after working for parts of four decades with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, the department director, Brian Nesvik, is nearing retirement.

That puts him in a good position to reflect on a career in Wyoming wildlife.

I'm Steve Peck of Wyoming, PBS.

This is Wyoming Chronicle.

- [Narrator] Funding for "Wyoming Chronicle" is made possible in part by Wyoming Humanities, enhancing the Wyoming narrative to promote engaged communities and improve our quality of life, and by the members of Wyoming PBS.

Thank you for your support, - Brian Nesvik, welcome to "Wyoming Chronicle."

Glad to be here with you today.

We're in Riverton in the midst of a two day meeting of the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission.

When I think of it, it's the commission's kinda like the school board and you're like the superintendent sort of- - That's a great analogy.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- That's exactly what it is.

- Now, yours not an elected office, right?

- No, no, it's not.

- And nor are any of the commission members.

I remember, the governor gets to appoint these positions, correct?

- Yeah, the governor appoints all the commissioners and he also appoints the director, but the commission does get a vote there too.

- I see.

- [Brian] They have the opportunity to send the governor three names whenever the director's position is vacant and then the governor makes a selection out of those three names.

- So when you come on as director, which you did five years ago, is that right?

- Yeah, just over five years ago.

- You're pretty well in sync, at least for the most part, with what the commissioners are all about, and they know who you are.

- Yeah, absolutely.

And you're right, I'd worked in the agency for many years and even at the administrative level when I was appointed to this job so I had a good familiarity with the commission.

- Yeah.

- [Brian] And kind of how the process worked and what their main charge in Wyoming law was.

- These agencies that are asked to do the job of state government in Wyoming have enormous, wide ranging responsibilities.

And you've got the top position now, sort of this top down view, but that wasn't always true.

You came up through the department, through the different positions, had sort of the middle out view as well.

It's a wide portfolio, let's put it that way.

For the uninformed, what would you say the Wyoming Game and Fish Department does?

- It does a lot, as you indicated.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- Our responsibilities are diverse.

But you know, if I was to define our primary charge, it's to manage the wildlife resources of our state and trust for the public.

Wyoming law directs that the wildlife in our state is owned by the state.

That covers a broad range of, you know, wildlife management covers a lot of areas.

- Yeah.

- We have one charge that's not directly related to wildlife management, and that's, we do oversee watercraft safety and enforcement in our state.

So we have that responsibility too.

That's a little bit not aligned with wildlife management.

- So there's a watercraft, a vehicle issue almost.

Transportation enters into it, land management enters into it.

The big game animals and the birds and the fish and the smaller animals, the administration of a big department, of course, the legislation, the funding, the rule making, it just, there's a lot to it.

- There is.

- Were you ever a little boy with a fishing pole in your hand thinking, "I wanna work for Game and Fish," or what got you interested in this kind of work at the beginning?

- Yeah, well, Steve, that's a great question and it's one that I like to, I really like to talk about because it really influences the way I think about our highest priorities for the department now.

And so I was very fortunate, I grew up in this state.

- Yeah.

- [Brian] My dad and my family gave me a lot of great outdoor experiences.

It was fishing, it was hunting.

I started hunting birds when I was 11 years old.

I went to the Springer Special Pheasant Hunt when I was 12 years old.

But what really hooked me on the department was I was hunting deer with my dad and his older friend in Deer Creek Park, south of Casper, I'll never forget this, and while I was on my very first big game hunt, then, you had to be 14 in order to hunt big game, we were contacted by a game warden and that game warden spent 30 minutes talking to us about what he'd been up to that day and he talked about all these deer he'd seen and these people he'd talked to and I thought, "You know what?"

- That sounds great.

- That's what I want to do when I grow up.

- Yeah.

- I want to be a Wyoming game warden.

And then I never lost sight of that goal.

- Some academic training that you can do that helps you prepare for it, what in your case was that?

- Yeah, so we required then, and still similarly now, require a degree in wildlife management.

- I see.

- [Brian] Or a related field and so that's what I did my degree in is University of Wyoming Wildlife and Fisheries Biology and Management.

- What's a typical first job after getting your degree in the department?

- Well, you hope that it's as a entry level game warden, if you were on my track.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- You know, a lot of other folks have an opportunity to work at like an aquatic invasive species check station.

- Sure.

