Karst at 9500 feet in Tosi Creek Basin
Gros Ventre Mountains, Bridger-Teton N.F.
© Ralph Maughan

This is a huge and highly scenic national forest that includes a good part of western Wyoming to the south of Yellowstone National Park. The forest was created about 15 years ago when the Bridger and the Teton National Forests were administratively combined.

Click for the official Bridger-Teton NF page

The Bridger-Teton National Forest includes 3.4 million acres (about 5300 square miles) of rugged, prime recreational country, including a number of large designated wilderness areas, the highest peak in Wyoming, tremendous scenery and outstanding fish and wildlife.

The Teton National Forest portion has long been recognized as primarily a recreational national forest, although attempts to "feed" a large lumber mill in Dubois, Wyoming, during the 1970s and early 80s, led to controversial clearcutting and the destruction of the Mt. Leidy Highlands roadless area just to the east of Grand Teton National Park.

The Teton National Forest has also been occasionally threatened by drilling for oil and natural gas. In fact at the present, it looks like the drillers want to make another run on the forest.

Except for the Bridger Wilderness, the Bridger National Forest to the south of the Teton, has more of a history of resource extraction. Presently a huge sour national gas field with hundreds of wells, pipelines, and natural gas sweetening plants exists near La Barge, Wyoming. Much of this is on the Bridger National Forest and adjacent public lands administered by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. Up to 10,000 gas wells may be put into production. Each would, on the average, produce about 50 tons of air pollution a year.

The Bridger portion does have, however, some fine backcountry in the Wyoming Range, Salt River Range,  Mt. Leidy Highlands , and the Commissary Ridge country.  

Current Projects on the B-T.

Do you want to find out what projects (such as timber sales, grazing allotments, and roads) are being planned on the Bridger-Teton? Click for a list of their quarterly projects. You have the right to request this information from the U.S. Forest Service and to comment on any of these projects. If you do send comments, ask specifically that your comments are "entered into the public record." If you are an American, these are your lands; and, for good or ill, you help pay for the projects.

Oil and Gas leasing-
This is a very big controversy.  Oil and gas leasing could lead to long-lasting and devastating changes to the semi-primitive areas of the forest between Togwotee Pass and the Wind Rivers to the south.  Here is a current newspaper story about the controversy.

"Improvements" to US 26-287-
A project that will affect many folks that you might want to check out is US 26/287 Reconstruction. This is the highway from Dubois, Wyoming over Togwotee Pass to Moran Junction in Grand Teton National Park. There are numerous accidents now at its relatively slow travel speed (mostly with large animals at night). If Wyoming DOT does its usual construction "improvement" job, lots of people, elk, moose, deer, and grizzly bears will die. Wyoming DOT is the lead agency. To contact them about this $47-million project, send you ideas about this highway to Tim Stark, WY DOT Environmental Services, POB 1708, Cheyenne, WY 82003-1708 or call 307-777-4378. 
After a recent conversation with B-T officials I feel a little better that this construction won't devastate the area. 

Mud slides have closed many roads on the B-T.

Story on the slides from the Idaho Falls Post-Register June 11, 1997