Under a chrome sky shrouded in rain clouds, local outfitter Jake Hutton led a ride on Kelly Parcel, telling stories all the while.

“I got charged by a grizzly bear here this spring,” said Hutton, who operates JH Outfitters in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. “She came out of the trees and bluffed for a second, stopped at 50 yards, stood up and growled, then made up her mind and took off right after me again.”

Luckily, he ran away from the bear on his horse. His story illustrates how this land not far from the resort town of Jackson Hole is still untamed. It is bordered on three sides by Grand Teton National Park. Birds and butterflies cruise over the sloping hills of sagebrush and aspen groves at the base of the jagged Grand Teton Mountains.

In March, after an outcry over a proposal to auction it off, Wyoming lawmakers came detailed a plan for sales the state-owned, 640-acre parcel to Grand Teton National Park for $100 million. Now the land has become something of a bargaining chip for state leaders who demand a few other things as well.

If they’re not satisfied, an important migration corridor for elk, moose and pronghorn may end up in the hands of private developers, who would find it attractive for its picturesque views of the park.

But there is pressure to sell to someone.

Wyoming, like many western states, is constitutionally liable to collect money from public land. In Wyoming, that money is mostly used for public schools. The income can come by leasing land for grazing, for recreation or by selling it off. Currently the state only raises about $2,800 annually outside the country.

Last year, Wyoming state commissioners considered selling The Kelly Pack at a public auction.

That suggestion prompted resistance by thousands of Wyomingites who sent letters and attended public hearings across the state.

“Getting people outside of Teton County in Cody and Casper to show up at these public meetings and really say, ‘Make sure it comes to the Park Service,'” said Leslie Mattson, president of Grand Teton National Park Foundation, a fundraising arm of the park. “My perspective? It was incredibly meaningful for us to know that people across the state value this piece, and that was a real motivator for us.”

After the uproar, the Wyoming legislature passed a bill allowing two years for the federal government to buy the land for no less than $100 million and merge it with the park next to it. Mattson’s foundation will need to come up with nearly $38 million. The federal government will kick in the rest.

“This is a heavy lift for us to raise $38 million basically from early winter to hopefully sometime in calendar year 24,” she said.

She said it’s the largest number the foundation has ever had to raise, and while Mattson and the foundation are cautiously optimistic they’ll find the money in time, the nail-biting isn’t over. “People say, ‘Well, congratulations.’ You’ve done it,” she said. “I’m like, ‘No, we haven’t gotten it done yet.'”

This is because there are several other obstacles to sales. First, there is a deep-seated distrust of the federal government in the Cowboy State.

“It’s a pretty common problem throughout the Western world, wherever there’s federal land,” said Gregg Cawley, a professor who studies environmental policy at University of Wyoming in Laramie. “Just talking about how the federal government interferes with our lives in the abstract doesn’t get you anywhere. But when it comes to something like land policy, there’s a certain kind of tangibility to it.”

According to Cawley, a state’s political atmosphere often comes into play — especially in a solidly red state like Wyoming — in cases like the Kelly Parcel where state lands are at odds with federal lands.

And there are things the state wants besides money. In the bill passed by the Legislature, there is a line that ties the fate of the Kelly Parcel deal to something else lawmakers want: More access to an area in the southwest corner of the state, which is owned by the federal government.

The federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM), under the Biden administration, wants to preserve that area, which is near the town of Rock Springs. But Wyoming’s leaders want that land open for natural resource extraction and grazing.

Eventually, each deal would have to go to the state Board of Land Commissioners for final approval. And some of its members, like Superintendent of Public Instruction Megan Degenfelder, still want more back.

“We cannot allow the federal government to get a sweetheart deal on the backs of Wyoming students, which these state lands fund,” said Degenfelder, who is one of five members of the board.

She wants the state to get access to oil and gas resources on federal lands yet Other part of Wyoming, although that request could jeopardize the Kelly Parcel deal.

“It’s a shame,” she said in an interview. “I mean, we have to do what’s best for Wyoming, I will always, always do what’s best for Wyoming rather than the federal government.”

Of course, if any of these complications block the sale to the national park, the parcel could end up right where it all began, with the board releasing it to auction and private development.

But according to Jared Baecker, Wyoming’s conservation coordinator at the nonprofit Greater Yellowstone Coalitiondeveloping it would “absolutely fragment and impede some of the largest migrations of ungulates in the lower 48 states.”

He and others point to the shift’s unique geography and the mountains that surround it.

“Physically, the landscape is a bottleneck; it’s a choke point between two mountain ranges,” Baecker said. “It is also acts as a migration route.”

In the sagebrush and hills of the Kelly Parcel, the political battle over the sale seems far away as the sun sets behind mountains that stick out like the teeth of some ancient beast.

“I’m pretty sure this is the best view in Wyoming here,” guide Hutton said.

He may go bankrupt if this land is sold to the national park, which may not allow his private tours to continue. He would prefer things stay the way they are, but then again, Wyoming needs to make money off this land and pay for schools.

Hutton said he would be upset if that means selling it to developers.

“You look around, like, what’s wild sage worth?” he said. “All these wild animals that have somewhere to roam? What’s the point of going and walking your dog in an open space?”

The Grand Teton National Park Foundation has a little less than two years to raise the money.

Chris Clements reports on politics and state government for Wyoming Public Radio.