Images

Researchers at the West Virginia Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit caught two walleyes during population surveys in a reservoir in West Virginia. Managers are interested in understanding the impacts of lake level fluctuations on recreational fisheries.  

Shingle Creek, a tributary of Clear Creek in Utah. As wildfire increases throughout the western USA, the persistence of sensitive ecosystems is threatened. The lightning-caused Twitchell Fire in south-central Utah affected 45,000 acres of montane forest, including areas identified for restoration of native Bonneville cutthroat trout.

Crocodilians are one of the few reptile taxa that exhibit parental care. In alligators, following nest construction, females stay nearby in a guard hole, and are known to defend their nests against predators or other intruders.

Welcome to the Washington Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit. We're committed to excellence in applied research to support our agency partners in conserving fish, wildlife, and their habitats. We're also dedicated to educating the next generation of fish and wildlife professionals.

Phaedra is the Unit Leader of the Utah Unit, a Professor of fisheries management and aquatic ecology in the Department of Watershed Sciences at Utah State University (USU) and a faculty member of The Ecology Center at USU.

Lake Sturgeon caught on the Gasconade River, Missouri.

Rainbow trout are native only to the western United States but are stocked widely throughout the country to increase fishing opportunities for anglers. Competitive interactions have been shown to be condition specific (for example, water temperature) and, thus, may only occur seasonally or under certain environmental conditions.

Jazmyn Bernard, an undergraduate student in the School of Renewable Natural Resources, dredges oysters in Sister Lake, Louisiana. Across coastal areas of the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill resulted in significant ecological injury and over $8 billion directed to restoration activities.

Amelia DuVall is a seabird ecologist and a member of the Quantitative Conversation Lab at the Washington Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit. Amelia's taking samples of a Scripps’ murrelet chick.

The Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) is frequently queried regarding the general status of endangered and threatened mussels in Missouri, a question that will remain incompletely answered until a sufficiently rigorous and comprehensive assessment and monitoring framework is implemented in Missouri.

Blue vane traps are one method used to collect bees in experimental study fields and are then emptied after 24 hrs. Bee tissues are undergoing analyses for pesticide residues.

Limited information is available about the movements of riverine smallmouth bass in landscapes with prevalent river-reservoir interfaces. This lack of information is especially problematic for the Neosho subspecies of smallmouth bass given the distribution covers an interwoven landscape of rivers and reservoirs.

Researcher swabs the body of a honeybee with fuschin gel to later use to identify the pollen particles on the bee's body and determine what plants the bee visited.

Mark Ford and his graduate students at the Virginia Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit (Ecosystems Mission Area, USGS), on the Virginia Tech campus, lead research on white-nose syndrome in bats across the mid-Atlantic states and northeast U.S. The research focuses on habitat use, distribution, and population ecology.

The Riverside East Solar Energy Zone is a vast area in southern California designated for large-scale solar development. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is charged with monitoring wildlife in this area to minimize the effects of the solar production on wildlife species.

Many field projects are in remote locations and accessible by all-terrain vehicles. The Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit is in the University of Wyoming’s Zoology and Physiology Department, where staff scientists are funded through the USGS. The researchers explore species and issues that are central to Wyoming and the Rocky Mountain West.

Cerulean warblers breed in mature deciduous forests throughout the eastern U.S., but are particularly abundant in oak-dominated forests that contain canopy gaps and a complex canopy structure.

The Virginia Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit is leading Northern long-eared bat ecology at Rock Creek Park in Washington, D.C. 

The Colorado Plateau of western North America contains large energy reserves under current or proposed development.  The region is also home to numerous localized and rare populations of plant species, many of which are listed under the Endangered Species Act. Our conservation and management challenge, then, is to design strategies that allow access to ene

USGS and other scientists have studied in-depth alligator populations in Florida and Louisiana, but basic ecological knowledge is lacking for populations at the northern edge of their range.

The Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit is located in the University of Wyoming’s Zoology and Physiology Department, where staff scientists are funded through the USGS. The Wyoming CRU is part of the nationwide Cooperative Research Unit Program, and we have a commitment to species and issues that are central to Wyoming and the Rocky Mountain West.