December 2022 - 13

PROJECT PROFILES
On a mission for you
The Wyoming Game and Fish Department works throughout the year to fulfill the mission
of " conserving wildlife, serving people. " A variety of projects, surveys and efforts are
underway across Wyoming to meet this charge. Some highlights of recent work include:
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BDAs for toads: Game and Fish worked with the Medicine
Bow-Routt National Forest to install beaver dam analogs
this summer at a boreal toad breeding site in the Little
Laramie River drainage. The structures were made of
timber poles, mud, grass sod, tree branches and rock.
The toads use beaver ponds for breeding habitat. Prior
to the project installation, there was one remnant beaver
pond for the toads to use.
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Mystery Lake cutthroat: Jackson Region employees
stocked 750 Snake River cutthroat trout into Mystery
Lake in the Teton Wilderness this summer. Personnel
used horses to pack the 5-inch fish into the remote
lake, located about 5 miles north of Brooks Lake near
Togwotee Pass. This was the second consecutive year
of the stocking. The project to return cutthroat to one
of its native waters began in 2016.
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Habitat investments: Game and Fish and conservation
partners invested more than $10.5 million in aquatic
and terrestrial habitat projects in 2021. The department
allocated more than $2.5 million for habitat projects and
leveraged that for more than $8 million from the Wyoming
Wildlife Natural Resources Trust fund, federal government
funds, state funds, private landowners and local conservation
partners. That is equivalent to $3.16 coming from
external partners for every Game and Fish dollar allocated.
Through these funds, Game and Fish executed 226 projects.
Dry Piney crossing structures: Construction of the
Dry Piney wildlife crossing project, led by the Wyoming
Department of Transportation with support from Game
and Fish, started this year and is slated to be complete by
October 2023. This section of U.S. Highway 189 between
LaBarge and Big Piney has one of the highest wildlife-vehicle
collision rates in Wyoming. The project includes nine
underpasses and 16.7 miles of 8-feet-high fencing on both
sides of the highway.
Flat Creek cutthroat: Fisheries personnel in the Jackson
Region sampled a section of Flat Creek late this summer
north of Jackson for Snake River cutthroat trout. The
number of fish per mile for 13-16-inch fish and more than 16
inches long exceeded the 10-year high that was previously
recorded in 2018. No nonnative brook trout were captured
during the sampling. Game and Fish also completed a
fence along Flat Creek to keep wintering elk from browsing
willows along the riparian area.
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Chub transplant progress: Hornyhead chubs, a Species
of Greatest Conservation Need native to Wyoming, were captured
in the Laramie River and reintroduced at two different
Sweetwater River sites in 2020 and 2021. The species was
last observed in the Sweetwater River in 1853. Surveys in
2022 found hornyhead chub nests and young fish between
1.2 to 2.5 inches long, indicating the transplanted fish are
successfully reproducing in their new home.
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Swift fox transplant: Thirty swift foxes were captured
north of Casper this summer and successfully transplanted
to the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in northern Montana,
which is part of the foxes' historical range. Game
and Fish plans to survey for swift foxes in the area where
the captures occurred in 2023 to assess population status,
determine any effects from translocation efforts and map
the expanding distribution of the species across the state.
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Restoration workshop: In July, Sheridan Region
personnel partnered with several conservation groups
to host a workshop for landowners and other natural
resource managers on habitat restoration techniques to
reduce water erosion and soil loss in upland, wet-meadow
habitats. The techniques showed participants how to build
low-tech structures designed to increase soil moisture and
raise the water table, along with improving and increasing
forage production to benefit wildlife and livestock.
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December 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of December 2022