Matt Kauffman is a wildlife researcher at the University of Wyoming. He leads the Wyoming Migration Initiative, which studies the migratory (迁徙的) paths of animals like deer and elk (驼鹿) in the American state of Wyoming.
In 2019, Kauffman and other scientists were talking at a conference in Italy. He began learning that wildlife around the world had the same difficulties faced by Wyoming's migratory deer and elk. "We just naturally got together, and nine or ten of us are working on migrations around the world," Kauffman told Jackson Hole News & Guide. "We realized that a lot of the same things we were trying to address by mapping migrations in Wyoming were applicable globally."
Their talk in 2019 was the beginning of an international effort that now includes 92 scientists and environmentalists. Their effort is called the Global Initiative on Ungulate (有蹄类动物) Migration. The aim is to gather information on the seasonal movements of gazelles in Mongolia and Norwegian reindeer. The hundreds of paths would then be presented in an electronic migration map. The researchers wrote a report that recently appeared in the publication Science.
The report describes how animal movements over long distances to get food and other resources are not doing so well. The main reason for the struggles comes from land development by humans. Roads and fences create barriers for the animals, restricting their movement. And the warming of the planet has also unsettled environmental systems.
Joe Ogutu studies migratory east African wildebeest, zebra and Thomson's gazelle for the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart, Germany. Since 2015, he has watched the ungulate migration called Mara-Loita in southwestern Kenya stop working because of fence-building and sharing land space with hundreds of thousands of sheep and goats. Ogutu hopes that the Global Initiative on Ungulate Migration will bring attention to the Mara-Loita migration and other at-risk paths. "Publicity and attention," he said, "will hopefully lead to its restoration and protection."
