The future of a Wyoming-focused science team that helped understand and popularize the phenomenon of wildlife migration is uncertain after a series of moves by the Trump administration’s U.S. Geological Survey to hollow out or even end its 43 cooperative research units.
Multiple sources reached by WyoFile this week said that plans are being developed to vastly reduce or even eliminate the entire national program, started in Iowa 90 years ago by conservationist J.N. “Ding” Darling. The Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit has been around since 1977.
“They have been instructed to develop liquidation plans,” said Tony Wasley, president and CEO of the Wildlife Management Institute. “I don’t know if it’s in anticipation of partial elimination or if it’s bigger than that, but they have been working to that end.”
Wasley’s organization is the private partner in the 43 cooperative research units. The U.S. Geological Survey pays the professors’ salaries while other cooperators in the research units are the Wildlife Management Institute, state wildlife management agencies, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and universities. In addition to USGS, Fish and Wildlife Service and the Wildlife Management Institute, the Wyoming unit’s unique partners are the Wyoming Game and Fish Department and the University of Wyoming.
The Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit has been best known publicly in recent years for its work on wildlife migration. Under its lead scientists and USGS employee Matt Kauffman, it administers the Wyoming Migration Initiative, which has refined the science, informed policy on the state and federal level and through its storytelling popularized the biological phenomenon of migration.
John Organ, a former chief of the USGS’ Cooperative Research Unit program, received the same information that Wasley did.
“Co-Op Unit leadership was told to come up with a plan to dispose of all vehicles and equipment and shut things down within two weeks,” Organ told WyoFile.
A story by Government Executive, an online magazine covering government affairs, increased alarm that Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency saw no need to continue with the cooperatives, which housed nearly 1,200 scientists, staff and students nationally in 2024. The publication reported that the USGS was laying off around 1,000 employees — and focusing the cuts on the Ecosystems Mission Area, which has roughly the same number of employees. The cooperative research units fall under USGS’ Ecosystems Mission Area.
Subsequently, the cooperatives got a slight reprieve: the U.S. Court for the Northern District of California issued a temporary restraining order pausing most federal agencies’ reduction-in-force notices through May 23, Government Executive reported. There was an additional glimmer of hope the research units might be spared when word spread this week that the 1,000 jobs cut would be distributed throughout the entire USGS, which has around 8,000 employees, according to the agency’s budget brief.
Organ, however, heard that the layoffs would “disproportionately” hit the USGS’ Ecosystems Mission Area and its cooperative research units. If any units survive the reduction-in-force layoffs, there are longer-term challenges. Trump’s 2026 budget request proposes $564 million in cuts to the agency, shaving roughly a third of its current appropriation, and an internal email publicized by Science suggests the administration has plans to fully eliminate the $307 million Ecosystems Mission Area.
Federal appropriations to the cooperative research units have ranged from $17.3 million to $28.2 million over the past decade, according to a USGS fact sheet.
Agencies mostly mum
The U.S. Geological Survey’s public affairs officers at the agency’s Washington, D.C. headquarters did not respond to an interview request for this story.
Ahead of the budget cuts, non-federal members of the Wyoming cooperative aren’t saying much about its potential demise.
The Wyoming Game and Fish Department declined an interview for this story.
At the University of Wyoming, the unit falls under the College of Agriculture, Life Sciences and Natural Resources. Kelly Crane, the dean, was unavailable for an interview, but told WyoFile in an email that he has little information about the situation.
“The expectation that our [cooperative research unit] faculty will be terminated by USGS has not been confirmed or even conveyed to UW,” Crane wrote. “We are aware of a potential [reduction-in-force] at USGS aimed at the Ecosystem Services section, but that is the extent of my insight.”
It’s unclear, Wasley said, if Wyoming’s and the other 42 research units could continue as a private, public partnership in the absence of federal funding. Those are conversations, he said, taking place right now.
“We understand that time is our biggest enemy,” Wasley said. “We’re doing everything we can to figure out how to maintain what we view as critical capacity for conservation, particularly for the fish and wildlife community.”
Kauffman was not authorized by USGS to give an interview, but losing him “would throw us into disarray,” said Greg Nickerson, the Wyoming Migration Initiative’s only other full-time employee.
“There is a tremendous amount of work that would not be happening without Matt,” he told WyoFile.
