RAWLINS -- Driving up to Baggot Rocks, it's clear that resident antelope and deer have been nibbling at their winter pantry.

Some sagebrush branches have been nibbled down in the spot south of Saratoga that's usually the last gathering place for big game late in the snow season.

There's stress on big game winter range, Wyoming Game and Fish Department officials said last week during a media tour of Platte Valley habitats.

Though this year's wetness is expected to alleviate some of that stress by enhancing plant growth, winter range is seeing longer-term impacts that need attention, they said.

Winter feeding grounds are important because they provide the nourishment for big game to survive the winter and to produce healthy fawns in spring.

If one area is lost, it means more stress on another range, Saratoga Wildlife Biologist Will Schultz said.

WGFD officials weave together trends, impacts and data to fulfill a mission "to prevent net loss of habitat and provide a sustainable yield of big game animals," Saratoga Game Warden Biff Burton said.

He said Baggot Rocks is the last place deer, elk and antelope go in the winter, and it's the first place they leave. That's mostly because there's simply not a lot of food there for animals that consume anywhere from an antelope's 2 to a mule deer's 6 pounds of food a day.

There are plenty of other winter ranges that big game visit before funneling together -- and competing for food and shelter -- at Baggot Rocks, but WGFD officials used the site to show an extreme.

It highlights the importance of protecting or resting certain areas -- and maintaining other, healthy winter ranges, they said.

But "if this looks like doom and gloom, it's not," Burton said. "This is not typical of the entire Platte Valley. This is what it looks like when a lot of animals are using one piece of land, and it never gets a chance to recover."

Schultz said the Platte Valley is still a well-functioning ecosystem with wildlife and fisheries that attract people worldwide.

But there are areas that need tending, he added, and winter range for big game is one of them.

Subdivisions, even 40-acre lots, have an impact on game habitats, said Bob Lanka, WGFD Regional Information and Education supervisor.

He said homes are often built on winter range, affecting migration, habitat and forage.

And more of those homes have been going in during recent decades because, "humans like the same country big game animals do," said Burton, who's worked in the Platte Valley since 1989.

"The habitat is being nibbled away by human impact," Burton said.

With homes come fences, which affect game movement -- though private landowners have the right to install their own fence type, Lanka said.

"(Antelope) didn't evolve in places where they had to jump (to get over fences)," he said. "They evolved in places where they had to go 50 miles per hour. ... There is no good fence for wildlife."

"All those little things -- whether it's a subdivision, a fence, a highway -- it's the cumulative impact on the wildlife habitat," Schultz said.

Noxious weeds can take over winter range, inhibiting nutritious plants like sagebrush and bitterbrush from growing, Lanka said.

He pointed to cheatgrass as an example, which Burton said has taken over and stunted native plant growth on the slopes of Baggot Rocks during the last 10 years.

"This invasive exotic plant (from the Mediterranean) is a huge concern for us on winter range," Lanka said.

Drought also impacts habitat, Schultz said.

Numerous big game roam the valley eating several pounds of food a day and, "this ground is barely producing" what's needed, Schultz said about the Baggot Rocks site, even after a wet year.

There's also the factor that reduced wildfires have meant older plants continue to grow and produce less than younger plants, officials added.

Yearly classification and other data collected by WGFD officials help analysts see trends and make decisions about habitat, hunting and other types of management, Burton said.

Burton said there's been a decline of mule deer in the past three decades, from a ratio of 68 fawns to 100 does to about 54 fawns to 100 does today, based on classification surveys of several thousand deer.

"When you extrapolate that over thousands of deer, it's still a pretty big reduction in the number of deer that are at least surviving into late November," he said.

"Wildlife is an indicator of the environment," he said, adding that though a classification survey is a snapshot, there's decades of information that can be combined with climate and weather data to incorporate the impacts of "Mother Nature" into decision-making.

WGFD officials also work closely with the public to solve the problems of human impact, Burton said.

To help mitigate subdivision impact on big game habitats, he and others have worked with local landowners on projects. One such project was asking developers putting in homes between Bennett Peak and Baggot Rocks to grow the lot size from 10 acres to 40 acres to reduce the number of homes in the development.

To encourage new sagebrush and bitterbrush development, WGFD uses chemicals and fire, Burton said.

And WGFD isn't alone.

"Every agency has a habitat management plan to get the most from the land multiple use," Burton said.

"The bottom line is that people try to look for the problem, the one problem and then try to solve it," Lanka said. "This is a very complicated issue ... it's going to take a lot of people coming together" to enable future generations to enjoy existing wildlife.