Bison don’t just follow the green wave of forage during migration, they actually manipulate it so springtime plant conditions last longer. WMI scientists Jerod Merkle and Matt Kauffman participated in the analysis, collaborating with biologists from the National Park Service and the University of Montana. Read the story and get links to the national media stories here.
Director and Cofounder WMI
Matt has an undergraduate degree in Biology from the University of Oregon and a Ph.D. in Environmental Studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Dr. Kauffman has worked on topics that include the management and recovery of peregrine falcons, evaluating the ecological role of wolves in Yellowstone National Park, and the effects of range management on carnivores in southern Africa. In 2006, Matt joined the Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit and the faculty of the Department of Zoology and Physiology at the University of Wyoming; he is currently the director of the Wyoming Coop Unit. Matt and his graduate students are conducting studies on elk, wolves, moose, deer, pronghorn, and bighorn sheep in Wyoming, addressing the influence of habitat condition, predation, human disturbance, and energy development on these species. Matt’s research combines work on animal physiology, behavior and demography to better understand population- and landscape-level processes, including a strong focus on ungulate migration. A primary focus of his research program is to provide timely information to agency biologists charged with managing Wyoming’s wildlife.
Student Cartography Project Manager
Peyton Carl is a student cartographer in the InfoGraphics Lab at the University of Oregon. Since joining the Lab in January of 2022, she’s worked on several projects focused on mapping ungulate migration with the Wyoming Migration Initiative, as well as state agencies including California’s Department of Fish and Wildlife. In early 2023, Peyton took a student project management role in the InfoGraphics Lab to help train students for and manage the USGS mapping effort on ungulate migrations across the Western United States. Peyton enjoys the convergence of her passion for animal conservation and wildlife management with the creativity and design of cartography. Peyton looks forward to pursuing a career where wildlife ecology intersects with GIS and graphic design.
PH.D. Student
Wilde is a Ph.D. student in the Wyoming Coop Unit and the Program in Ecology at the University of Wyoming working with Matt Kauffman. Luke’s doctoral research uses the Sublette mule deer herd’s Red Desert to Hoback migration among others to explore how animals optimally alter migratory behaviors in response to barriers and environmental changes, as well as the mechanism by which juveniles develop their own behavioral profile. Luke also provides data and analysis for social media outreach and heads up development of a curiosity-driven learning curriculum in k-12 classrooms around Wyoming. Before joining WMI, he earned a master’s degree researching the effects of mixed-species social interactions and phenological mismatches on the early-life survival of long-distance migratory shorebirds in Alaska. Luke is an avid climber, fly fisher, and ski mountaineer around Wyoming, Washington, and his home state, Montana.
Graduate Research Assistant
Cody is a master’s student with the Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit in the Zoology and Physiology Department at the University of Wyoming. His research focused on how juvenile animals learn their migration patterns. Cody previously worked as an assistant research scientist for the Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit where he managed the Shirley Basin pronghorn project. Prior to coming to Wyoming, he worked for Colorado Parks and Wildlife on several research projects studying cougars, black bears, mule deer, and elk. Cody received a B.S in wildlife Biology from the University of Montana in 2012.
Email: cwalla21@uwyo.edu
Research Scientist
Anna completed her PhD on the varying-length migrations of mule deer using the Red Desert to Hoback migration corridor. She is a co-founder and lead researcher of Western Wildlife Research Collective, LLC. For her dissertation she compared fat dynamics, birth rates, fawn recruitment, and adult survival among short-, medium-, and long-distance migrants. Anna had previously been a Wildlife Field Technician and GIS Analyst for several studies conducted by the Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit. As a PhD candidate she worked on sagebrush, mule deer, and bighorn sheep in the field. Ortega has also mapped the home ranges and migration routes of moose, mule deer, elk, and mountain goats and has conducted database work for several of these species. She has extensive experience with other taxa, including Piping Plovers, Red Knots, Emperor Geese, Pacific Loons, bees, and sage grouse.
