Interior Department Announces Permanent Protections for Critical Land and Wildlife Migration Corridor in Grand Teton National Park

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The Department of the Interior today announced the purchase from the State of Wyoming and permanent protection of the 640-acre Kelly parcel, a picturesque landscape known for mountain views and world-class wildlife habitat within Grand Teton National Park.

The parcel, which was state school trust land, had been the largest remaining piece of unprotected land within the boundaries of Grand Teton National Park. The permanent conservation of this square mile maintains essential connectivity for wildlife in the southern Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem—one of the last remaining, nearly intact temperate ecosystems on the planet.

“Today marks an incredible milestone, decades in the making, to permanently protect an essential wildlife migration corridor and treasured landscape within Grand Teton National Park,” said Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland. “This will benefit our public lands and Wyoming’s public school students for generations to come.”

In 2023, more than 10,000 people from across Wyoming and the United States participated in a public comment process related to the potential sale of the Kelly parcel, overwhelmingly supporting its conservation for wildlife, public enjoyment, and strengthening Wyoming’s economy. In 2023, visitors to Grand Teton National Park contributed $936 million and supported 9,370 jobs in gateway economies.

The $100 million sale to preserve the Kelly parcel was made possible through an Interior Department and National Park Service (NPS) public-private partnership with the Grand Teton National Park Foundation and additional support from the National Park Foundation. The Department invested $62.4 million from the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) paired with $37.6 million in private donations raised by Grand Teton National Park Foundation. All $100 million from the sale will directly benefit Wyoming’s public education system.

At no cost to taxpayers, the LWCF, which was created by Congress in 1964 and is administered by the NPS, supports increased public access to and protection for federal public lands and waters, and provides grants to state governments for the acquisition and development of public parks and other outdoor recreation sites. LWCF was fully funded by the Great American Outdoors Act.

Located within a key migration corridor for pronghorn, elk, and mule deer, the Kelly parcel provides critical wildlife habitat and extraordinary open space. Grand Teton National Park anchors this unique landscape, connecting Yellowstone National Park with the Bridger-Teton and Caribou-Targhee national forests, including the Upper Green River Valley and the Wind River, Gros Ventre, and Wyoming Range mountains. The parcel is the starting point for the Path of the Pronghorn—the longest land migration in the lower 48 states—and is a critical link to mule deer migration corridors that stretch to public, private and Tribal lands hundreds of miles away.

Today’s closing on the Kelly parcel completes an effort that spanned decades to exchange, trade or sell the state-owned school trust land within Grand Teton National Park. A Wyoming constitutional mandate requires that school trust lands, created at statehood in 1890, must generate income for the common school trust. Since the late 1990s, Wyoming’s congressional delegation, governor and state legislature have worked to resolve this inholding challenge. The late U.S. Senator Craig Thomas passed legislation in 2003 to authorize exchanges, sales or trades that would compensate the State of Wyoming for the Grand Teton school section inholdings. The second to last school section in the park, known as Antelope Flats, was purchased by the NPS in 2016 for $46 million, which was made possible by $23 million in philanthropic support raised by Grand Teton National Park Foundation and the National Park Foundation that matched $23 million from the LWCF.