UW’s Biodiversity Institute Organizes Hunting and Fishing Symposium April 6

Avid hunters and anglers, as well as the public, are invited to attend a Hunting and Fishing Symposium from 1-4 p.m. Saturday, April 6, at Central Wyoming College’s Intertribal Education and Community Center in Riverton.

The event, coordinated by the University of Wyoming’s Biodiversity Institute, will begin with tables hosted by various organizations and food catered by hunting camp cook Jeremie Hill. Talks will begin at 2 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.

“The purpose of the event is to celebrate the practices of hunting and fishing while also drawing attention to conservation and management issues surrounding them,” says Brett Addis, associate director for UW’s Biodiversity Institute. “This is the first year we are taking the event outside of Laramie, with the intent of making the event more localized, focusing on specific issues within the host community. The speakers for this year’s event, therefore, all have relevance to game and fish on the Wind River Indian Reservation.”

Organizations that will host tables in an adjacent lobby are UW’s Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources; the Northern Arapaho Tribal Historic Preservation Office; Sporting Lead-Free; the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; the Wyoming Game and Fish Department; the Wind River Tribal Buffalo Initiative; Wyoming BioBlitz; and WyoParks.

The schedule, including times, topics and speakers, is:

-- 2 p.m.: “Implementing novel detection methods as a tool to study chronic wasting disease in mule deer,” Tucker Russell, from Lander, a UW second-year master’s student studying zoology.

-- 2:20 p.m.: “Integrating stakeholders into caribou management: An anthropologically informed approach to wildlife conservation,” Casey Black, of San Antonio, Texas, a UW second-year master’s student studying anthropology.

-- 2:40 p.m.: “Examining stocking success of sauger (Sander canadensis) in the Wind River Drainage, Wyoming,” Sam Johnson, from Parker, Colo., a UW first-year master’s student studying botany.

-- 3 p.m.: Topic TBA, Jeremy Molt, youth coordinator at Shoshone and Arapaho Tribes Fish and Game.

-- 3:20 p.m.: “Successes in Wildlife Conservation on the Wind River Reservation: The 40th Anniversary of Implementing the ‘Game Code’ and Recent Large-Scale Removals of Feral Horses,” Pat Hnilicka, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist.

For more information about the symposium, go here; or call Addis at (307) 766-6279 or email baddis@uwyo.edu.