Email: aortega1950@gmail.com
PhD student
Anne is a PhD student with the Program in Ecology at the University of Wyoming. Her graduate research focuses on group dynamics and collective decision-making of migratory ungulates, primarily mule deer. Prior to coming to Wyoming, she was a research intern at the Smithsonian National Zoo where she analyzed GPS and accelerometer data from the Asian elephants. She also conducted research on local ecological knowledge in rural Uganda. She holds a master’s degree in Conservation Science from Imperial College London and a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Dickinson College.
Email: Anne.Scholle@uwyo.edu
Graduate Research Assistant
Lindsay is currently working towards her master’s degree with the Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit at the University of Wyoming, advised by Dr. Matthew Kauffman. Her research focuses on spatial analysis of four moose herds’ movements in Wyoming including the Jackson herd, Sublette herd, Snowy Range herd and the Bighorn Mountain herd. Specifically, Lindsay is comparing moose movement strategies and habitat use across Wyoming in variable habitats at the southern extent of their range.
Before starting her master’s research Lindsay worked on multiple research projects focused on large-scale population dynamics including the Rocky Mountain Amphibian Project, the Southern Greater Yellowstone Area Mesocarnivore Monitoring Project and the Southwest Wisconsin Chronic Wasting Disease Deer and Predator Study. Her interest in wildlife management has developed during positions with academic researchers, non-profit organizations, and state and federal agencies where she worked with birds, amphibians, mammals, wildlife disease and habitat management. She spent four years in western Wyoming working for the U.S. Forest Service on the Bridger-Teton National Forest as a lead wildlife technician. Lindsay earned her bachelor of science from the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana.
Email: lmarti52@uwyo.edu
Graduate Research Assistant
Carrie is a master’s student with the Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit in the Zoology and Physiology Department at the University of Wyoming under Dr. Matthew Kauffman. Her research is focused on expanding the generality of full annual cycle ecology across taxa by looking at the year-round movements of mule deer, elk and moose in the Bighorn Mountains Wyoming. Carrie earned her bachelor’s degree in Wildlife Ecology and Environmental Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Since then, she has established a solid foundation of collaborative research and field experiences by working for several universities, state and federal agencies. She has extensive experience with many taxa including black bears, Mexican grey wolves, coyotes, bobcats, white-tailed deer, mule deer, elk, moose, pronghorn and white-fronted geese.
Email: ckyle@uwyo.edu
Project Coordinator
Global Initiative on Ungulate Migration
Janey Fugate serves as project coordinator for the Global Initiative on Ungulate Migration (cms.int/gium), for which WMI is a core collaborator. Janey is working to connect GIUM's maps and conservation tools with government partners, wildlife managers, stakeholders and NGOs around the world. She brings her prior experience working in various communications and storytelling roles with a passion for wildlife science and conservation to support GIUM's mission. Before joining GIUM in early 2024, Janey earned her Master's in Zoology as a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellow at the University of Wyoming in the Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit. Her research explored how Yellowstone bison learned to migrate over generations after their reintroduction to the park in the early 20th century.
Email: jfugate@uwyo.edu
Ph.D. student
Molly is a Ph.D. student in the Program in Ecology at the University of Wyoming with the Merkle research group. Her graduate research focuses on ungulate (bison, elk, mule deer, pronghorn, and bighorn sheep) migrations in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. She will be investigating the community and movement ecology of these species to help understand why a large diversity of movement strategies exist among sympatric ungulates. Previously, Molly worked as an Environmental Scientist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife where she conducted habitat and wildlife monitoring on state lands and analyzed camera and GPS telemetry data to investigate wildlife use of highway crossings. Molly is a recipient of the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and she earned her bachelor’s degree in Integrative Biology from the University of California, Berkeley.
Email: mcaldwe2@uwyo.edu
Postdoctoral researcher
Justine is a postdoctoral researcher who focuses on understanding the origin and maintenance of multiple movement strategies in Wyoming’s pronghorn populations. She is using GPS collar and remote sensing data from across Wyoming to investigate the connection between spatiotemporal environmental variability and the long-distance movement tactics used by pronghorn, which can be migratory, resident, or nomadic. Through her research, Justine hopes to both improve our understanding of long-distance animal movements and inform strategies for the management and conservation of these movements in pronghorn. Justine’s background is in behavioral ecology, and she is broadly interested in understanding the ecological causes of individual behavioral variation and the consequences of this variation at the population- and community-level. Prior to joining WMI, Justine completed her Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University where she studied the movement ecology of antelope in Mozambique’s Gorongosa National Park. Justine received her B.A. in History and B.Sc. in Biological Sciences from the University of Auckland in her home country of New Zealand.