With the USGS’ Corridors Mapping Team, Kauffman has spearheaded publishing five volumes of ungulate migration maps and has a sixth in the works, Nickerson said. The federally funded University of Wyoming professor has also been integral to the Global Initiative on Ungulate Migration, which launched an interactive global atlas last year.
There’s a theme to Kauffman’s work, Nickerson said. He uses science not only to understand large mammal migration, but also to guide its conservation by providing actionable information.
“That model has really developed here in Wyoming,” Nickerson said.
Lot to lose
Bob Lanka, a former Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit graduate who went on to supervise statewide wildlife and habitat management for Game and Fish, described the potential hit to migration research as “only part of the story.” The unit’s other USGS-salaried staffers, Anna Chalfoun and Annika Walters, have conducted important research that informs management tools like the Wyoming State Wildlife Action Plan.
Wyoming Game and Fish, he said, has improved its capacity to do its own research, but still leans on the cooperative for the “more difficult” research questions.
“Like, how do songbirds react to oil and gas development? And not only how do they react, but why do they react that way?” Lanka said.
Between current and former students, the Kauffman, Chalfoun and Walters labs have mentored nearly five dozen graduate students, according to the cooperative’s website. Browsing the names, it’s clear many have remained within Wyoming, employed with the Game and Fish or through other nongovernmental organizations.
Nationally, there are “hundreds” of graduate students whose research is now in limbo, said Steve Williams, a former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service director who earned his Ph.D. via the Pennsylvania Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit in the early 1980s.
“I have friends in the Fish and Wildlife Service, and know folks in the co-op units, and they don’t know what tomorrow is going to bring,” Williams told WyoFile. “This is a hell of a way to run a government if you’re looking for efficiency. It makes no sense at all.”
Outside of the Trump administration’s target on the program, Williams has never heard of any displeasure with the 43 cooperative research units, either from the states or universities.
“It’s just the opposite,” he said. “We just added a couple co-op units recently.”
Wyoming’s unit, Williams said, is the “poster child of what the research cooperatives can do for fish and wildlife.” They took on a “real problem,” he said, and helped solve the puzzle of how migration works — and what it requires to survive — on the modern landscape.
“Matt Kaufman and all the students and researchers, they pushed that issue right to the Secretary of Interior,” the former Fish and Wildlife Service director said. “They’re making great strides protecting migration corridors. What’s going to happen if they go away?”
Thank you for the article, for those of us in the senior age have a hard time understanding the effects of some of these programs. I’m a lucky one I have a son and daughter in law one work for the state and one for the feds, I have resources to help me understand but some don’t. This article was easy to read and understand. Thank you!
Being a retired wildlife biologist who did his graduate research under a Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit I can testify to the value of the program. The system not only provides students with real world experience working along with state and federal wildlife agencies but provides useful data on which to base management decisions. There certainly is waste in government but blindly cutting this program is throwing the baby out with the bath water. I would urge those with first hand knowledge of the programs accomplishments to write their legislators and provide examples of these values. That includes Wyoming Game and Fish Dept and NGO’s dealing with wildlife conservation
Absolutely shameful. Wyoming is literally leading the world on research on long-distance wildlife migrations (and so many other topics through the co-op), only to have it threatened to be eliminated so that billionaires can get bigger tax cuts. Despicable.
Elections have consequences. If this comes to pass Wyoming will lose world-class wildlife ecology/biology/management researchers. Hugely talented people that perform important, relevant, applied wildlife research that helps the state conserve its most important resource. The resource that makes Wyoming a destination for tourists and sportspeople from across the globe – these folks come mostly for the wildlife, and they spend billions of dollars in the state each year. The Coop is vitally important now, and for the future of Wyoming and the Rocky Mountain West and the loss of this remarkable unit would be a disaster for the state.
I met Matt Kaufman at a talk in Jackson. He and his many collaborators had just published the Wild Migration Atlas. Many other presentations by Matt and all of the big name ungulate biologists followed. I was so excited learning about this research, that my husband and I committed to a legacy gift to the Wyoming Migration Initiative. EVERYTHING will go to them when we die, the Jackson Hole house, the investments, all the money that we have never gotten the hang of spending. I have since gone to a few spring and fall mule deer and bighorn sheep captures with Matt, his amazing grad students, and fellow scientists that have provided some 10 years of data on the many aspects of how, where, and why Wyoming’s amazing herds of mule deer, elk, pronghorn, bighorn sheep, moose, and bison move through our rich landscape. This is conservation to be acted upon, and our legacy gift is well-directed. This work MUST continue. Please give your heart if not your moolah, and write to our shortsighted government leaders.