- [Brian] As a fisheries technician, as a biologist technician.

- [Steve] It's a science agency among other things too.

I've meant to mention that, but of course it is.

- [Brian] Yeah, absolutely, you know, well over half of our agency are wildlife management biology-based folks, so.

- [Steve] Yeah.

So you got this entry level position as a game warden?

- I did, actually, then, we had a completely different problem than we do now.

Now, we're really having to work hard to recruit wardens that are suited for this job.

Then, the year I graduated, they didn't even offer the selection process or the game warden exam, they called it then, because they didn't have any vacancies.

And so I had to wait a year and during that year, I went to work as a deputy sheriff in Albany County.

And then the first time they offered the exam, I took it and was hired.

- What's changed in that area?

Why were there no vacancies then and it's harder to recruit now?

What'd you say?

- You definitely, when you look back on time, there definitely is peaks and valleys that are based on when large numbers of folks came into the agency.

- Sure.

- [Brian] Most of our wardens, when they hire on, they retire from the agency.

And so, you know, you'd see these kind of, these groups of folks that came on at the same time and then they would all retire around the same time, and then there just weren't any, nobody was retiring.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- And so, you know, recently we've had more turnover.

A lot of that crop of game wardens that came in when I did or right before me have left and created a lot of vacancies.

And then, you know, a lot of our responsibilities that we entrust game wardens to deal with have increased.

- Well, you've brought up an issue that applies now to you as well.

You're planning your retirement here in just a few months, correct?

- Yeah, I think middle of September.

- [Steve] Yeah.

Why is now the time?

- A lot of factors play into this, but I think one of the things that I've insisted on when I decided that I was gonna move and apply and try to serve in the senior levels of the department, I also did this in my military career as well, I had a separate military career that you don't wanna spend too much of your time in the really high pressure, high responsibility jobs because you run the risk of not being able to be innovative and not being able to look at things with fresh perspective and not have the same fire.

And I still have all that right now, and I think it's time to hand the keys over to the Ram 3500 that this agency is right now when it's running really well and not wait till there's something wrong with it.

And I feel like the timing is right for that.

- Interesting, I recall an interview we did a couple years ago with Cam Sholly, the Superintendent of Yellowstone.

- A good friend of mine.

- And I'm sure you know.

- Yep.

- [Steve] And I asked him after all this upward movement that he's had to the very pinnacle of the park job and one of the big jobs in the whole park service, these conspicuous ones, does he still get a chance to get on a horse and ride through Yellowstone?

And he said, "Yes, I make a point of it."

Are you still able to enjoy the elements of Wyoming wildlife and the outdoors that attracted you when you were a boy?

- Absolutely.

- Yeah.

- And it's easy to get tied in and focused on the crisis of the day and all of the demands of the job.

But it is really important to stay in touch with the resource and I do that.

In fact, you bring up Cam and riding horses, and Governor Gordon and I had an opportunity to spend some time in the back country south of Yellowstone last summer, and one of those evenings we rode up and met Cam at the park service cabin and he cooked us a steak, so.

- One of the things that the agency does is compile a list of accomplishments.

Here's we're looking back on the year just passed, and here's some things that happened that came up that we, some of which we planned for, some of which maybe we didn't, but that we accomplished.

And two of them, in fact, we did "Wyoming Chronicle" shows about.

One was the Wildlife highway crossing in Western Wyoming, and another was the restocking of the fishery at Saratoga Lake where we stood there with Bobby Compton, I think it was.

- [Brian] Yeah, yep.

- [Steve] And he told us all about that.

One of these things I have a feeling, I know had been talked about necessarily because it was such a big undertaking to build this big overpass for animals, and the other was sort of an unexpected thing that came on the radar and had to be dealt with.

I'm sure, I guess the job has a mix of those two things.

How much of what you do is sort of on your agenda, your to-do list compared to things that the phone rings and, "Houston, we have a problem?"

- [Brian] Yeah.

I try to make sure that I spend most of my time being proactive.

I've got a lot of folks in the agency that are great firefighters, and when the fire breaks out, I got folks that are very capable of handling most of those.

There are a handful of those that I have to become directly involved in.

And so, you know, I probably spend about 25% of my time or less reacting, and I try to spend three quarters of my time being proactive.

- Let's talk about the highway crossing for a moment.

