Bozeman, Montana – The Wyoming Governor’s Big Game License Coalition (WGBGLC) finalized its 2025 project funding by allocating $1.5+ million for Wyoming wildlife conservation projects with monies raised by auctioning special big game tags in 2024 and 2025.
A total of 73 projects (including 7 bighorn sheep projects) that benefit the Coalition’s five priority big game species will be funded from the sale of five bighorn sheep, five moose, 10 deer/elk/antelope and five wild bison licenses. These include specific projects benefiting the big game species, including:
- Bighorn sheep habitat enhancements – Whiskey Mountains
- Absaroka Range Bighorn Sheep Population Assessment
- Wyoming Range Mule Deer – Aspen Restoration
- Elk I-80 Project – Snowy Range
- Evaluating the efficacy of treatments for enhancing moose habitat
- Evaluating the influence of wind energy on pronghorn movement and distribution
- Strain Typing Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae from Wyoming’s bighorn sheep herds and other projects that will benefit habitats and other game and non-game species.
“In 1980, under the leadership of then-Wyoming Governor Ed Herschler, the first-of-its-kind special ‘Governor’s License’ for one bighorn sheep was issued for auction,” said WSF’s Gray N. Thornton, President & CEO. “Governor Herschler realized that license revenue from very few available bighorn sheep licenses was insufficient to mount any serious bighorn sheep restoration program. His foresight into a new conservation funding model for big game species is what launched a new age of additive conservation funding to got us to where we are today. Current Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon continues the Wyoming’s Governor Big Game License Coalition which was launched in 2003 by then-Governor Dave Freudenthal and continued under Governor Matt Mead.”