NAPF Welcomes Steve Martin to Board of Directors
In NAPF Newsletter #1, the Board announced their search for a Board Member to represent NAPF in the great state of Wyoming. Home to the largest population of pronghorn in the world, we felt it is imperative to establish a presence through our Board of Directors in Wyoming.
With that, NAPF is proud to welcome Steve Martin of Rock Springs, Wyoming to the North American Pronghorn Foundation Board of Directors. Not only is Steve an avid outdoorsman, he brings decades of experience and knowledge around Wyoming wildlife and conservation. His collaborative mindset and strong interest in the future of our wildlife will be an asset to NAPF conservation efforts going forward.
“Steve fills a much needed role within NAPF. It would be a challenge to truly represent the interests of pronghorn without having representation in the state that is home to 40-50% of the world’s population”, says NAPF Chairman Brock Wahl. “We feel grateful that someone with Steve’s experience and passion is interested in helping NAPF fulfill it’s mission and advocating for the needs of pronghorn.”
Steve will aid the NAPF leadership team in continuing to build the organization while also maintaining his focus on Wyoming-centric pronghorn conservation opportunities and issues.
To learn more about NAPF leadership click here!
Public Land and Pronghorn
History, they say, repeats itself. The conservation world is no exception these last months. The ideas known in the 70s and 80s known as the Sagebrush Rebellion came to call again recently, with the amendment offered by Representatives Celeste Maloy and Mark Amodei to President Trump’s budget bill and most recently, with Senator Mike Lee’s budget proposal. These would bypass the established process to dispose of public land and force the sale of federal lands to private buyers or the states.
Why are we, a pronghorn conservation organization, writing about this now? There are organizations dedicated to the protection of our ownership of, and access to, public lands.
The conservation of pronghorn cannot occur without conservation of the habitat they live on. While this is done in many ways on private lands, with and through private landowners, most pronghorn habitat, and our access to them, is ensured by public lands. The North American Pronghorn Foundation is not, opposed to every transfer of public land. There are many examples, particularly in developed areas, where land transfer simply makes good sense. The transfer of DoD property around the former El Toro Air Station for example, turned an abandoned and decaying property into a municipal park, golf course, and schools that gets tens of thousands of people outside. It isn’t always in a fully developed area that this makes sense. In Alaska, the biggest transfer of federal land ever undertaken has been occurring quietly and with little fanfare. In the last five years, the various federal agencies have transferred more than 5.3 million acres to the State of Alaska, tribal nations, and native individuals for their sustenance and to uphold treaty obligations.
What is more important than specific examples for either side is the process we use to decide when and how to dispose of those lands. The Federal Lands Policy and Management Act, or FLPMA, was designed to do just that. Without trying to make anyone an expert, a legal pathway exists for identifying, asking for public comment on, and finally, selling at fair market value, lands to be transferred out of federal ownership. After sale, the Federal Land Transfer Facilitation Act (FLTFA), specifies the use of the proceeds for improvement of existing public lands. The Malloy/Amodei Amendment and Senator Lee’s initiatives would bypass both processes, forcing the non-reviewed sale of identified land and directing the proceeds into the federal general fund.
Public lands are one of the things that makes us unique in the United States. They are one of our most democratic expressions. We all have equal right to use those lands within the law. When someone thinks those lands can serve us better under the stewardship of a state, local government, or a private landowner, we all must have a part in making that decision. This is why the North American Pronghorn Foundation finds pronghorn conservation aligned with access to and conservation of public land. We cannot allow land to be sold without the comment and consent of the people. Evading the legal process to do that, denies us our voice. Access to a resource is control and ownership of it. If we allow public land transfer without our voice being heard, we lose access to the land and the resources on it, including pronghorn. That’s what these measures are about. Privatizing public resources.
Public land not only sustains the people of this country who recreate on and enjoy them, they enable pronghorn to live as they have for millennia. We cannot speak for pronghorn without speaking for those lands. The NAPF will always stand for public land managed openly and transparently, and we will always stand to give voice and stewardship to land that sustains pronghorn. This is how we future-proof pronghorn, and that, simply said, is our mission.
