Game and Furbearer Program Summary Report – 2025
Game and Furbearer Program Summary Report – 2025
The Game and Furbearer Program I am very privileged to be a part of the Game & Furbearer Program and serve as its Assistant Chief. This group of outstanding biologists is a vital part of the NCWRC, working together to achieve the program’s mission of 1) ensuring the long-term viability and sustained harvest of game and furbearer populations, and 2) participating in planning and coordination of management directives based on sound science. The staff represent the agency on regional and national technical groups, often in official leadership positions. They serve as experts on the species with which they work and interact closely with the agency’s 21-member Board of Commissioners to provide the best information available for the Board to make regu- latory decisions. They design and carry out wildlife surveys and analyze reports, evaluate
Game and Furbearer Program Staff
BLAKE ANDREWS Special Projects Technician (January-May)
CAITLIN BRETT Furbearer Biologist
hunting and trapping regulations annually, and when necessary, spearhead recommendations for changes to those rules. Collectively, they interact with many constituents, including thousands of hunters and trappers each year. They routinely write professional journal articles, magazine articles, and mainstream media news releases. There is much more to their jobs, but those are the highlights. During this last year, July 2024 through June 2025, our program grew to eleven full-time, permanent posi- tions. We also rely on two temporary (i.e. seasonal) technicians that assist the full-time biologists on a variety of projects and we collaborate routinely with the agency’s Mammalogist, who is part of the Wildlife Diversity Program. In August, we established a full-time permanent Waterfowl Biologist position and hired Hunter Morris, who had previously worked as a temporary technician in the program. In January, we were fortunate to hire Cait- lin Brett as our Furbearer Biologist and Jenna Malzahn as our Black Bear Biologist, which represents a notewor- thy increase in capacity, since duties related to bears and furbearers had previously been consolidated in a single position. Unfortunately, our program suffered a great loss with the passing of Migratory Game Bird Coordinator Doug Howell in April. We will deeply miss the wealth of knowledge and experience that Doug brought to the program. We will be refilling the Migratory Game Bird position in the fall of 2025, as well as an additional Sur- veys and Data Manager position. This increase in personnel speaks to the importance of the program’s mission and the role within the NCWRC. This report highlights just a few of the program’s projects over the last year. There is not enough space in this report to touch on everything. Please take a few minutes to look through this report and don’t hesitate to reach out to me or our staff to let us know what you think.
GREGORY GODWIN Special Projects Technician (July-December)
DOUG HOWELL Migratory Game Bird Coordinator
CHRIS KREH Assistant Chief, Game and Furbearer Program
EVERETT MCATEER Special Projects Technician (January-June)
JENNA MALZAHN Black Bear Biologist
The Game & Furbearer Program gathered in January of 2025 at the 4H Center in Columbia to welcome new staff and strategically plan for critical work they do.
JONATHON GRUENKE/NCWRC
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