Email: Justine.Atkins@uwyo.edu
Cartographic Production Manager
Alethea Steingisser is the Cartographic Production Manager in the InfoGraphics Lab at the University of Oregon. She serves as lead designer and project manager on a wide variety of cartographic products, most notably atlas projects including: the Atlas of Yellowstone (2012, 2022); Wild Migrations: Atlas of Wyoming’s Ungulates (2018); Atlas of Design, Volume 4 (2018); and Archaeology and Landscape in the Mongolian Altai: An Atlas (2010). Her work consistently garners awards in both cartographic design and subject matter. Alethea was drawn to cartography both because it is perfect blend of art and science, and because of its ability to tell powerful visual stories that have far-reaching impact. The InfoGraphics Lab has partnered with the Wyoming Migration Initiative for over a decade to visualize and communicate data-rich stories of ungulate migrations and ecology.
Email: asteingi@uoregon.edu
Phone: 541-346-4870
Research Associate
Hall is a research biologist with Western Ecosystems Technology (WEST), Inc. He serves as adjunct faculty in the Zoology & Physiology Department at University of Wyoming. Hall is also a research associate with the Wyoming Migration Initiative. Hall earned a BS degree in wildlife biology from Colorado State University and MS and PhD degrees in Zoology from the University of Wyoming. Hall worked with the Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit as a research scientist from 1997-2001, coordinating a variety of ungulate research projects. Since then Hall has worked with WEST, Inc. and conducted numerous ungulate studies in Wyoming, with emphasis on impact analysis and migration ecology. Hall’s work with ungulates spans 20 years and involves agencies, industry, non-government organizations, and graduate students.
Email: hsawyer@west-inc.com
Phone: 307-760-7211
Project Manager and Cofounder WMI
Bill has a Masters Degree in Zoology from the University of Wyoming and a BS degree from the University of Idaho. He retired from the Wyoming Game and Fish Department in 2011 after a 30-year career with the WGFD where he worked as a Special Project Biologist, District Biologist, Wildlife Management Coordinator, and Deputy Chief of the Wildlife Division. Bill has extensive experience working with stakeholders relating to a wide range of wildlife issues including big game management, population estimation, endangered species management, and wildlife/transportation issues. Bill has overseen and supervised large programs including the habitat, sensitive species, and trophy management sections for WGFD, and he had oversight of 8 wildlife regions in Wyoming. Bill has helped guide wildlife research efforts for WGFD and has extensive knowledge of the landscapes and wildlife issues of Wyoming.
Email: billrudd2@gmail.com
Phone: 307-630-2642
Filmmaker
Pat is a scientist, filmmaker, writer, and photographer for Wyoming Migration Initiative. Pat earned his MS in Zoology as a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellow at the University of Wyoming in the Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit in 2020. His research, which was highlighted in the film 92 Miles, focused on mule deer migratory behaviors, particularly around hunting season. Pat now works to increase public understanding and awareness of migration science and conservation using storytelling. He co-produced the award-winning series, My Wild Land, and was associate producer of Animal Trails: Rediscovering Grand Teton Migrations.
Email: prodgers@uwyo.edu
Atlas Text Editor
Through her journalism, writing, and story production, Emilene brings readers along on the long-distance journeys of Wyoming’s migratory wildlife. In collaboration with wildlife photojournalist Joe Riis, she hiked 80 miles of the Teton pronghorn migration corridor through the Gros Ventre Mountains and Upper Green River Basin in western Wyoming to produce a High Country News cover story, “Perilous Passages: The struggle to understand—and protect—the long-distance journeys of western wildlife.” Her essay “A New Vision for Yellowstone: An ecosystem defined by migration,” provides the anchoring text for the conservation photo book Yellowstone Migrations. She composed vignettes to open each section of Wild Migrations: Atlas of Wyoming’s Ungulates as well as edited all of the book’s text. Emilene has worked in various capacities for publications including National Geographic magazine, Wyoming Wildlife magazine, WyoFile.com, and High Country News. She was founding editor of Western Confluence magazine, a publication of the UW Ruckelshaus Institute. Emilene holds an MFA in environment and natural resources and creative nonfiction writing from the University of Wyoming.
