Construction crews have been forced off of several sections of a natural gas liquids pipeline across southern Wyoming due to wintering big game animals.

The Wyoming Bureau of Land Management had granted variances through several crucial big game wintering habitats on federal lands for construction of the Overland Pass Pipeline, due to unusually warm weather in November, according to agency officials.

But with the onset of colder weather in December, BLM revoked some of the variances, including a 16-mile section west of Rock Springs and another near Walcott just west of Elk Mountain.

"Once cold weather set in, Wyoming Game and Fish and our own biologists saw that animals were moving into these areas, so we told (the pipeline company) they had to move out," said BLM spokesman Bruce Collins.

Overland Pass Pipeline is a joint venture of Oneok Partners and a subsidiary of Williams Co. The 760-mile, $535 million pipeline begins in Opal and will carry liquid natural gas to a terminal in Conway, Kan.

Read more in Friday's Casper Star-Tribune.