-Erik Dippold
It Would Be a Shame To Lose the Wyoming Migration Initiative
For the last several months there’s been a lot of talk about the Trump administration’s Federal funding cuts. Many Americans recognize and agree, myself included, that something must be done about Federal spending to control the national debt that has ballooned to 36 trillion dollars.
With that said, the 2026 budget request from the White House Office of Management and Budget proposes to wipe out the entire Ecosystems Mission Area (EMA) at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). What is of particular concern to NAPF is the Cooperative Research Unit (CRU) Program that is within the EMA. There are 43 CRUs that work in tandem with state wildlife agencies to conduct, in part or in full, wildlife research in 41 states. Their partners include state wildlife agencies, universities, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services, and conservation organizations. In FY24, the CRU program was federally funded at 28 million dollars, or 0.0004% of the annual federal budget of around 7 trillion dollars. For reference, if you make $75,000 per year, 0.0004% is .30 cents.
For taxpayers, the beauty of the CRU program is the partner funding. In FY24 the CRUs leveraged their federal funds with partners to secure an additional $48 million dollars to support their wildlife research efforts. Cooperating universities provided another $22 million of in-kind support through facilities, student tuition, and reduced overhead. This makes the research conducted by these CRUs an incredible value for the American taxpayer. The program maximizes taxpayer investment, turning every appropriated Federal dollar into three dollars to fund wildlife research priorities that serve the interest of the public trust beneficiaries (you) and the trust corpus (wildlife).
The Wyoming Migration Initiative (WMI), housed within the Wyoming CRU, is one of the benefactors of this program and may be one of the most well-known research groups in the hunting community. WMI has conducted innovative research that revealed big game migration corridors for elk, deer, and pronghorn. They’ve identified vital areas to sustaining pronghorn populations in the Cowboy State, and insights that will bolster many other states’ populations. If CRUs disappear, it is likely that WMI follows the same fate. WMI Director and lead scientist Matt Kauffman, is already preparing for such a closure. The Wyoming CRU and WMI have done an incredible job with research that our beloved big game species and hunters need, but they aren’t the only ones.
Just specific to pronghorn, the CRUs impacts can be felt today. Art Einerson, former leader of the Oregon Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit at OSU, wrote the first "The Pronghorn Antelope and its management" book for the Wildlife Management Institute in 1948. Einerson also helped support Jim Yoakum's MS study on pronghorn. Mr. Yoakum was a huge advocate for pronghorn, a Berrendo Award recipient (2002), and inducted into the Pronghorn Hall of Fame. Bart O'Gara, another Berrendo Award recipient (2004) and Pronghorn Hall of Fame member, did a lot of pronghorn work in Montana, as the Unit Leader of the Montana CRU. Those are just a few examples of crucial work CRUs have conducted in understanding and conserving pronghorn. Impactful pronghorn research has come from CRU units all over the west: WY, MT, OR, AZ, UT, NM, and OK. That Research may have never been conducted without CRU funding and partner support.
Defunding the CRU program would abruptly end ongoing wildlife research and stifle future research from getting off the ground. It would be a generational setback to wildlife knowledge, dismantling partnerships, destroying institutional knowledge and momentum, and limiting what we know about pronghorn and other big game species. As hunters and conservationists we cannot afford this loss, particularly at such a low cost to the taxpayer.
When conversations arise about reducing government spending, I generally find myself in agreement. However, the wildly beneficial and affordable CRU program is not the place. In fact, it works against the first Trump administration’s actions that took steps to improve the conservation of ungulate migration corridors through the signing of Secretarial Order 3362, “Improving Habitat Quality in Western Big Game Winter Range and Migration Corridors”.
I would encourage you to call your elected US Congressman and urge them to maintain funding for the Cooperative Research Units so they can continue to do the work that carries tremendous benefits to hunters and the wildlife we pursue across the nation, including pronghorn. It needs to be continued.