Email: emileneostlind@gmail.com
Phone: 307-752-4599
Writer and Filmmaker WMI
Greg is a writer and filmmaker for the Wyoming Migration Initiative. He works to inform and educate the public about migration research, with a special focus on researching the human stories surrounding wildlife migration. Originally from Big Horn, Wyoming, he’s a lifelong hunter of migratory elk in the Meeteetse and Wapiti area, and has worked as a mule deer and elk guide for the Darwin Ranch in the Gros Ventre Mountains. He has worked as a documentary filmmaker since 2008, telling stories for Wyoming PBS, the Emmy-Winning team at History Making Productions in Philadelphia, and This American Land. From 2010-2015 he was a contributor and investigative journalist for the online news site WyoFile.com, where he covered the Wyoming state government and the University of Wyoming, including several stories about UW’s migration research on mule deer and bighorn sheep. Greg holds degrees in history of the American West from the University of Wyoming, and Carleton College.
Email: gregory.nickerson@uwyo.edu
Phone: 307-766-5491
Associate Research Scientist / Data Science Consultant
Steffen Mumme is a wildlife ecologist working as data science consultant for the Global Initiative on Ungulate Migration (cms.int/gium), for which WMI is a core collaborator. His focus is to coordinate the large-scale mapping effort for the global atlas of ungulate migrations, which provides crucial information to different stakeholders in global ungulate migration ecology, from local wildlife managers to decision-makers. For his work Steffen combines his curiosity about ungulate migration, his experience in handling GPS data sets and his fascination for maps, trying to facilitate all the steps from raw data to final cartography. The Before joining the GIUM in early 2022, Steffen earned his PhD at La Sapienza University of Rome in Italy, investigating human impact on red deer and elk movements across Europe and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Prior to his PhD, Steffen earned a B.A. in Geography and an M.Sc. in Ecology, and enjoyed his time doing “boots on the ground” wildlife work as research assistant for several years.
Email: mumme.steffen@gmail.com
Web Cartographer
Joanna is a cartographic developer for the InfoGraphics Lab at the University of Oregon, a longtime partner of the Wyoming Migration Initiative. She has contributed cartography and animations for the Wyoming Migration Initiative's popular migration tracking program on social media.
Email: jmerson@uoregon.edu
Research Scientist
Jenny McKee is a research scientist for the Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit. Before starting with the Wyoming Coop Unit, Jenny completed her BA at Kenyon College (2009) and PhD on seabird foraging ecology at Wake Forest University (2021). Her PhD research investigated how environmental factors, and age and sex of an individual, influenced the foraging performance of Nazca Boobies, a seabird in the Galápagos Islands. Now that she is working with ungulates, she applies similar spatial analyses from her seabird research to big game migration. Her work with the Wyoming Migration Initiative focuses on mapping and researching ungulate migrations across the western United States.
Research Scientist
Blake Lowrey is a Research Scientist for the Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, where he works on spatial ecology topics for ungulates throughout Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Blake also cooridinates the USGS Corridor Mapping Team documenting ungulate migrations across the western U.S. Before starting with the Wyoming Coop Unit, Blake completed his PhD on mountain ungulate spatial ecology at Montana State University. He also worked jointly with Montana State University and Montana Fish Wildlife & Parks on a series of habitat and migration related projects across Montana.
Email: blowrey@usgs.gov
Postdoctoral Researcher
Mike is a postdoctoral researcher in the Merkle Research Group. His research focuses on how extrinsic environmental changes across seasons and years drive animal movement and migration, and how intrinsic differences among individuals influence the distribution of movements within a population. Mike’s research investigates how individuals acclimate to changes in their environment and how diverse strategies among populations could buffer them against future environmental change. Mike also works for the Global Initiative on Ungulate Migration, where he coordinates mapping efforts for ungulate migrations. Mike completed his PhD in Biology at Memorial University in Newfoundland, Canada where he studied drivers of migration in caribou, and his M.Sc. and B.Sc. from the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada.
