A southwestern Wyoming big game hunting advocate who spent the past 13 years safeguarding beleaguered mule deer has been appointed to a high position in the Trump administration’s U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Josh Coursey, the co-founder and longtime president of the Muley Fanatic Foundation, announced to the group’s membership on Wednesday that he’ll be assuming his new post in May. Coursey did not disclose the nature of the position and reiterated to WyoFile that he was not yet at liberty to say.
“It’s a presidential appointment,” Coursey told WyoFile. The position, he added, does not need to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
In his departure note, Coursey said he felt “called to serve” and is eager for the new challenge.
“I know, as the [Muley Fanatics] motto states, Do the Right Thing, that this calling is the right thing to do,” he wrote.
Coursey’s announcement did not mention President Trump’s nominee for the top Fish and Wildlife Service post, Brian Nesvik, who’s also a Wyoming resident. Nesvik, a former Wyoming Game and Fish Department director, is still undergoing his Senate confirmation. He’s cleared the first hearing and subsequent first vote, 10-9, along party lines, the Jackson Hole Daily reported.
But Nesvik and Coursey run in the same Wyoming wildlife circles. The former Game and Fish director even appeared on Coursey’s podcast, Wild Things and Wild Places, in a two-part series in late 2023.
By some measures, Coursey is lesser known. Desirée Sorenson-Groves, who leads the nationwide National Wildlife Refuge Association, had never heard of him when reached by WyoFile on Thursday.
Sorenson-Groves’ hunch is that Coursey was selected as a “political” deputy director at the Fish and Wildlife Service. “That is what I would guess,” she said. “A guy named Siva had [the position] before.”
Siva Sundaresan, a former Wyoming resident, was deputy director of the agency under the Biden administration’s director, Martha Williams.
Besides Nesvik and Coursey, at least a couple other Wyoming residents have been selected for appointments by the Trump administration. Sheridan County resident Cyrus Western, a former Republican statehouse representative, was picked to helm the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 8 office in Denver, Colorado. And Cheyenne attorney Karen Budd-Falen was selected as the acting deputy secretary under U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.
Coursey told WyoFile he could not yet discuss the nature of his role or the issues he’ll be working on.
When he starts in May, he’ll be helping to lead a federal agency significantly diminished by the administration that selected him. The Trump administration’s Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency cuts have hit the Fish and Wildlife Service nationwide, including in Coursey’s home state of Wyoming. There are plans to close the agency’s tribal office in Lander, staffing impacts at places like the Saratoga National Fish Hatchery and blows to the Service’s black-footed ferret recovery efforts.