JACKSON - State and national wildlife and sportsmen's groups are questioning a federal agency's new building location in a Pinedale wildlife corridor.

The Wyoming Wildlife Federation and the Wildlife Management Institute of Washington, D.C., said the Bureau of Land Management's decision to move into a building in an already-tight pronghorn antelope migration corridor reflects poorly on the agency.

"We consider it inappropriate, leasing office space in the middle of a pronghorn migration corridor," said Dave Gowdey, executive director of the Wyoming Wildlife Federation. "We think it shows an indifference to wildlife that we find extremely disturbing."

Steven Hall, spokesman for the BLM's Cheyenne office, called an article about the office location - published in the Wildlife Management Institute's "Outdoor News Bulletin" April 12 - irresponsible.

"When it comes to issues in Upper Green, people lay all the problems squarely at BLM's feet," Hall said. "That type of rhetoric adds to this type of journalism."

Hall said the new BLM building is being built on private land, and the BLM will lease the building. There are other structures on the site on the west end of Pinedale, including hotels and a Wyoming Department of Transportation building. The BLM has worked with the developer to ensure that a stretch of grass is maintained for pronghorn passage, he said.

Much of Pinedale is being developed, Hall added. Areas of historic migration are being developed into housing subdivisions and businesses. To single out the BLM isn't fair, he said.

"The BLM is not the sole influencer in terms of wildlife and development," he said.

The Wildlife Management Institute article also says no environmental analysis was completed for the construction, but Hall said the site is private land and not subject to those analyses.

Gowdey said wildlife groups have raised the issue of building in a migration corridor with developers. But he said the BLM has a federal mandate to protect wildlife and wildlife habitat, while hotel owners do not.

"While I can get upset with WYDOT and a private hotel, they don't have that mandate," Gowdey said. "They don't have dozens of wildlife biologists working on their payroll."

The so-called "antelope alley" is a 200-yard-wide corridor where as many as 1,500 pronghorn pass each spring and fall. The area is wedged between developed areas in town and the outside Pinedale Anticline natural gas field.

"(B)ecause the BLM office is literally and figuratively permitting fast-paced development in the surrounding area, with negative impacts on pronghorn and other wildlife, conservationists are left to wonder what the agency is thinking and doing by not only allowing, but causing a final blow to this pronghorn migration route so close to town," the article said.

Hall said the BLM worked to keep migration routes open at Trapper's Point - the only remaining open migration corridor in the area - as development encroached, but that point is not being brought up by groups when it comes to the new building.

He said the agency's move to a new building should not raise questions of its commitment to multiple use.

Environmental reporter Whitney Royster can be reached at (307) 734-0260 or at royster@tribcsp.com.