Upper Shoshone Mule Deer Video Collaring Project
Need and opportunity
Our goal is to visually represent the difficulty of migration for some deer that spend winters in the developed and human influenced winter ranges located just to the west and southwest of Cody, WY and to quantify the diet and quality of habitat of mule deer in the remote backcountry of Yellowstone National Park. Visually representing the life of these deer in relation to the challenges of migration will allow us to tell a full migration story of deer that during the winter portion of their life seem relatively tame and enjoy an “easy” life near human development. This story telling will allow us to show the value of mule deer in the Cody area and may help to garner support for protecting remaining tracts winter range. In addition, because many of these deer summer in some of the most remote and difficult to access habitats in the lower 48 using video collars are the most efficient way to start to understand both food selection and potentially habitat quality.
Where we are
We currently have 9 video collars deployed on the landscape and 1 collar that was retrieved in July that we will be receiving data and beginning the analysis during the winter of 2024/25
Where we’re going
We hope to deploy another 20 collars in February/March of 2025 in order to focus on getting collars into more native mule deer winter range as a comparison to our first deployment in more human influenced landscapes.
Team members
Arthur Middleton
Arthur is an associate professor in the Department of Science, Policy, and Management at the University of California, Berkeley and also acts as the Senior Advisor on Wildlife Conservation for the US Department of Agriculture. He leads a variety of interdisciplinary research efforts on wide-ranging wildlife and large-landscape conservation, and works actively to ensure positive outcomes of this work for communities.
Kristin Barker
Kristin serves as the research coordinator for the Beyond Yellowstone Living Lab. Her research primarily focuses on migration ecology, predator-prey dynamics, and anthropogenic influences on animal behavior. She’s spent most of the last two decades living and working in the Rocky Mountains, hiking, camping, biking, skiing, paddling, hunting, and doing lots of fieldwork.
Jerod Merkle
Jerod is an assistant professor and the Knobloch professor of migration ecology and conservation at University of Wyoming. Jerod’s research program is twofold. He and his team study the intricacies of the movement and migration of big game, and develop data products and tools to facilitate their conservation and management.
Corey Class
Corey is the Wildlife Management Coordinator of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department based in Cody, Wyoming. He came to Wyoming from Idaho, where he worked as regional wildlife biologist and Mule Deer Initiative coordinator for Idaho Fish and Game. A long-time hunter and outdoorsman, Corey previously served as staff biologist and operations manager for the Minnesota Deer Hunters Association.
