Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation Makes Major Gift to Migration Mapping

A collaborative effort to map large-mammal migrations just received an additional boost from the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation (RMEF) to further the science and conservation of big-game species across the American West.

The nationwide conservation organization donated $250,000 to the University of Wyoming, home of the U.S. Geological Survey’s (USGS) Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, which coordinates a Corridor Mapping Team working across the West.

“It is critical to bolster our understanding of the locations of migrations and the movement challenges elk and other wildlife face in order to strategically conserve these corridors,” says Blake Henning, RMEF chief conservation officer. “Doing so ensures their health and future. We appreciate the ongoing efforts of USGS, along with state and tribal partners, in documenting and creating these migration maps and making them available to wildlife managers.”

RMEF’s gift follows a previous $180,000 donation to the project made in 2021. While many conservation nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), agencies and private partners have supported the numerous individual tracking studies that underpin this work to date, RMEF is the only NGO to contribute funding for the West-wide analysis and mapping work of the Corridor Mapping Team.

The mapping effort represents a major state-federal collaboration. Since 2020, 157 ungulate migrations have been mapped and published in USGS’ “Ungulate Migrations of the Western United States” volumes 1-3, with a fourth volume forthcoming in early 2024. The map files also are accessible in the online interactive viewer www.westernmigrations.net.

The collaborative project began in 2018 in response to Secretarial Order 3362 issued by then-Department of the Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. The directive called on USGS to work with Western states and tribes to map migration corridors of mule deer, elk and pronghorn. The agency responded by creating the Corridor Mapping Team, which USGS has financially supported since its inception.

Together, the maps represent the world’s largest publicly viewable archive of elk, mule deer and pronghorn migrations. The maps are the result of collective work by 11 Western states, multiple Indian reservations and dozens of research partners who have tracked thousands of animals and analyzed millions of data points.

“This funding will go a long way to support the Corridor Mapping Team, its analysis, cartography and production of migration maps, all to benefit the health of these herds and aid the conservation of their corridors,” says Matt Kauffman, a wildlife biologist and researcher with the USGS Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit at UW, who leads the Corridor Mapping Team. “RMEF has been a steadfast supporter of this work and a key NGO partner in this collaborative vision to map ungulate migrations across the West.”

With ungulate species migrating across a complex terrain of public and private lands, along with state, federal and tribal land management jurisdictions, detailed maps can provide a common understanding about what steps can be taken to conserve wildlife for future generations.

The open sharing of migration maps provides a common visual tool to land managers and the public so that they can evaluate where migrations occur, what threats may exist to the free movement of animals, and what conservation actions may need to be taken.

The Corridor Mapping Team at UW is coordinated and administered by the USGS Ecosystems Mission Area and the Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Units Program, which works with state and federal partners to provide actionable science to monitor and manage the nation’s fish and wildlife populations.