JACKSON -- Finding a way to celebrate northwest Wyoming's large-scale elk and antelope migrations may be key to permanently protecting the corridors of open space they tread each year, a Jackson biologist said Friday.

Joel Berger, wildlife biologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society, said a "Migration Festival" may be a way to connect people to place and recall the ties humans have to the living landscape.

"This could be a win-win situation," Berger told a crowd from the Jackson Hole Chamber of Commerce.

He said migration corridors should be designated now, and no new surface development or fences should occur in those areas.

Berger was the keynote speaker in a luncheon titled "Watchable Wildlife." The JH Chamber of Commerce has adopted a slogan of "Respecting the Power of Place" to try to connect local economic health to environmental vitality.

Berger started his talk by asking the crowd of about 75 what made Jackson different from other ski towns. The scenery, the snow, the quality of life is the same, he said.

"Why are we different?" he asked. "We have this that they don't: We have migration. We have extreme migration."

Northwest Wyoming has the longest recorded migrating distances for elk, moose, pronghorn and mule deer in the lower 48 states, he said.

The longest moose migration was recorded from Jackson Hole to the southern boundary of Yellowstone National Park -- a 69 mile round trip.

Elk traveled 106 miles and pronghorn 375 miles round trip on their migratory journey.

Berger said those journeys are increasingly threatened by development in and around migration corridors. Most notably, pronghorn migration routes from the Upper Green River Valley area in Pinedale to Grand Teton National Park are in jeopardy.

"People think, 'If animals want to get there they're going to find another way in,'" Berger said. "That's not what we're seeing."

The vitality of the migration corridor from Pinedale to Grand Teton is critical to the survival of pronghorn in the national park, Berger said.

Through a video presentation, Berger showed how pronghorn fixed with radio collars are moving through Pinedale, up over Union Pass and down the Gros Ventre River as expected despite being squeezed by bottlenecks.

"When you remove humans from the equation, you can let the pronghorn tell us what migration looks like," Berger said. "If we lose this migration corridor, what we're talking about is the extinction of pronghorn in Grand Teton."

The most notable bottleneck is at Trapper's Point just outside of Pinedale, where the corridor is squeezed to about a third of the width that animals move between two rivers regularly from summer to winter range. The area was protected by a consortium last year.

It's a route pregnant pronghorn have used for 6,000 years, he said, judging from fetal bones found in the area.

Other bottlenecks, including the Red Hills area in the Gros Ventre drainage, are drawn tighter by roads, rivers, farms, fences and campgrounds.

Barry Reiswig, manager of the National Elk Refuge, also addressed the Chamber crowd and said "uniqueness" should be a business strategy for the community.

"I think we are coming to a crossroads in Jackson," he said. "Can we continue to have wildlife? At the rate we're going, I think we're going to have less .... People come here to see wildlife, not condos and houses and power lines. To me, less is more and smaller is bigger."

Reiswig said resort communities are increasingly looking the same, dominated by posh hotels. He said by scaling Jackson's development back, more people will be drawn to the valley.

"It's a winning combination," he said.