MATT CUZZOCREO
SENIOR WILDLIFE CONSERVATION ASSOCIATE
Matt helps lead the Greater Yellowstone Coalition’s wildlife program in Wyoming. With an emphasis on improving interactions between wildlife and humans, this work is focused on recognizing opportunities to enhance natural animal movements through the landscape, implementing strategies to reduce conflicts with grizzly bears, and identifying legislative policies that benefit iconic species across the ecosystem.
Matt became obsessed with the Greater Yellowstone as a child through an unconventional exposure. Growing up in Connecticut, his first introduction to the landscape was through photographic placemats, postcards, and souvenir magnets gifted by his grandparents from previous Yellowstone adventures that somehow stirred a calling to a place he’d never visited. After earning a BS in Wildlife Biology from the University of Vermont, he migrated to Cooke City, Montana for a field season as a wildlife technician studying small mammals and coyote behavior in the park. Nearly two decades later he is still mesmerized by the grandeur of the ecosystem and committed to help steward the processes that sustain it.
While not at work, Matt can be found exploring the GYE via bicycle or skis, or on foot with a rod or rifle accompanied by his partner, Livy, and his rapidly slowing dog, Tucker.
Conservation Hero: Mardy Murie
Podcast I’d recommend: Against the Rules with Michael Lewis
Interesting Fact About Greater Yellowstone: Two bodies of water in the GYE straddle the Continental Divide and drain water to both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans (Isa Lake in YNP and Two Ocean Creek in the Bridger-Teton National Forest).
