About

History of the Wyoming Coop Unit

The Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit was established in 1977, and is currently one of 43 USGS Cooperative Research Units nationwide. Our offices, programs, and personnel are embedded within the Department of Zoology and Physiology on the campus of the University of Wyoming. We collaborate with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, federal land and wildlife managers, the Wind River Indian Reservation, private entities, and nonprofit partners to provide actionable scientific information for wildlife and fisheries management.

The Wyoming Coop Unit is part of a larger legacy of state, federal, and independent wildlife biologists and managers who have worked to conserve and restore Wyoming wildlife and fisheries for more than a century. Thanks to these past generations, our state has some of the most intact habitats in the continental United States, including the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, which is of global importance.

Our unit is led by three USGS-employed research scientists working on large mammals, fisheries, and non-game species. Notable topics of research throughout our history include rare and endemic fish, sagebrush-obligate songbirds, migratory big game, black-footed ferrets, wolves, bats, amphibians, and how to best maintain Wyoming’s species and their habitats amid increasing development and weather severity.

As part of providing research to partners and managers, our major focus is training the next-generation of wildlife biologists at the University of Wyoming. Since the late 1970s, the Wyoming Coop Unit researchers have advised more than 200 graduate students. This includes more than 31 Ph.D. students and 169 MS degree students. The unit has yielded a cadre of professional fish and wildlife biologists working in natural resource management, education, and several other professions throughout Wyoming and beyond.

Leaders of the Wyoming Coop Unit

Dr. Stanley Anderson led the Wyoming Coop Unit from 1979 to 2005, joined by assistant unit leaders Fred Lindzey and Wayne Hubert. Upon Anderson and Lindzey’s retirements in 2005, Wayne Hubert served as unit leader until 2009. Assistant unit leader Matthew Kauffman joined the WYCRU in 2006 and became unit leader in 2010 after Hubert retired. Annika Walters and Anna Chalfoun joined the WYCRU in 2011 as assistant unit leaders for fisheries and wildlife, respectively.

Coop Unit Funding

The Wyoming Coop Unit researchers are federal employees of USGS in the Department of the Interior. Our research scientists and staff are employees of the University of Wyoming, which maintains our lab facilities in the Biosciences Building. Funding for individual research studies comes through many state, federal, and nonprofit partners, as well as individual donors. The University of Wyoming Foundation is our nonprofit umbrella for tax-deductible donations.

Economic Impact

Taken together, our unit conducts millions of dollars of research each year that directly benefits the state economy and serves the land-grant mission of the University of Wyoming. This research is a significant economic multiplier. Findings from our collaborative research have helped support or underpin more than $100 million for conservation work done by partners across the state, from wildlife overpasses, to private land easements, and numerous projects to conserve and restore habitat.

Additional Projects

Our unit emphasizes scientific outreach and sharing research with the public through multimedia storytelling, particularly around ungulate migrations. In 2012, we launched the Wyoming Migration Initiative, a grant-funded collaborative of ungulate researchers, cartographers, and filmmakers. Since 2018 we have also been the home of the USGS Corridor Mapping Team, which works with state and Tribal Nations across the American West to map more than 200 big game migrations across the American West. Our researchers are active in the Wyoming Chapter of The Wildlife Society, The American Ornithological Society, and the American Fisheries Society.

Origins of Coop Units

The USGS Cooperative Research Units program has roots dating back to the 1930s when Aldo Leopold and others drafted the American Game Policy. This policy called for science-based management of wildlife to move beyond mere conservation and include restoration of species. The idea of conducting collaborative research between state, federal, university, and private partners originated with Ding Darling, a former Iowa state wildlife commissioner who went on to work for the Biological Survey (a predecessor to the US Fish and Wildlife Service) in the Roosevelt administration. Darling brought the Coop Unit idea to Congress, and by 1935, nine land grant universities had signed on to host the wildlife research units with the support of the Wildlife Management Institute. By the 1960s fisheries were added through an act of Congress. Read more about the history of the coop unit system here.