The inspiring moments we have as sportspeople and wildlife enthusiasts are all part of our experience and admiration for our wildlife resources. Great emotions and memories are attached to the first time you hooked a fish on a line — or even the first catch of the day. There’s awe and excitement in spotting a moose as it emerges from the willows, or hearing the first meadowlark of spring singing its melodic and hopeful tunes of spring.
Most hunters know the most memorable hunt and most successful hunt are not always the same. The skills, tools and education for these moments come from training, experience and acquired knowledge. Recognizing these moments and why they matter is part of education.
Education comes in many forms. It can refer to an act or process of acquiring knowledge or the knowledge and training acquired by the process. The classic definition of education through classes, trainings, courses, certifications and degrees is commonly recognized. Education in the form of collected knowledge or experiences through which valuable information can be compiled, applied and reapplied also is widely understood. Lastly, education in the culminating sense of the word is the acquired knowledge utilized to implement action, experimentation and to hone a skill, which can come through formal and informal processes — in a classroom with a screen or on top of a mountain you climbed with your grandfather.
From classical training to field experiences, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department knows first-hand what formal and informal education looks like. Education is a crucial component throughout the department’s strategic plan to inform and educate, provide diverse fish and wildlife-based experiences while inspiring and empowering people and keeping the goal of a sustainable future for Wyoming’s wildlife. Education and outreach also is a job component for most positions at Game and Fish. Employees are encouraged to engage with the public, stakeholders and their communities through events, public meetings and schools. Lately, Game and Fish expanded its education programs and reach in Wyoming.
In 2019, Game and Fish Director Brian Nesvik took education to the next level for Wyoming’s future generations with the department’s Inspire a Kid — it’s for Life campaign.
“It is our responsibility as citizens, parents and as a wildlife agency to ensure kids know our hunting heritage and continue conservation efforts to enjoy and protect our wildlife resources,” Nesvik said.
Five years later, Inspire a Kid has become a recognized brand on Game and Fish vehicles, events, education courses and with partner organizations. Weekly emails with activities, crafts and learning resources are available. There are numerous ways Game and Fish works to inspire kids in Wyoming, and hopefully the kid in us all.
Hunter Education
Hunter education, formerly known as hunter safety, is the foundation of formal education and outreach for Game and Fish. The first hunter safety course was designed more than 50 years ago to reduce hunting accidents and promote ethical hunting practices. The legal certification was formally recognized in Wyoming in 1979. The goal of hunter education are firearm safety and training, hunter ethics, outdoor safety, wildlife identification, field care of game, state law and regulations and principles of wildlife management.
Since hunter education's inception, there has been a 50 percent reduction in hunting accidents. In Wyoming, nearly 350 volunteer and agency hunter education instructors train and educate more than 4,000 students annually. Game and Fish hosts hunter education classes and instructor trainings around the state. Instructors are required to go through a background screening, training and certification process before they can teach hunter education in Wyoming. Bowhunter and trapper education are also addressed in Wyoming’s hunter education manual and offered as additional courses.
SUMMER CONSERVATION CAMPS
Game and Fish has hosted summer camps since 1990. In 2017, the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission renovated the Whiskey Mountain Conservation Camp near Dubois to ensure future generations of campers are introduced to outdoor skills and inspired by the world-class setting and wildlife that surrounds the area. Campers are introduced to various topics including archery, canoeing and kayaking, fishing, hiking and wildlife management and conservation careers. Since renovations were completed in 2018, Game and Fish has hosted camps for families, teachers, youth and women with the goal of providing as much opportunity for high-quality, hands-on conservation education as possible.
In 2023, Game and Fish introduced an Assistant Conservation Education program. ACE participants are previous youth campers who were recognized as exceptional leaders by staff. They are invited to apply and interview for a volunteer position to serve the following year at camp.
“We quickly recognize which campers are natural leaders,” said Frances Schaetz, Game and Fish conservation education specialist. “We need great people to work alongside us and our ACE program is one avenue to recruit future department staff and conservation enthusiasts like ourselves."
WYOMING WILDLIFE FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM
In 2021, Game and Fish with the University of
Wyoming, under the Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources, created the Wyoming Wildlife Fellowship Program. The purpose is to give undergraduate students pursuing academic coursework in natural resource management and related fields firsthand experience working in the field of natural resource management with a state wildlife agency to better prepare them for a conservation career.
“We're trying to craft well-rounded wildlife and fisheries professionals who not only know about the ecology of the systems they work in, but also how to connect with multiple stakeholders and how to communicate the important details of wildlife and fisheries management to the public,” said Rhiannon Jakopak, University of Wyoming Fellowship Program coordinator.
The program has grown over the past few years to be a prestigious and respected program that is highly competitive with limited spots. The fellowship is open to any student to apply as an incoming freshman, a transfer student from a community college, current freshmen or sophomores or anyone with at least two full years remaining in the undergraduate degree at the university. Students must apply, interview and be selected through a rigorous multi-round process and maintain a 3.0 GPA, demonstrate academic progress, complete a minimum of 40 hours of volunteer work throughout the school year and complete two summers working for Game and Fish. In exchange, the fellows are given an annual scholarship and the summers are paid internships.
“One of the most beneficial aspects of the program is that students build connections with wildlife and fisheries professionals across the state, which will be incredibly beneficial to these emerging professionals as they enter the workforce,” Jakopak said.
Aside from the numbers, progress and anecdotal stories of the fellowship’s success, the program has yielded three hirings of graduates and one of those students is now a full-time employee at Game and Fish.
“We have inspired them, trained them and now we work alongside them — this is the ultimate success when it comes to education,” said Ashley Leonard, Game and Fish education supervisor.
