Plans are coming together for improvements in the Grover Park area of the Bridger-Teton National Forest.

Greys River Collaborative Director Brett Story offered background on the work of the local organization that teams up representatives from the Bridger-Teton National Forest with local government leaders to oversee local projects.

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Explaining the collaborative he said it was “put together several years ago by a number of community members that wanted to participate with the Forest Service,” he said. “The Forest Service was a big advocate of it and the county was a big advocate of it.”

Story, with extensive experience in forest restoration work, joined the collaborative efforts.

“I volunteered my time to do it,” Story recalled.  “I think they were trying to sort out how they could really be a participant with the Forest Service. As you know, the Forest Service has a lot of rules on how to participate.”

Story volunteered his experience to help with the projects. “I’ve spent the last two decades of my career supporting the Forest Service and other forests, and so I had that capability and got organized with the District Ranger, and the leadership, and the staff, and kind of talked about, what could we do?”

With those meetings a series of projects, including the restoration work at Grover Park, was planned.

He said, “One of them is a master plan for Grover Park, and a variety of things that combine what the forest is about, which is certainly protection of species and recreation. And, it allows for local involvement in the program.”

Story noted the collaborative could help with Grover Park and other projects as the Forest Service faces staff reductions.

“The long term approach is to develop a master plan for Grover Park, but it’s really to develop a master plan for anywhere in the Bridger-Teton,” he explained. “We have lots of areas that could utilize the same thing. We’re focused on Grover Park, for one, because it gets a lot of use now, and there’s a lot of people with a lot of good ideas of how it could be used better.”

Story is assisting the collaborative with a grant that will allow for funding to help with the planning process.

“You really need a professional to organize it. But the idea is this, develop a master plan that reaches out to local residents, particularly those that have been here for a long time, those that live near it, people who come in, as you know, people come all four seasons to Grover Park and this beautiful valley,” he explained. “So, it’s going to be an outreach effort, and then it’s going to be a combination of what makes sense, what can we economically put in there? What makes sense with the Forest Service regulations, and how they manage recreation?”

He added, “It’s one of those things, be careful what you wish for, because we could suddenly have thousands of people come all the time and then it would get overused and potentially damaged. So, we’re looking to build that balance.”

Story explained the process for the Grover Park project and others.

“Once the public input is gathered, the planning process moves to a formal approval,” he said. “Once that balance is put together, the next step for it would be to go through NIPA or the National Environmental Protection Act.”

He added, “It’s not a long process for this type of thing, but nevertheless, it has to check and balance everything that goes on in the forest. That’s where the details of, let’s say, someone who wanted a horse trail or a bicycle trail. Well, that works well on paper, you’ve got to figure out how does it work with the topography, how does it work with the other recreational things that are going to go on there?”

He summarized, “All of that would be planned in that environmental report, and then it would come up with a conclusion of what’s feasible and what’s not.”