MISSOULA, Mont. —-(Ammoland.com)- The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation is proud to announce that Dr. Matt Kauffman is the recipient of its Conservationist of the Year Award for 2018.
Kauffman is the lead scientist of the Wyoming Migration Initiative, a University of Wyoming-based collaborative of biologists, mapmakers, artists, photographers and writers working to research ungulate migration and share that information with the public.
“Perhaps no one has done more to further the scientific understanding of elk migration than Dr. Kauffman,” said Blake Henning, RMEF chief conservation officer. “His past and continuing research shines a light on landscape-wide wildlife movements not previously captured or recorded in such a comprehensive manner.”
RMEF’s support of the Wyoming Migration Initiative dates back to 2006 when it worked with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department to provide funding for research that eventually led to the initiative.
Since 2013, RMEF provided more than $243,000 on 14 projects while formally working alongside Kauffman. Key accomplishments include the Atlas of Wildlife Migration, Wyoming Ungulates, Elk Migrations of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, Invisible Boundaries: Exploring Yellowstone’s Great Animal Migrations, Migration Assessment of elk herds in various parts of Wyoming and other tools that allow researchers and the public to view and understand migrations.
“The 2018 Secretarial Order 3362 focusing on conservation and big game migration corridors can in no small part be traced back to the Wyoming Migration Initiative and its ground-breaking work. Wyoming is known to have the best migration data of any of the western states,” added Henning.
Currently an assistant professor at the University of Wyoming, Kauffman leads the Wyoming Cooperative Fish