Ironically, the Coop Fish & Wildlife Research Units program was started by “Ding Darling” whose vision was that multiple efficiencies would be realized by partnering the resources of universities and state and federal agencies. This is a sad day, not only for me a former unit leader, but also for the thousands of students, faculty and staff who cooperated in this venture.
An interesting integrity test of Brian Nesvik, former WGFD director and incoming head of USFWS. His nomination is touted as a win for Wyoming. WGFD’s current director likes to publicly tout her department’s inside track with USFWS – our Brian will deliver the venison. Since hobbling the wildlife co-op system would directly affect WGFD’s access to pertinent research data on Wyoming’s wildlife, including revenue-generating species, we may see what matters to Nesvik. Will it be loyalty to Trump and that new Washington office, or concern about pertinent wildlife research in his home state and elsewhere? Don’t bet on the latter.
Contact Rep. Harriet Hageman with your department concerns and all your important work with migration.
Well. If we not going to drill or mine our minerals off the land to benefit the nation. Why hang on to it? Sell. And pay down National debt. None of this seems to matter if new ski resort goes in.
no mention of the deficit when it comes to tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations.
if you were as concerned about the deficit as you pretend to be, why aren’t you outraged about your dear leader’s “big beautiful bill”. seems that you are following marching orders exactly as instructed.
When the ax entered the forest, the trees whispered, “It’s okay, the handle is one of us.” Arbeit macht frei, Larry.
Coy. With out mining minerals , logging trees, drilling for oil, we would not have the necessary minerals wood crude oil that sustains your life style. Even if you are completely off the grid. And drive an EV. None of the solar, electricity of any sort, computor, clothes- shoes, house you live in are here with out mining drilling logging agriculture are workable with out them. NOTHING! This was all put here on earth by the great creator. Use them wisely. Be thankful for them.
Well, another loss. But at least the four boys across the country that were playing girls sports can’t do that anymore. Priorities are important to the Trump administration. And yes, this is typed in sarcasm font.
The silver lining is this: much as will be the case with increased prices stemming from tariffs, big game enthusiasts (many of whom are Trump supporters) will have only themselves to blame in the possible event that mule deer, elk, and antelope start declining.
Voting has consequences. I only hope that that Trump’s supporters will connect the dots.
To be clear team orange, this is a lose-lose for WY and what’s left of our Nation. WY loses decades of scientific expertise and migration corridor work (that results in real infrastructure jobs in WY), while getting nothing in return. Nothing.
The post-doge Federal budget adds more than $4 trillion to the deficit. The pimple faced doge cuts came in at less than $15B in savings after accounting for the costs to implement, and the only winners are the ultra-rich who are getting additional tax breaks. Medicare – gutted. Food assistance for the poor – gutted. When we add in the looming financial disaster of the draft dodger’s fumbling tariff schemes, the WY maga voters will have been key to turning us into a dumpster fire and laughingstock of the Western world.
trump bellowed. China laughed. trump caved. The Art of the Kneel. Get off your knees maga, you are embarrassing your family.
MAGA continues its barbarian assault on science. The Co-Op units have been in the vanguard of conservation science for decades and are a perfect example of how science is done at the local, regional, national, and even international levels–by communities of scientists in government, universities, colleges, NGOs, and even citizens. Of course, community, co-operation, and knowledge are not MAGA values.
People of Wyoming, you think this current administration cares about wildlife and wilderness? Care about our way of life going forward and speak out!
Three more years and we can ‘liquidate’ the Trump administration and his long list of goofballs in the white house. It’s going to be a long three years.
Your blog is a treasure trove of knowledge! I’m constantly amazed by the depth of your insights and the clarity of your writing. Keep up the phenomenal work!
Knowledge and understanding is not a priority with chrump or his sycophants.
The dumbing down of society has been accelerated by the gullible ol’ party and their imagined persecution. Angry white bigots suck!
Isn’t it great to be making America Great Again? Apparently the only thing that is labeled as great is composed of gold. Conservation, assuming it survives, is being set back years, along with everything else this administration touches.
Oh, and in case I didn’t mention it, or the article didn’t, these efforts are not just national in scope. They’ve become international, and something the state should be proud of