Dubois ranchers balk at oil and gas leases in treasured wildlife habitat in Shoshone, Bridger-Teton national forests

After losing its last timber mill and seeing its economy sputter for decades, there’s a renewed vibrancy in the town of Dubois. There’s been a stimulus effect from the National Museum of Military Vehicles, but the small community’s modern vitality is all wrapped up in the region’s outdoor splendors, a benefit of its location along the eastern slope of wildlife-rich Togwotee Pass. “This community is about tourism, hunting, fishing, outdoor recreation and second homes, certainly,” said Budd Betts, a former state lawmaker who represented Dubois in the Wyoming House of Representatives during the 1990s. Betts, the longtime owner of Absaroka Ranch, is one of several large landowners who are vocalizing concerns about an oil and gas play in the Absaroka and Wind River Range foothills not far from the northwest Fremont County town of roughly 1,000 people. “It’s just not consistent with where this community is heading,” Betts told WyoFile.

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