One of the things that we learned while we were there was that the Game and Fish has to have these partnerships with other agencies and other funding sources and other officials, and that I think people just don't understand.

That's not something that the Wyoming Game and Fish Department funded and built, it's there- - Right.

- [Steve] With your department's input, but many of the things that you want to do, that you need to do, you have to reach out and become part of a much bigger group.

- Absolutely.

And I will tell you that number one partner on these wildlife crossing projects, and it's plural now, we have several under our belt.

- Right.

- [Brian] And are working on more.

Our most important partner is the Wyoming Department of Transportation.

They have that responsibility to upkeep, maintain, and build our highways.

And so we can't do any wildlife crossing work without- - Right.

- [Brian] The Wyoming Department of Transportation.

They're exceptional partners.

Director Westby and I are good friends and work together on this all the time.

Another very important partner in our state is the Wildlife Fund.

- That's who we were with that day.

- [Brian] Yes.

The Wildlife Fund is, they're an exceptional group of folks, small, lean, but extremely effective at building partnerships, securing funding, generating the interest from the public and big donors.

And so they've been critical.

And our federal partners as well, you know, a lot of these projects occur as a consequence of big federal grants.

It takes some talent and some hard work to do the right things to apply for those and convince folks that don't live here how important it is, but we've been very successful at that.

- The second project that you mentioned near Kemmerer, sort of coming about from kind of a different reason, a different spark to it from the original one because this, a pilot nuclear power plant is gonna be built in that small town, and the sudden increase in traffic is just sort of monumental and really unprecedented, especially on a little secondary road like this.

And so almost feel like you have no choice but to do this if you're gonna be protecting both the people and the wildlife.

- Yeah, absolutely.

And that project and the projections for increased traffic drove a lot of that.

But another part of it is that that particular deer herd is extremely important to our state.

And I'm glad we were able to get that thing funded.

It's gonna make a difference.

- It strikes me that the mule deer has sort of a special place in the Wyoming wildlife profile.

- You know, people, they really value mule deer.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- Wyoming has, I believe, the most prolific and valued herd in the country.

It's the largest, the Wyoming range herd.

It's got this really interesting life history and biology with migration.

And then the other thing that's important with mule deer is they occupy habitats that are important to a lot of other species.

- [Steve] Right.

- [Brian] They're kind of an indicator.

- Yeah, that's the word.

- An indicator of overall ecosystem health.

You know, the places that mule deer spend a lot of their time are important to sage grouse and pronghorn and elk and a whole lot of non-game species, anywhere from bird species to small mammals that a lot of times don't catch a lot of the limelight, but are very important to Wyoming, and our department has a charge to manage all wildlife in the state.

- So you've been monitoring through collars and other means of, what about, is it about a thousand deer or is it more than that?

- Yeah, it's been more than that.

- [Steve] Is it?

Okay.

- Yeah, we've done a lot of collaring work to learn about these animals and their movements.

- [Steve] And during this time, of course, last year, we're here in April of 2024, April of 2023, we were sort of reeling from this, in my lifetime, you and I have lived in Wyoming all our lives, I don't remember a winter worse than that one was.

And of course that had this devastating effect on the deer herd as well.

Had the monitoring program that you're talking about now started before then, and this was just added on to the difficulty?

- Very fortunately, this work in the Wyoming range specifically had been going on for 10 years.

- Yeah.

- [Brian] Over 10 years.

And that is gonna be very meaningful as we watch this deer herd recover because we have pre devastating winter information, and now we're gonna be able to watch 'em recover and see how that works.

- There are lots and lots of mule deer in Wyoming now, but only about, am I right in saying only about half as many as Game and Fish thinks there ought to be?

- Absolutely, we definitely have seen, and this is across the entire west, not just in Wyoming.

- Yeah.

- But a decline over the last 30 years of mule deer populations.

And people are pretty darn concerned about it and we are as well.

- About a quarter of a million mule deer in Wyoming now, roughly, is that- - A little north of that, yeah.

I think that the last I saw was around 300,000.

- [Steve] Oh, really?

And you wish, or ideally you'd like to see half a million or more?

- Yeah, a pretty good marker is equal to the population of Wyoming.

- Interesting.

- [Brian] So the human population of Wyoming.

- Right.

- [Brian] Yeah.

- What's been deer's difficulty over the past century or so?

- It's a mixture of a whole lot of factors that are coming together all at one time, and it does vary geographically around the state.

