Cooperative fish and wildlife research units across the country help train the next generation of the conservation workforce and support decision-making through on-the-ground technical assistance to state agencies. But the long-standing U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) program could be on the chopping block as a result of Trump’s proposed budget cuts, according to reporting from Science.
Amid the uncertainty about its future, people close to the co-op unit program are concerned about what cuts could mean.
The Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit is currently led by three USGS researchers: Matthew Kauffman, Annika Walters and Anna Chalfoun. It’s one of 43 across the country and is well-known for its work on wildlife migration and houses the Wyoming Migration Initiative.
The initiative’s work, highlighted in videos and atlases of big game migration routes, has helped inform state plans for migration corridor concerns and wildlife connectivity projects.
More broadly, the Wyoming co-op’s projects have directly informed conservation and management policy in the state for almost 50 years.The program got its start in 1935 at Iowa State University and was codified by Congress in the 1960s. Since the ’70s, co-op researchers at the University of Wyoming have also advised more than 200 graduate and Ph.D. students.
That includes Niall Clancy, who grew up in the co-op model and graduated this spring. He got his undergrad through the Montana unit, masters through the Utah unit, and doctorate through the Wyoming unit. His most recent work looked at how climate change will impact native stream fish in Wyoming and Montana.
“ As a guy with a Ph.D., I'm not just interested in these ivory tower questions,” he said. “ What I'm interested in is actually helping these agencies figure out how to do conservation for fish and wildlife for needs that they identify.”
That’s how the model works: USGS scientists, university researchers and students partner with state wildlife agencies to tackle agency-specific issues. A 2025 USGS fact sheet reports that Congress appropriated $28 million for the program in fiscal year 2024, which primarily covered the co-op researchers’ salaries. Meanwhile, co-op scientists secured approximately $48 million in research funds from cooperators and stakeholders.
According to that fact sheet, co-op scientists, research staff and students also published 360 scientific papers in FY 2024 related to “partner-identified natural resource problems,” and unit scientists directed over 700 research projects in that same time span.
“ It's essentially on-the-job training in a lot of ways for these students,” said Clancy. “ It's really a win-win for everyone involved.”
Clancy had a postdoctoral fellowship lined up with the Idaho co-op unit following graduation, where he had plans to help develop a non-game fish program to help preemptively and proactively keep species off the endangered species list.
Part of the goal was to identify the species that would need more work to “keep common” than others, which would have likely included the green sucker, northern leatherside chub and wood river sculpin, according to Clancy.
But then he got a call saying the postdoc was cancelled as a result of all of the uncertainty around the program. He’s been looking at jobs, even in other countries, and said he’s worried that if the USGS co-op researchers lose their funding, it’ll make the job search even more difficult.
“ Guys like me who just finished their Ph.D. [will be] competing against our advisors, essentially against people with 20 years of experience on us,” he said. “It basically destroys the chances of the next generation for becoming scientists.”
John Organ was in charge of the USGS co-op research units nationwide in the mid 2010s, and spent 40 years working with the USGS and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He said the strength of the program is two-fold.
“ Their purpose is to solve these fundamental problems, real world problems, while at the same time training students to be cognizant of what agencies do and the kinds of problems that they are faced with, as well as allowing them to interact with the agency professionals,” Organ said.
Organ knew about the co-ops from a young age. As a teenager, he was fascinated with a pair of brother biologists in Montana: John and Frank Craighead.
“John Craighead was the leader of the Montana Wildlife Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit, and their work on grizzly bears in Yellowstone Park was monumental,” he said. “They were my heroes.”
Organ went on to get his masters and Ph.D. through the Massachusetts co-op program, and also worked for the Wetlands Inventory Program and the National Wildlife Refuge system. He says the Wyoming co-op’s work on migration stands out in the field of traditional game management.
“ Unlocking the secrets of these migrations, we can already see the benefits of that with road crossings, with land conservation [and] working with ranchers and private landowners to conserve these magnificent animals,” he said.
Steve Williams also has deep roots with the co-op program. He said when he was a wildlife biologist in Massachusetts, working with its researchers broadened his horizons.
“ I learned a lot from those folks,” he said. “We made better decisions because we had better scientific information than if we were just trying to do it on our own.”
Williams also got a Ph.D. through the co-op program and spent his career working in the world of conservation. He went on to direct the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for three years, which is one of the co-op partners.
He said cutting the program could hurt the future pipeline of wildlife management leaders.
“A number of those students that go through the co-op unit programs have moved into either state or federal agencies, and work their way up through the agency because of that exposure,” he said.
Williams also said he finds the uncertain state of limbo that the co-op researchers are currently in especially frustrating.
“ It’s no way to run a railroad,” he said. “This is not how you deal with professionals or anybody. It's more than frustrating. It's disheartening. It's heartbreaking to know people that are going through this right now.”
Tony Wasley is the president and CEO of the Wildlife Management Institute, which is the private partner of the national co-op program. He said the units have been a bit of a political football for a while.
“ Under the Clinton administration, they were moved from the [U.S.] Fish and Wildlife Service into the USGS,” he said. “And during Trump's first administration, there was again a presidential budget that showed very little interest in maintaining the cooperative research units.”
Wasley said Congress has intervened in the past and maintained the funding, but he added there’s been “a whole lot of conversations” about what a federal funding cut could mean this go-around.
In that scenario, he thinks the co-ops could survive through some sort of public-private partnership, but said that might look different for each unit based on the support from their state agency or university partners.
“ It would be advantageous to all the partners, all the cooperators to present a timeline that allows for adaptation to a new model,” he said.
He added that communication – or the lack thereof – will play a big role in the co-ops’ future.
“Would it cut 'em off at the knees?” he said. “Yeah. If things happen too quickly without warning, that makes contingency planning really difficult, and the loss of that incredibly valuable science and those partnerships would be felt far and wide.”
The USGS and Wyoming Game and Fish did not respond to questions about the co-op before publication.
UW spokesperson Chad Baldwin said the school hasn’t been informed about any in-the-works terminations, adding, “We certainly value what the Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit has done for the state and for UW.”
As for the future of the program? Baldwin emphasized, “We just don’t know.”
