May 11, 2021
This mule deer was spotted in Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest. Melanie LaCava, a UW Ph.D. candidate in the Program in Ecology, was lead author of a paper about Wyoming mule deer that was published in the May 11 issue of Ecography. Despite the fact that Wyoming mule deer are a highly mobile species found throughout the state, UW researchers discovered that mule deer in the state represent three different genetic groups. (Melanie LaCava Photo)
Despite the fact that Wyoming mule deer are a highly mobile species found throughout the state, University of Wyoming researchers discovered that mule deer in the state represent three different genetic groups.
May 6, 2021
A small herd of wildebeest walk across the Masai Mara Plains in Kenya at sunset. Matthew Kauffman, who directs the USGS Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit at UW, is the lead author of a paper, titled “Mapping Out a Future for Ungulate Migrations,” that will appear in the May 7 issue of Science. An international team of 92 scientists and conservationists has joined forces to create the first-ever global atlas of ungulate (hooved mammal) migrations, working in partnership with the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals, a U.N. treaty. (Munir Virani Photo)
An international team of 92 scientists and conservationists, including a few from the University of Wyoming, has joined forces to create the first-ever global atlas of ungulate (hooved mammal) migrations, working in partnership with the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS), a United Nations treaty.
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IMAGE: Wildlife biologists at the University of California, Berkeley, combined GPS location data of tagged mule deer and pronghorn antelope with satellite imagery of Wyoming fences to find out just how. view more
Credit: Image courtesy Wenjing Xu
Berkeley Each year, thousands of migratory mule deer and pronghorn antelope journey northwest from their winter homes in the Green River Basin, a grassland valley in western Wyoming, to their summer homes in the mountainous landscape near Grand Teton National Park.
But to reach their destination, these ungulates must successfully navigate the more than 6,000 kilometers (3,728 miles) of fencing that crisscrosses the region. That s enough distance to span nearly twice the length of the U.S.-Mexico border.
Wide brush strokes painted north and south. They were lines on a map of Wyoming already full of lines indicating rivers, mountain ridges, highways and interstates. But these brush strokes â wider than any of the others â illustrated where the Platte Valley mule deer herd migrates, threading east of the Sierra Madre and west of the Snowy ranges.
Many of the lines stopped abruptly at the border between Wyoming and Colorado. Except, of course, the deer themselves donât stop there. They keep wandering on for 30 or sometimes 40 miles following better food as snow piles in late fall and melts in the spring.