Travel through Wyoming long enough and you’re likely to encounter a wildlife crossing that helps pronghorn traverse the state’s western highways. Or perhaps you’ve spotted mule-deer-friendly fencing before.
Those structures are designed to protect Wyoming’s migration corridors, the routes that pronghorn, deer and other ungulates travel from one location to another. Those efforts are made all the more precise largely thanks to one scientist: Dr. Matthew Kauffman.
The leader of the Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Unit at the University of Wyoming recently and a United States Geological Survey researcher won the Aldo Leopold Award for his ungulate research and conservation efforts.
The Aldo Leopold is awarded annually by the American Association of Mammalogists to recognize people who have made lasting contributions to mammal conservation. These individuals are nominated by their colleagues for outstanding conservation work, whether in the form of research or direct conservation efforts.
“I was very surprised, I didn’t know I was being considered for it,” Kauffman said. “Looking at some of the past winners, these are people who were leaders in their field, whose work I read as a graduate student.”
Kauffman is himself a leader in his field, reshaping the way scientists understand ungulate migrations. As an 18-year UW faculty member, he has focused on how and why ungulates — hoofed mammals such as deer, elk or pronghorn — migrate and what that movement means for conservation efforts. Kauffman helped create “Wild Migrations: Atlas of Wyoming’s Ungulates,” which is a collection of maps to track ungulate migration patterns. Recently Kauffman has gone worldwide, launching the Global Initiative on Ungulate Migrations with the United Nations, which seeks to map ungulate migration worldwide.
“He’s an amazing combination of boots on the ground, conservation work and really important conceptual scientific findings,” said Kate Lyons, the chair of the Conservation Awards Committee for the American Association of Mammalogists. “It was a no brainer for the committee that he deserved this award.”
While renowned for his work on migration patterns, that’s not what Kauffman set out to do. He put GPS collars on animals to track them while studying other information, but it was the data that showed how they moved that really caught his attention.
“We would get the collar data back, and the animals would be migratory, and they would make really interesting movements,” he said.
Over the years, migration as an ecological phenomenon has become the subject of Kauffman’s research, as well as management and conservation of migration corridors.
That research has relevance to ordinary people in Wyoming, Kauffman explained.
“The things that we do on the landscape tend to make these migrations more difficult,” he said. “Wyoming is still a fairly small state, but as it grows, we have more fences, more traffic on our roadways, more oil and gas development, more wind and solar development. All of these things, they sometimes occur in the middle of these migration corridors.”
Kauffman’s research is currently used to develop better maps of where the migrations are, helping people determine where conservation efforts will be most useful. These maps also are used when an area is being developed, to help make informed decisions about the impacts of development on migratory corridors.
Kauffman feels honored to have won the award and is grateful for all the people who helped him along the way. “How fortunate I have been at the University of Wyoming to have just to have been able to work with great colleagues and with my group with graduate students, with Masters and PhD students and postdocs,” Kauffman said.
Kauffman said he also is grateful to state and federal wildlife agencies for their support.
Clarification: This story has been updated to add details about Kauffman’s professional affiliations. —Ed.
Congratulations, Matt!
A well deserved recognition and commendation.
Thanks for studying and helping Wyoming’s wonderful critters.