CASPER (WNE) — “Animal Trails: Rediscovering Grand Teton Migrations,” a new Wyoming-made documentary, shows how the migration patterns often depend on habitats up to 190 miles away from Grand Teton National Park — not just in it. 

Animal Trails: Rediscovering Grand Teton Migrations from Wyoming Migration Initiative on Vimeo.

The film was released by the Wyoming Migration Initiative at the University of Wyoming and Grand Teton National Park. It was directed by Gregory Nickerson. A summer screening at Grand Teton’s Craig Thomas Discovery and Visitor Center and Colter Bay Museum first introduced it to the public. 

“The film documents more than a decade of research revealing how Grand Teton National Park’s mule deer and pronghorn actually depend on habitats up to 190 miles away from the park boundaries,” a press release says. 

In the winters, big game herds travel to Idaho and the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming, as well as across the Cowboy State. Those routes are “vital for their survival.” 

“We are living amid a revolution in migration science happening in and around the edges of one of America’s crown-jewel national parks,” Nickerson, a writer and filmmaker with the Wyoming Migration Initiative at the University of Wyoming, said in an online article about the film. 

The park has been tracking mule deer migrations since 2013, along with UW, Idaho Fish and Game, Wyoming Game and Fish Department and the Shoshone and Arapaho Tribes Fish and Game of the Wind River Indian Reservation. One of the key tenets of the film, the article says, is its understanding that Indigenous people were the first to track and understand the impacts of migration patterns. The 25-minute long film will show at the Craig Thomas Discovery and Visitor Center and Colter Bay Museum next summer. It is also available to watch on Vimeo or YouTube.