-Brock Wahl
Find your U.S. Congressman and call the US Capitol switch board at (202) 224-3121 to voice your concerns about eliminating CRU funding.
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NAPF Supports Lahontan Horse Removal in Nevada
NAPF Supports Horse Removal in Nevada
On May 9th, 2025 NAPF submitted it’s second comment supporting feral horse removals in the west, this time in western Nevada. The BLM’s Sierra Front Field Office proposes to gather and remove excess horses from the 9,600 acre Lahontan Herd Management Area (HMA), located approximately 35 miles east of Carson City and immediately south of the Lahontan Reservoir.
This action would address the significant over population of horses inside and outside of the HMA. The BLM’s defined appropriate management level (AML) for the Lahontan HMA is 7-10 wild horses. The estimated wild horse population, based on a 2024 aerial census, is 518. NAPF encouraged the BLM to remove horses and meet their established AML of 7-10 horses in the HMA.
NAPF’s comment cited peer reviewed scientific literature specifically from the Great Basin, “areas without wild horses had higher shrub cover, plant cover, species richness, native plant cover, and overall plant biomass, and lower cover of grazing tolerant, unpalatable, and invasive plant species such as cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum), when compared to areas with horses”.
The removal of feral horses from western landscapes will provide benefits and stability to a host of native species that rely on these ecosystems, their limited water resources, and local cattle operations that rely on those same landscapes for their livelihoods. Horse removals are long overdue and NAPF applauds these proposals from the Bureau of Land Management.
NAPF’s First Policy Actions
NAPF submits first comments to advocate for pronghorn and their habitat in Wyoming.
The North American Pronghorn Foundation (NAPF) was founded to enhance pronghorn populations and habitats through advocacy, stewardship, stakeholder partnerships, and our hunting heritage. Recognizing the threat that feral horses and fractured migration corridors have on that mission, on April 29, the NAPF submitted its first comments on public policy.
The first was made to support of a Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Rock Springs Field Office proposal for gather and removal of nearly 3,000 feral horses from over 1 million acres of Wyoming public lands. Multiple studies corroborate the damage that these horses have on sagebrush ecosystems when numbers exceed forage and water limitations.
This proposal advocates for permanent removal of feral horses in the newly converted herd areas of the former Great Divide Basin, Salt Wells Creek, and a portion of the Adobe town herd management areas (HMAs). It followed a May 8th, 2023 BLM decision to cease management of public lands for wild horses within checkerboard land ownership areas.
The NAPF believes that for the wellbeing of pronghorn and the landscapes they call home, that horse removals are long overdue. The BLM must act swiftly to prevent irreversible damage to landscapes and native species treasured for their uniquely American heritage, features, and habitats. The removal of these feral horses is scheduled to begin in July 2025.
The second comment was in support of the State of Wyoming’s proposed designation of the Sublette Antelope Migration Corridor via executive order 2020-1. The Sublette herd, perhaps the largest on the continent, migrates south from summer ranges in the foothills of the Wyoming Range, Bondurant, and Jackson Hole areas, to winter range near Pinedale, Green River, and Rock Springs. This corridor has been identified through decades of science using GPS collar data from hundreds of pronghorn. The state gained hard-earned knowledge about how disruptions to the corridor impact pronghorn. Poorly sited industrial projects, including the Sweetwater Solar facility have documented negative impacts on herd populations since 2019. The NAPF believes this designation is a key step to avoid those impacts as we support a wide range of activities occurring on the landscape.
NAPF commented on the need for this designation to safeguard priority areas within this corridor including high use areas, bottlenecks, and stopover areas. These proactive conservation measures are vital to the Sublette herd’s health in Southwest Wyoming, particularly following the devastating 2022-2023 winter where they suffered extreme mortality. We believe that we cannot be content to sustain the status quo, and that through careful planning, research in upcoming collar studies, and advocacy for pronghorn, we can ensure a robust future for this distinctively North American animal while ensuring a range of uses on the landscape.