September 2021

The Nevada Department of Wildlife (NDOW), University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Wildlife Management Institute (WMI) recently signed a cooperative agreement to establish a new Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit at UNR. The Nevada unit is the 41st Cooperative Research Unit (CRU) in a national system across 39 states. The three-part mission of the CRU system is to conduct applied research to support management of fish and wildlife, provide post-graduate education to enhance the conservation workforce, and provide training and extension to meet the needs of cooperating agencies. The unique model of the CRU program increases productivity and capacity of the cooperators by allowing partners to leverage each other’s strengths. The Nevada CRU program will include three scientists employed through the USGS who will have adjunct faculty appointments to UNR. The unit scientists will focus their research and graduate student training on the ecology and management of Nevada’s fish and wildlife as well as the human dimensions of wildlife conservation and the importance of wildlife to the public’s overall quality of life.

Thanks to multiple national funding sources and numerous agency, NGO, and academic partnerships, the next generation of CWD information and quantitative surveillance tools were recently rolled out to assist wildlife management agencies in the long fight against Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD). In parallel and in partnership, the CWD Alliance along with the Cornell Wildlife Health Lab at Cornell University and Boone and Crockett Quantitative Wildlife Center at Michigan State University spent nearly two years creating state-of-the-art web-based applications to help state and provincial wildlife management agencies use and manage their data in novel ways that better support their CWD management goals. The CWD Alliance and the Cornell Team rolled out the results of their respective projects in a joint webinar late last month titled “CWD Tools, Maps, and More Showcase.”

The Wildlife Management Institute (supported by a Multi-State Conservation Grant) provides you with this quarterly snapshot of the excise tax collections to help you understand the health of American System of Conservation Funding. This system of funding was established in the 1930s and expanded and perfected over the next 40+ years. This reliable source of annual funding for state fish and wildlife agencies represents a unique partnership between the agencies and the hunting, shooting sports, angling, and boating industries. In rough national numbers, these excise tax deposits made by the partner industries represent about half the state fish and wildlife agencies’ annual budgets. That said, there are a number of state fish and wildlife agencies that enjoy other sources of funding (i.e., state level appropriations, specific sales tax additions, lottery funds, etc.) Regardless of other funding sources, the funding generated and made available to state agencies is substantial. Therefore, it is imperative to conservation that agencies (from the commissioners down to the field biologists) understand the industry trends and work with these industries to ensure a strong income flow going forward.