Atlas of Birds, Mammals, Amphibians, and Reptiles in Wyoming

Wyoming Game And Fish Department - Game Division Biological Services

In 1979, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department (Department) and the Bighorn Audubon Society compiled a working draft of the Wyoming Avian Atlas. The first edition of the Wyoming Avian Atlas was published in 1982 under the authorship of Bob Oakleaf, Helen Downing, Bert Raynes, Meg Raynes, and Oliver K. Scott. Updates were provided each year in the Threatened, Endangered, and Nongame Bird and Mammal Investigations Annual Completion Reports. In 1981, Scott Findholt, Bob Oakleaf, and Bill Long published a Working Draft of the Wyoming Mammal Atlas. Updates were provided in some Annual Completion Reports. In 1991, the Department published a revision of both atlases, titled the Draft Distribution and Status of Wyoming Birds and Mammals. This publication included all of the information in the Avian Atlas and the draft Mammal Atlas. Several hundred people, without whom this effort would not have been possible, contributed to the 1991 draft publication. A combined Bird and Mammal Atlas, edited by Bob Oakleaf, Bob Luce, Sharon Ritter, and Andrea Orabona Cerovski, was published in 1992. Annual updates were provided to all persons who received the 1992 Atlas. These updates included hundreds of observations of birds and mammals, including many for which little information was previously available. A large number of bat observations were added due to a special project carried out between 1994 and 1996 to document bat distribution in the State. In 1997, John Priday initiated an effort to gather data from a variety of sources to compile current distribution data for the amphibians and reptiles of Wyoming. After initial review within the Department, the decision was made to publish this information with the Bird and Mammal Atlas, and the title was changed to the Atlas of Birds, Mammals, Reptiles, and Amphibians to reflect this inclusion. Updates to the 1997 Atlas continued as new information became available, and reprints occurred in 1999 and 2004. In 2005, the Atlas was made available on the Department’s web site, negating the need for paper copies to be mailed. However, original hard copies and electronic files of both the Atlas and annual Atlas updates remain available from the Wyoming Game and Fish Department’s Nongame Bird Biologist in Lander. Since 2001, the American Ornithologists’ Union had made numerous modifications to genus and species names and phylogenetic order. In addition, many updates to the avian portion of the Atlas were added as a result of observers submitting sightings to the Wyoming Bird Records Committee and on the WyoBirds list serve. Therefore, a new version titled the Atlas of Birds, Mammals, Amphibians, and Reptiles was published in July 2004, April 2009, and June 2012 to reflect these major changes.