But when you consider things like long-term droughts in certain parts of the state, and you consider things like cheatgrass, I mean, cheatgrass is the cancer of Wyoming.

It creates monocultures, it out competes those native species that are so important to mule deer, not only grass species, but forbs and brush species.

So, you know, mule deer are browsers, they don't eat a lot of grass, they eat mountain mahogany and sagebrush, and those kind of things.

So those kind of habitat issues, we know that in certain herds, the CWD, Chronic Wasting Disease prevalence is high enough to have population level impacts.

We know highway collisions when you have deer populations that are already having some struggles and challenges, that highway mortality can be additive and problematic.

We are on the, you know, we're looking hard now at even competition with other species as being part of a problem.

- Yeah.

- [Brian] You know, we have growing elk populations and a lot of those places where elk populations are growing, mule deer populations are declining.

- [Steve] Interesting.

- We need more information before we can draw exact parallels there, but that's certainly something we're concerned about.

Look across Wyoming from when you and I were young, the amount of urban development around Wyoming's communities, - [Steve] Even in Wyoming.

- Even in Wyoming, you know, some of the places where we've built subdivisions are in the middle of mule deer winter range.

And so that's certainly been a problem as well.

- And then you throw a terrible winter in on top of that, which reduced the herd by what gruesome percentage do we think?

- You know, in certain places it was 70%.

- [Steve] Wow.

- Yeah.

Maybe even 80.

- [Steve] Yeah.

The gray wolf.

What's Game and Fish's role these days with wolf management?

- [Brian] So we're on year six now of having state responsibility for their management.

- [Steve] Right.

- [Brian] And so really our role is very similar to that is of our role with regards to mountain lions and black bears.

Those are other large carnivore species that we're charged with managing.

We have robust monitoring for gray wolves, and as you're well aware, we only manage for them as a trophy game species with seasons and licenses and methods of take in the northwest corner of the state.

- [Steve] Right.

- So that's where our responsibility lies.

We don't have responsibility for managing 'em in the part of the state where they're listed as predatory animals.

That falls, as with the other animals listed as predatory animals, that falls with the Department of Agriculture.

- Interesting.

- And is governed by a separate set of statutes.

- There's an issue that happened earlier in 2024 regarding a man who injured a wolf and a snowmobile.

He captured the wolf, he brought it into a business, showed it off for a while, then killed it.

It's been generating lots of coverage and there'd been some talk about what Game and Fish's role ought to have been with that.

- You know, we became aware of a potential violation of Wyoming law that we're charged with enforcing.

- [Steve] Right.

- We investigated that and we determined there was a violation of the law and we charged the individual involved appropriately under the law.

It's been adjudicated.

We've completed our work.

You know, the county certainly has an opportunity to give this a look and see if they believe there's any other statutes outside of Game and Fish statutes that are relevant here.

But the incident was certainly unfortunate.

I feel it was very disrespectful to Wyoming's wildlife.

It does not represent the value people have for our wildlife.

I have not talked to one person in the state or out of the state that said, "Well, that was a good thing."

- Yeah.

- [Brian] So, you know, it's unfortunate, but I think it's time to move past it.

- It was also unprecedented, right?

- It is.

- This isn't some sort of chronic issue- - No.

- That's happening all the time.

- Never.

I've been doing this for 29 years, I've never seen that behavior before.

I know our people in this state and I realize this happened, it's unfortunate, but it's not common.

- All right, here's another high profile animal that's treated a little differently in Wyoming now, it exists, but I'm talking about the grizzly bear.

- I'll start by saying that the recovery of grizzly bears in Wyoming from as low as maybe 136 bears in 1974 to a level now north of a thousand bears is one of the, if not the biggest conservation success story in the world.

Incredible success story.

And my department has taken the significant role in that recovery.

Our sportsmen in this state have invested now well over $50 million in their recovery.

We've done a majority of the on the ground work with resolving conflicts between bears and people, between bears and livestock.

We've done a tremendous amount of monitoring, invested a lot of money in collaring bears and learning about 'em and figuring out, you know, putting together a grizzly bear management plan that works for Wyoming.

And I say this with all sincerity, we've invested blood in this, we've lost a person who was doing grizzly bear work in a plane crash.

And so we're invested heavily, we're passionate about it, we're the right agency to manage grizzly bears.

