Taking a long drive this fall? Pass the time with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department’s podcast “Get Outside!” The audio series covers a selection of the department’s top conservation issues, starting with a series on chronic wasting disease. 

Continued monitoring of CWD over time is important to help Game and Fish understand the potential impacts of this disease in deer and elk herds throughout the state. A large part of this effort relies on the public to be knowledgeable on CWD — which includes the department’s ask for hunters to submit lymph node samples from their harvested deer and elk. Ensuring hunters understand their role in the department's monitoring and management of CWD is one of the goals of the podcast series.

“It’s vital that deer and elk hunters recognize how important they are to CWD monitoring — with sample submissions, carcass transport and disposal and overall awareness of Game and Fish’s CWD management plan,” said Janet Milek, public information specialist at the Casper region who helped develop the CWD series. “Podcasts are just one of the new ways we’re trying to educate people — and especially hunters during this fall’s hunting season and beyond —  about this disease and the challenges we face in Wyoming.”

In the five-part series, Game and Fish biologists and wildlife health managers discuss CWD from the basics to monitoring to the department’s management plan. There’s also episodes that cover carcass transport and disposal rules in Wyoming and answering questions from the public on the disease. 

The podcasts run between 20 to 50 minutes each. Games and Fish intends to release a new episode, produced by the department’s Ray Hageman, on the first Thursday of each month. Additional topics covered by “Get Outside!” include raising cool and warm fish and mule deer hunting in the Greys River area in western Wyoming.

“Get Outside!” podcast episodes are available on the Game and Fish website, Spotify and iTunes.