A week before Gov. Mark Gordon announced Angi Bruce would trade in leading the Wyoming Game and Fish Department for a newly created policy job in his office, she was out checking Bighorn Basin anglers’ fishing licenses with game warden Jordan Winter.
One goal of the ridealong was to “remain in touch with the department employees,” Bruce told the warden, according to a story in the Powell Tribune. Eight days after her rapport-building mission, Gordon released a short statement saying Bruce had resigned from Game and Fish’s top job “effective immediately” for a newly created position titled “director of special policy initiatives.”
That could be a temporary gig. Policy staffers working under Wyoming governors customarily cycle out with a change in administrations. Gordon’s term ends in less than five months, in January 2027.
Although it’s been suggested that Bruce quit on her own volition, information that WyoFile acquired through the Wyoming Public Records Act points toward an involuntary departure so sudden that it even caught Bruce off guard.
Bruce’s calendar for the week of Aug. 10-14 — the week after her “effective immediately” job change — shows she had booked multiple meetings associated with her director role and even had Game and Fish obligations that following Monday.
Bruce’s new position also came with a significant pay cut. As Wyoming Game and Fish Department director, Bruce’s salary in 2025 was $190,080, according to the government-transparency-focused nonprofit OpenTheBooks.com. With the governor’s office, she’ll be paid a monthly rate of $12,035 according to information provided by Betsy Anderson, Gordon’s general counsel and deputy chief of staff, in response to the records request. That pencils out to an annual paycheck of $144,420 — a $45,660 pay cut, roughly 24% less than what Bruce was making in 2025.
Bruce did not respond to interview requests on the day that her departure was announced and again on Monday.
Emails acquired by WyoFile show that Gordon’s staff, the Game and Fish workforce and the public were all informed of Bruce’s departure within the span of 29 minutes on the afternoon of Friday, Aug. 7.
At 3:37 p.m., Sara DiRienzo informed her fellow governor’s office staffers that Bruce was coming aboard. Then 16 minutes later at 3:53 p.m., Game and Fish Deputy Director Eric Wiltanger informed his own staff of the transition. Some 13 minutes later, the general public was informed in a press release from the governor.
None of roughly a half dozen Game and Fish employees whom WyoFile has spoken with were made aware of Bruce’s departure before that afternoon.
Wiltanger was named interim director of the high-profile agency, which is charged with managing wildlife in a state where hunting and angling drive a significant segment of the economy and are interwoven into many residents’ everyday lives.
In a Monday press conference about Game and Fish leadership changes and priorities, Wiltanger told reporters that he would not be addressing the “transition that occurred a few weeks ago.”
“I would say that in Angi’s time here at Game and Fish, she played a significant role in the great things [the agency did] for Wyoming’s wildlife,” Wiltanger said.
Gordon’s press release also thanked Bruce for her time as director. In the new job, she will work on federal natural resources issues, including grizzly bears, sage grouse, shared stewardship agreements and the management of elk feedgrounds, according to the governor’s office.
When she was tapped as director in 2024, Bruce became one of the few biologists and the first woman to ever rise to the top role at the agency. Her two-year tenure, however, was marked by several high-profile controversies.
At times, the tension broke out into the public. In February, retired longtime Game and Fish staffer Chris Madson wrote an opinion piece in WyoFile arguing that Bruce had made “several statements that should concern anyone with an interest in the state’s wildlife heritage.”
“First — and most alarming — was her contention that Game and Fish should not ‘advocate or speak for wildlife,’” Madson wrote.
During Bruce’s tenure, Game and Fish commissioners took the rare step of twice reversing politically influenced proposals from the department. It happened with mountain lion hunting in the summer of 2025, and again when state wildlife managers sought to remove proposed protections for two segments of the Sublette Pronghorn Migration Corridor, which were overturned. (The migration was designated in June, and at Gordon’s direction it did not include the two contested segments recommended for protection by the commission.)
A dustup over Game and Fish’s handling of the Wyoming State Shooting Complex’s location in crucial mule deer habitat marked another controversy that preceded Bruce’s departure. Under her leadership, Game and Fish declined to conduct a formal environmental review of the site. In July, former Cody Region senior wildlife biologist Tony Mong told the Powell Tribune that the shooting complex was the final straw in his decision to resign from his job.
Seventeen days after the Tribune’s story published, the announcement came that Bruce was changing jobs.
During Monday’s press conference, Deputy Director Jeff Davis told reporters that Game and Fish is continuing its efforts to connect leadership with biologists, wardens and other staffers around the state.
“The executive leadership team is really leaning in to spending more time outside of Cheyenne and in region offices and doing ride-alongs with folks,” he said.
Chief Warden Dan Smith, who’s temporarily working as an interim deputy director, emphasized that the agency’s leadership is going to strive for an “open door policy.” Game and Fish staff “aren’t afraid to share their opinion,” he said.
“We try to give the space to allow them to do that,” Smith said. “When we trip over something and don’t get it just right, people share with us — and we try to learn from that.”
Wiltanger, Game and Fish’s temporary top employee, told reporters that the buck stops with him.
“When we misstep or if we step in a hole, those [incidents] need to come to me and I’ve got to hear about them, because it’s my responsibility to address those appropriately,” Wiltanger said. “Whenever things don’t go right, I need to know.”
Game and Fish’s next permanent director will be selected by Wyoming’s next governor. State Sen. Eric Barlow, who won the Republican nomination in last week’s primary election, will face Democrat Kenneth Casner and Rebecca Bextel. The Constitution Party candidate is the Teton County conservative activist at the center of the Checkgate controversy that dominated the 2026 legislative session.
The state’s next chief executive will be able to choose from three candidates selected by the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission. That selection should be made by March, Wiltanger said.
