Capturing the hidden moments of Wyoming wildlife management
From Wyoming Tribune Eagle:
JACKSON — For years, Susan Patla tried to find funding to tag harlequin ducks, migratory sea birds that migrate from the West Coast to summer in Jackson Hole, the farthest eastern edge of their range.
Patla spent decades working as the Wyoming Game and Fish Department’s non-game biologist and studied the species people couldn’t hunt.
She knew the ducks wintered on the west coast of Washington. But there was no data showing whether they had multiple migratory paths and winter ranges or one. Patla worried about an oil spill wiping out their breeding population. When the Meg and Bert Raynes Wildlife Fund eventually funded her research, Mark Gocke captured the resulting field work on camera, documenting Patla’s joy as she released a duck into the wild.
