A message from Teton County Commissioner candidate Karyn Chin.
JACKSON, Wyo. – Dear Neighbor,
During my years as a National Park Service ranger and wildlife guide, I spent countless hours observing the natural world and sharing it with others. I learned to challenge people to see beyond the obvious beauty of a place – to recognize the intricate relationships between wildlife, habitat, water, and the larger ecosystems that sustain them.Â
I loved this work. And through it, I learned that to care for a place, you first have to understand it. And the more deeply you understand it, the greater your sense of responsibility to protect it.
When I moved to Jackson in 2008, I found a community where generations of people had acted on that responsibility. The landscapes we cherish today are not simply the result of good fortune. They reflect decades of vision, advocacy, difficult decisions, and people willing to stand up for something larger than themselves.
I have enormous respect for that conservation legacy. It’s one of the reasons I chose to build my life here.
Over nearly two decades, my understanding of conservation has grown alongside my relationship with this community. I’ve worked in our tourism economy as well as for a local conservation nonprofit, raised my daughter and built our home here, and organized alongside neighbors working to make Teton County a place where more people can belong. Through those experiences, I’ve come to see more clearly how the future of our natural environment is intertwined with the future of the people who live here.
I believe conservation is more than protecting landscapes from development. At its best, conservation can also be an act of resisting exclusivity.
Our public lands legacy is profoundly democratic, reflecting the belief that some things are simply too important to be owned and enjoyed exclusively by those with the greatest wealth. You don’t have to own a piece of the Tetons to experience their beauty, or have a fortune to feel that you belong in the mountains.
But today, Teton County is testing the limits of that promise. What does it mean for these lands to belong to everyone if the people who work here can no longer afford to live anywhere near them? What does public access really mean when the demands of making a living leave so little time to enjoy the place you call home?
This is not a reason to question our conservation legacy. Rather, it is the fundamental reason to carry its underlying values forward.
I see protecting our public lands and preserving a place for working families as expressions of the same values. It is two sides of the same belief, that ordinary people deserve access to the extraordinary.
Both ask us to think beyond private interests and consider what we owe one another, what we hold in common, and what we want future generations to inherit. I believe that the extraordinary beauty of our mountains, rivers, forests, and wildlife, and the inherent value they contain, should be part of our shared inheritance.
Charting a different course for our County will be hard, and leadership requires a willingness to make hard choices and be held accountable for them.
If elected to the Teton County Commission, I will approach decisions about land use, housing, transportation, and development with an understanding that their consequences extend far beyond any individual project. I will advocate for protecting wildlife habitat and migration corridors, safeguarding our water, and preserving the public lands and open spaces that are central to this valley’s identity. And I will work to ensure that the people who make this community function have a future here, too.
I am committed to making Teton County a place where we protect the extraordinary alongside the ability of ordinary people to share in it.
With gratitude,
Karyn Chin
Democratic Candidate for Teton County Commission
