April 30. Variances require the director’s approval, consultation with Game and Fish and plans that “provide similar resource protection and mitigation.”
But surface-disturbing activities on state lands permitted via a “special-use lease” are regulated more loosely, Booth said. That’s due to the wide variety of projects that require a special-use lease, which is a “catch-all bucket” for permanent changes to the land ranging from a commercial shooting complex to a trail network, he said.
“We have to take these [leases] on a case-by-case scenario, and we’re not able to develop those same standard stipulations,” Booth said. “There’s not stipulations in the same sense as an oil and gas lease, but there could be comments or recommendations from Game and Fish.”
Because the Office of State Lands and Investments didn’t ask for a project review from its sister agency, Game and Fish’s formal recommendations don’t exist in writing.
But Booth said the State Shooting Complex’s developers have been in talks with wildlife managers.
“It’s our understanding that the lessee is working diligently with the Game and Fish,” he said, “and on a variety of wildlife matters.”
Additionally, he pointed out that there’s a provision in the State Shooting Complex lease that requires developers “to observe state and federal laws and regulations for the protection of fish and wildlife.”
The specific concessions being made to minimize harm to crucial mule deer range and core sage grouse habitat in the southern third of the site were not available before this story was published.
Glenn Ross, who chairs the Wyoming State Shooting Complex Joint Powers Board, could not be reached for an interview Thursday.
But previously, he told WyoFile that Game and Fish’s wildlife impact concerns were considered from the get-go and an earlier Park County site north of Cody was abandoned because it overlapped an elk calving area.
“Our planning with our site has been making every attempt to be wildlife friendly,” Ross told WyoFile last summer.
There was no discussion about impacts to wildlife habitat when the State Board of Land Commissioners — comprised of Wyoming’s top five elected officials — met last week to finalize the complex’s lease.
The 75-year lease went through without any major controversy, though Secretary of State Chuck Gray did oppose an amendment that closed the entire 1,956-acre state land site to the general public.
“This is just a little too heavy handed for me, all 2,000 acres,” Gray said. “I think there is a path, maybe, to get a little more of a balance there.”
The site design for the Wyoming State Shooting Complex is nearing completion, according to the Powell Tribune. Its joint powers board met Thursday morning to potentially approve the design, the newspaper reported, and a public meeting to show off the new design has been scheduled for 5:30-7:30 p.m. Oct. 15 at the Park County Courthouse.
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