The Biden administration bought a state-owned parcel of land within Grand Teton National Park last week, concluding a monthslong odyssey that saw Wyoming condition the sale on the Bureau of Land Management shrinking the scope of restrictions in a separate land-use plan.
The National Park Service has long prioritized the purchase of the 640-acre “Kelly Parcel” within the picturesque Gros Ventre River Valley on the national park’s eastern border. Though the region serves as an important wildlife migration corridor in the southern Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, the state of Wyoming at one point considered holding an auction to sell the parcel to the highest bidder, raising fears the land would be developed into luxury homes.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland on Monday called the $100 million land purchase an “incredible milestone, decades in the making,” that will allow the National Park Service “to permanently protect an essential wildlife migration corridor and treasured landscape within Grand Teton National Park.”
Doing so, Haaland added, “will benefit our public lands and Wyoming’s public school students for generations to come.”