Email: mlaforge@uwyo.edu
Geospatial Software Developer
Josh Gage is a geospatial software developer located in Bozeman, MT. Josh specializes in building decision support mapping tools, data analysis, database and data processing pipelines. Selected clients include the US Geological Survey, US Forest Service, World Wildlife Fund and the Wilderness Society. Josh earned his masters degree in earth sciences from Montana State University.
Email: josh@gagecarto.com
Associate Research Scientist
Emily Gelzer is a co-founder and associate research scientist for Western Wildlife Research Collective, LLC. Emily received her bachelor’s degree in environmental biology at Fort Lewis College in Durango, CO. While working in different technician positions scattered across the West, Emily fell in love with the southwestern landscape and found her passion for conserving fish and wildlife species. She has worked with desert tortoises, bald eagles, mule deer, pronghorn, several trout species, and aquatic insects. Emily completed her MS in Zoology at the University of Wyoming with the Merkle Research Group. Her work focused on how the individual fidelity of mule deer and habitat variability influence the consistency in migration corridors from year to year. Her work with the Wyoming Migration Initiative focuses on mapping ungulate migrations and conducting research on ungulates across the western United States.
Email: emilyrgelzer@gmail.com
Cartographer
Ian is a cartographer for the Wyoming Migration Initiative, designing maps and visualizing data to make research findings more approachable and engaging. He earned a B.A. in geography and spatial data science at the University of Oregon, where he worked as a student cartographer in the InfoGraphics Lab. He spent much of his time in the lab mapping ungulates across the Western United States with the USGS Corridor Mapping Team, and also worked on projects with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, and Montana Fish Wildlife & Parks. At WMI, he continues to support the Corridor Mapping Team, but also makes maps for other scientific reports, journal articles, and outreach.
Email: ifreeman@uwyo.edu
Cartographic Editor
James Meacham is a senior research associate emeritus in the University of Oregon’s Department of Geography, and co-founder of the UO’s InfoGraphics Lab. He is a former president of the North American Cartographic Information Society. His interests include map and atlas design and data visualization. James taught map design in the UO Geography Department for nearly 30 years. He is the cartographic editor on the Wild Migrations: Atlas of Wyoming’s Ungulates and Atlas of Yellowstone first and second editions. He is co-author on the Archaeology and Landscape in the Mongolian Altai: An Atlas and the Atlas of Oregon publications. These atlas publications have received several major awards from the Wildlife Society, American Association of Geographers, the Cartography and Geographic Information Society, the Renewable Natural Resources Foundation, the Wyoming State Historical Society, and the Association of American Publishers. He is a long time member on the Oregon Geographic Names Board.
Email: jmeacham@uoregon.edu
Research Associate
Shannon Albeke is the ecoinformaticist embedded within the Wyoming Geographic Information Science Center (WyGISC) at the University of Wyoming. Shannon holds a PhD in Landscape Ecology from the University of Georgia and has over 20 years of experience as an ecologist and informaticist specializing in the integration of field-collected data with spatial/statistical analyses and database management. His research focuses on improving the efficiency of analyzing large spatial and temporal datasets through innovative methodologies that take advantage of database structure and design, coupled with open-source statistical software.
Email: salbeke@uwyo.edu
Phone: 307-760-9993
Assistant Professor, Knobloch Professor in Migration Ecology and Conservation
Jerod is an assistant professor within the Department of Zoology and Physiology at University of Wyoming. Jerod is a quantitative wildlife ecologist with broad interests in understanding how the movement of animals relates to environmental heterogeneity and change, and how these interactions scale to population- and landscape-level ecological processes. Jerod’s specific research foci include movement and migration ecology, fitness consequences of behavior, how cognition and innovation influence foraging behavior, and conservation and management of large mammals. More information on his research can be found at https://merkleresearchgroup.org/
Email: jmerkle@uwyo.edu
Phone: 307-766-5448