Wyoming Governor Matt Mead has summoned Grand Teton National Park Superintendent David Vela to Cheyenne for a closed-door meeting about the park's preferred plan for managing traffic along the Moose-Wilson Road, a scenic byway popular with wildlife lovers.

While the park staff is recommending a management plan that would limit vehicle access to the narrow, two-lane road that runs through the park from Moose to Teton Village, the Wyoming governor has complained to regional Park Service officials that the state wasn't properly given an opportunity to comment on the plan as it was being drafted.

"You failed to address my concerns or to recognize the valuable role cooperating agency expertise can and should play in arriving at a positive solution for the Moose-WIlson Road," he wrote Intermountain Region Director Sue Masica and Superintendent Vela in mid-October.

Last Thursday the governor's staff requested the meeting with Superintendent Vela, for this afternoon. Also invited were elected officials from Teton County and Jackson, as well as the state Transportation Department. Conservation organizations reportedly were not invited, although told they could meet later with state officials.

In the concept outlined in the draft Moose-Wilson Corridor Comprehensive Management Plan released in late October, a queuing system of some sort would be designed to limit "the number of vehicles entering the corridor at any one time during peak use periods through timed sequencing techniques. Provide queuing lanes on the north and south ends of the corridor, as needed."

Details of exactly how such a queuing operation would work have not been formulated.

In his letter to Regional Director Masica and the park superintendent, Gov. Mead wrote that "a plan for non-motorized transportation and and vehicle access that protects park resources can be achieved, but only with early and meaningful engagement of local and state cooperators. ...The special expertise of cooperating agencies in federal land management decisions is invaluable."

The management plan, months in the works, is intended to balance public access and preservation of the corridor, which provides access to some hiking trails in the parks as well as to the Laurance S. Rockefeller Preserve. The draft is open for public review and comment through December 29.