State Senator Brian Boner Discusses Committee’s Large Project Bill

We spoke with State Senator Brian Boner about the NRF committee’s 2022 large project bill.

Brian Boner: So these are the projects that are more than $200,000 that require legislative approval per our statutes. And so the wildlife natural resource trust does a host of projects that improve our natural resources. In particular this year, you’ll see money for wildlife crossings to help avoid collisions between various types of wildlife and their cars going up and down the interstate and Johnston County, you’ll see some projects that help improve forest health, either in the Black Hills or other parts of the state to make sure that we have healthy forests. And we also have even projects that improve habitat for fish in Sweetwater County, make sure that there’s a good healthy habitat for aquatic species as well. So overall, a very important program for the state of Wyoming given the importance of natural resources to our economy. We’re gonna see more and more of these wildlife crossings as we learn more about migration corridors and how we can help strengthen those corridors for wildlife sake, but obviously, there’s a life safety issue with the traveling public as well. So it’s certainly something that we’re excited about something we look forward to contributing to, it’ll help reduce economic damages associated with car crashes significantly as well. So it’s a win win for everybody. And that’s just the way this program works. Overall, you know, we’re leveraging every dollar that we spend from this program from wildlife animal resource trust, we’ve leveraged about three or four additional dollars, whether it be from private organization or another government entity, it’s really helped set is a good investment and our long term economic outlook, but it’s also very efficient use of taxpayer dollars. It’s another aquatic project for this program. It’ll help improve the habitat for those fish species. And I will certainly more there are more details as to how they do that. But it’s consistent with what projects we’ve done in the past where you help connect fish that are spawning grounds, if there’s some ad, blocking them from traveling upstream, for example, and so we’ll see how this project Sweetwater County specifically will help improve habitat for fishing Bob says something that’s going to be good just for the biological health of that river system but also for our outdoor recreation industry as well.