The reason that grizzly bears are still on a list doesn't have anything to do with biology or their recovery.

It has to do with entanglements in courts.

It's a travesty that we're not managing these bears, that the state doesn't have that authority right now.

- And you've been watching this throughout much of your entire employment tenure with Game and Fish, not just as director, but well before that.

- [Brian] Absolutely.

- On and on it goes.

- [Brian] On and on it goes.

I mean, I remember the first grizzly bear I ever trapped, you know, and I never thought when I trapped that first bear that I was gonna be testifying in front of the Senate about why they should be delisted.

But I've seen the full gamut.

The long-term success of grizzly bear conservation in our state is going to continue if the state is in charge.

- Let's talk about fish for a moment, a gigantic part of what Game and Fish department does.

- Yeah, so, you know, we're a headwater state.

- [Steve] Yeah.

Just say, what do you mean by that?

- The major river drainages all start at the tops of our mountains.

Most of the water that runs through our state with one exception originates in Wyoming.

And that's a benefit to our state.

What it creates for us is we have tremendous fish habitat and a lot of opportunity to provide angler opportunity to not only people that live here, but people that don't live here.

So it's a heck of a neat opportunity.

And then we have a reservoir system too that provides a tremendous opportunity for different types of fisheries than were here before we showed up here.

- We like almost every type of fish in Wyoming.

But not every fish belongs in every body of water.

And that's something that falls under the department's purview as well, isn't it?

- It absolutely does.

And, you know, mother nature designed things the way she did for a reason.

And when you put something there that wasn't meant to be there originally, it usually doesn't work out well.

And we've had some terrible situations where somebody probably with the intention of, you know, looking out for their own personal interests.

- [Steve] Right.

- Put a species in a lake or in a stream that didn't belong there.

You know, when you put a voracious predator into a system that doesn't rely on predators, it could be devastating.

You know, putting a walleye in Buffalo Bill Reservoir was a bad thing.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- Perch finding their way to Saratoga Lake was a bad thing.

We've got, you know, invasive burbot in Flaming Gorge, one of our best fisheries in the state, and it's had a very negative impact.

The really good news here is, is that we do have a robust hatchery and rearing station program, and we're able to provide a lot of fish, millions of fish, all of our state.

- Millions.

- [Brian] Millions.

And that's pretty darn cool.

- [Steve] I think I'm safe to say if you are a Wyoming person, you have a little kid in your house, one of the really, really fun places to take that little person is to a fish hatchery.

- You go to one of our visitor centers, one of my favorites is the Story hatchery, and you see those young folks and the glimmer in their eye.

- Yeah.

- [Brian] When they're looking at those fish and they get to feed 'em and it's pretty special.

- [Steve] Yeah.

What's your successor's big challenge or two as as you see it?

- So, you know, I mentioned cheatgrass and I will tell you that the cheatgrass of the water are quagga and zebra mussels.

- Yes.

- [Brian] And keeping those two species out of Wyoming's water is absolutely has to be a high priority for whoever replaces me.

- So far we've done pretty well with that, right?

- We have, we don't have 'em in our water.

We'd know it if we did.

- [Steve] Yeah.

Yeah.

- And some other states around us have not been successful.

But those mussels continue to get closer and closer and we have to be ever vigilant to do our level best to keep 'em out of our state.

- A year from now, you're no longer the director, what do you wanna be doing in say, April, 2025?

- Fishing will be definitely on a day like today when the sun's shining and to be able to be outside.

And I'm very fortunate, I married well above my station in life.

I married a sweet little ranch girl from Glenda, Wyoming.

And we have a tremendous- - We're on statewide television, what's her name?

- Penny, Penny Nesvik.

Yep.

And we have the opportunity to run our ranching operation on her long-term a hundred plus year family ranch.

- Really?

- [Brian] And so we'll certainly be doing that.

I intend to stay involved in some of the boards I'm involved with conservation wildlife related kind of work.

And then, you know, I might find myself involved in some other projects, but certainly don't have any intentions of a full-time job where I spend half my nights in a hotel.

- I'm happy to say the thing that we say to military servicemen, and you're one of those as well, thank you for your service to Wyoming since the 1990s, if not before.

And thanks as well for appearing with us today on "Wyoming Chronicle."

- Absolutely, Steve, you take care.

(bright music)