From Yellowstone National Park to the Shoshone National Forest, Park County already offers many opportunities to get out and enjoy public lands, but a new effort is aiming to open more access to the public.

Wes Allen, the owner of Sunlight Sports in Cody, said he started thinking about the access issues after serving on an outdoor recreation task force — and after seeing reports that millions of acres of Wyoming’s public lands are inaccessible to the public.

“... My concern, my thought, centers just in this northwest corner of the state,” Allen told county commissioners last week. “We’re talking about increasing access for the residents of Park County.”

He envisions pulling together a small working group, made up of public land managers at agencies like the Bureau of Reclamation, the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service, along with the owners of small and large parcels of private land that border public properties.

The group would likely spend a couple years identifying a few specific areas where access might be improved, Allen said. Ideas could include public-private land swaps that result in a net gain for the public or potentially opening up, say, a new horse trail, he said.

But Allen stressed that his vision is for a balanced group that would consider a mix of uses — from hunting to hiking to fishing — and draw on input from private landowners.

“Having grown up on a ranch in the [Big Horn] Basin, I know that we do occasionally see landowners who are negatively impacted by access, illegal access, lots of pressure, even just people leaving their gates open and having to deal with the stock getting back in,” Allen said. “When we start talking to those folks, I think we can start identifying ways to help those people as well.”

Park County commissioners expressed enthusiastic support for the general concept of the working group, though they reiterated the need for a balanced approach.

Commissioner Lee Livingston suggested that, beyond expanding access, it would “go a long ways” if the committee also considered problems with existing access.

“There are landowners that are impacted by legal access to public lands and they are impacted adversely,” Livingston said, to agreement from Allen.

Livingston and fellow Commissioner Jake Fulkerson plan to assist Allen in refining the concept before the actual working group is formed.

Once the group is in place, it will operate independently from the Park County government. However, Allen is asking the county to pay for a facilitator to help the group chart its mission; Allen said he wants to make sure “the process starts out in a balanced way,” without “veering into one special interest or another.”

Commissioners didn’t take any action but seemed amenable.

“I see it as, really, a good idea that just needs a little bit of a push to get going,” Livingston said.