Conservation Education in Schools
After great success with the Inspire a Kid campaign, a reinvigoration of camps, a steady and constant demand for hunter education and the solidifying of the collegiate fellowship program with the University of Wyoming, Game and Fish saw the gap in the middle of all of these programs and wanted to approach education in a more systematic and sustainable way with Wyoming schools and teachers.
In 2023, Game and Fish, along with education and conservation partners around the state, launched a Conservation Education in Schools package comprising of four programs that allow schools and teachers to bring conservation education into the classroom.
Game and Fish worked with education partners, such as the Wyoming Department of Education, State Board of Education and the Professional Teaching Standards Board to ensure the conservation programs embodied the recognized standards expected in Wyoming classrooms. Schools can select all, one, a couple or none of the conservation education programs. The goal is to provide the opportunity and ease to integrate the programs as schools see fit and thus far, they have proved to be wildly successful.
Trout in the Classroom
Last year Game and Fish launched Wyoming Trout in the Classroom with a pilot program in 28 schools around the state. Trout in the Classroom is a nationally recognized program that has been around for more than 30 years and allows schools to raise fish, in our case rainbow trout, from eggs to fingerlings while students learn about fish biology and freshwater ecosystems. The Wyoming program is a partnership between Trout Unlimited and Game and Fish. Teachers have customizable lesson plans to guide their students through the life cycle of trout and the role people play in ecosystems in a semester-long program.
The first eggs, provided by the Dubois Fish Hatchery, arrived in schools in January. All the schools operate under a special permit and follow strict protocols for maintaining and eventually releasing the fish into designated locations. The majority of the release locations are community fishing ponds with the first releases occurring this month.
Inspiration, education and connecting the two are what create the moments we remember forever — and Trout in the Classroom is a gateway course in fishery biology that students from elementary school through high school can now experience in Wyoming, watching fish hatch, develop and be released as part of a real-life education process.
National Archery in Schools Program
This is another national program Game and Fish had in the past. However, due to some budget restrictions several decades ago, the program diminished. In 2023, the department regained coordination of the program in Wyoming. To create longevity, Game and Fish offers opportunities for teachers to become NASP instructors and supports their acquisition of archery equipment through grants, fundraising or community donations. Currently, 19 schools are engaging in NASP programs around the state. This year, there was a virtual, statewide archery tournament for participating schools to qualify students for nationals.
Conservation Crates
These are precisely as they sound — resource bins that include Game and Fish-approved lesson
plans for students at multiple grade levels and all the instructional materials required for teachers to implement them in the classroom. The Game and Fish education team developed lessons approved by content experts and correlated with Wyoming education standards. All regional Game and Fish offices have a set of conservation crates people can check out, use for a specified length of time and return to the office.
The six conservation crates cover topics such as migration and habitat, management models, invasive species and diseases, animal adaptations, bear identification and safety and pelts and skulls. The goal of the conservation crates was to create an all-in-one box that a teacher could open, instruct and utilize to cover a vital conservation topic in an easy, do-it-yourself manner and then hand it back to Game and Fish for others to use.
Hunter Education in Schools
Wyoming had a few schools and some after-school programs already implementing hunter education. Still, Game and Fish wanted to expand the reach and opportunity. The department partnered with the Wyoming Professional Teaching Standards Board to create a hunter education endorsement.
The hunter education curriculum and certification programs are identical to any offered by the department. The difference is Wyoming teachers who become certified as hunter education instructors can now apply through the Professional Teaching Standards Board to have the endorsement recognized on their teaching licenses and the professional development credit earned toward their recertification. As of February, the hunter education teaching endorsement
went through rules promulgation and the governor signed it into effect. The optional endorsement is now available for Wyoming teachers who are interested. in teaching hunter education in their classrooms. Teachers can offer the course in a condensed format or extend it to a semester-long course, build it at the end of the school year to fill some open space or
offer it as an optional course after school. To date, 23 schools offer hunter education to students.
Recruitment, Retention and Reactivation
Better known as R3 in the conservation world, this is the way we recruit, retain and reactivate our sportspeople and wildlife enthusiasts to support wildlife management and conservation efforts. The core of R3 is engagement and every part of a great education program inside a classroom or out in the field has engagement. All of the educational efforts and countless others are part of the greater R3 model for the department. We want people educated and involved in wildlife management and conservation topics.
Get Inspired and Get Involved
There are plenty of other educational opportunities available across the state, from free fishing day to community events such as Wyoming Outdoor Weekend, Mule Deer Days, Medicine Lodge Outdoor Day and many others Game and Fish and partners work to provide communities and stakeholders.
Public meetings also provide opportunities. Some are annual, such as hunting season-setting meetings, others are topic-specific. Regular Game and Fish Commission meetings are available in-person or online for anyone who wants to understand more of the inner workings of the Commission and the department’s work for wildlife and Wyoming. There are eight Game and Fish regional offices and headquarters in Cheyenne for anyone who has questions. Any interested businesses can sponsor the education programs listed above in their communities to support the acquisition of equipment required to run the programs.
Education for Game and Fish is formal and informal, simple and sophisticated, heartwarming and painful, researched, collected, applied, reapplied and discussed. Education can be seen on the landscape, in work, with the people staff members meet, in the public and partners, through research and science and with the individuals taught and the lessons learned along the way.
Now more than ever, Game and Fish is working to educate, engage and build a future of inspired sportspeople and wildlife enthusiasts for a sustainable future to conserve wildlife and serve people. Where are you at with your inspiring and empowering moments? Are these moments in sync with your skills, knowledge, experience and education in Wyoming wildlife? Either way, we hope you will get involved today and join us as we Inspire a Kid — It’s for Life.
— Dr. Nish Goicolea is the Communications and Education Chief for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.