Mule Deer Migration Project, Western Wyoming Red Desert to Hoback. Photographer – Joe RiisWildlife; Ecologist – Dr. Hall Sawyer.
Photos of the longest-documented mule deer migration in the U.S. are on exhibit during July on the mezzanine at the Sheridan County Fulmer Library. Taken by Joe Riis, a photography fellow for the Wyoming Migration Initiative, the images give an up-close view into the lives of mule deer on the Red Desert to Hoback migration corridor. Viewers can travel along with the deer as they undertake a 150-mile migration north from the hills near Rock Springs to the peaks surrounding the Hoback Basin near Bondurant.
While this migration was known for decades, the full extent was only revealed in 2012. Using camera traps that take a photo when deer pass by an infrared sensor, Riis documented how deer navigate obstacles as they migrate between winter and summer range.
Gregory Nickerson
The Wyoming Migration Initiative would like to bring this exhibit to other libraries. The photos will be on display at the Fulmer Library through the end of July, but will be available for other host sites beginning in August. Contact WMI writer and filmmaker Gregory Nickerson at gregory.nickerson@uwyo.edu or 307-766-5491 for details.
At 6 p.m. tonight, July 5, Nickerson will give an educational program in the Sheridan Fulmer Library Inner Circle focusing on the human connections to wildlife migration throughout history. Also, Wyoming Game and Fish Brucellosis-Habitat Biologist Eric Maichak will give a short presentation about an ongoing local disease study that is also yielding information about movement of elk in the Bighorn Mountains. The photo exhibit runs through the end of July.