BOZEMAN - Butterflies can be "wicked fast," Kaylee Guajardo Sullivan discovered three summers ago.

The second-year master's student who studies statistics at Montana State University recalled swinging her butterfly net and sprinting across a field in Glacier National Park. Surveying the insects in 23 locations was part of a research effort assessing change in butterfly species diversity from nearly 40 years ago to present day, and she is determining the best way to model the data accurately.

A statistician may seem like an unlikely addition to wildlife habitat research, but Guajardo Sullivan is one of 57 graduate students at MSU pursuing such interdisciplinary work. The students share a common goal: to study how humans can better protect and manage their environment to support wildlife.

"If you're driven and you want something, this is a school that's going to support you," said Guajardo Sullivan, who is originally from Chicago and has lived in Montana for nearly six years. "I have no words, only gratitude."

This gratitude, she said, is for Kathy Crawford and her late husband, Thomas H. "Tim" Crawford, creators of the Crawford Wildlife Habitat Graduate Fellowship for graduate students and the Crawford Wildlife Habitat Scholarships for undergraduates, which will begin supporting students in the fall. The $30 million gift, awarded to MSU in 2025, is the largest scholarship endowment in the university's history.

On April 16, Kathy Crawford and MSU's Graduate School celebrated the Crawford Fellows with a research showcase, organized by graduate assistant Kade Woolverton.

"It's exactly what I had hoped for," Crawford said. "The enthusiasm is huge for taking care of wildlife habitat, and I'm overwhelmed with appreciation for what the students are doing."

Denali Stetson, a second-year master's student from Corvallis who studies animal and range sciences, presented research on stream characteristics that are the most suitable for beaver colony reintroduction in Montana.

The U.S. Forest Service has pursued reintroduction initiatives since the 1980s to combat disease and trapping that plagued Montana's beaver populations. Stetson analyzed a 40-year data set on 11 stream sites across the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, Custer Gallatin National Forest and Yellowstone National Park. She found that beavers are likely to remain near streams that are meandering, have lower slopes and have an average width-to-depth ratio.

She will continue the research in the fall before graduating in December with what will be her second degree from MSU, the first being a bachelor's in fish and wildlife management that she earned as a Hilleman Scholar, a program for Montana residents who demonstrate academic and leadership potential.

"I have always known I wanted to be a wildlife biologist, but actually finding a master's project and continuing my education means a lot," she said.

Sundas Iftikar, a second-year doctoral student studying computer science, said continuing her education was made possible, in part, by the Crawford fellowship. As an international student from Attock, Pakistan, visa restrictions prevent her from finding employment off campus during the school year.

"I was able to focus on my research without the stress of, 'How can I manage my rent? How can I manage my debt?'" she said.

Iftikar studies how unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, can help detect wildfires earlier and prevent the loss of life, ecosystems and property in the U.S. Traditional fire detection technology is unsuitable for large spaces because it experiences delays in dense areas, has limited range and is sensitive to factors like dust that cause false alarms.

Her research team is training and testing UAV technology, integrated with machine learning algorithms, using more than 48,000 images of wildfires. The images are rotated, cropped or flipped to test the detection models' intelligence. Iftikar will spend the next three years at MSU working with larger and more diverse wildfire datasets, with potential to explore thermal drone sensors and artificial intelligence-generated weather predictions.

Another research endeavor presented at the showcase studied how livestock managers can better use their land to feed beef cattle in Montana. Housed in the Department of Animal and Range Sciences, the study covers nearly 11,000 acres between the Madison River and MSU's Red Bluff Research Ranch in Norris, and researchers followed hundreds of beef cattle over six years of winter grazing.

Noah Davis helped complete the project as a doctoral student last semester and is now an assistant professor of grazing ecology and management at MSU. He studied changes in forage protein and fiber availability, as well as how livestock interact with the plants they graze. Researchers also gave protein supplements to 318 cattle along their grazing paths and, using GPS collars, tracked how cattle traveled further and grazed less after receiving the supplement.

"Understanding how animals use the landscape, disturb the landscape and how we can manipulate that is critical," said Davis, who is from Ventura, California, and has lived in Bozeman for 12 years.

Many studies like these are making important strides in the conservation field, but they lack outlets to share information with the public, said Timothy Mooring, a second-year student in the Science and Natural History Filmmaking program. Mooring, who is from San Diego, aims to bridge this gap with two short films he presented at the showcase, both featuring the Zambian Carnivore Programme.

He shadowed the program's Greater Liuwa Ecosystem branch in western Zambia, which tracks wildebeest migration patterns and where the animals avoid human contact. He said this information will inform conservation efforts that protect areas key to wildebeest passage, a necessity given the animal is a vital food source for Zambian predators.

Mooring said he was awestruck by the environment his mother described when he was a child - she was born in Zambia and moved to the U.S. at age 26 - and the conservationists' passion that emanated from the screen.

"I would finish interviewing someone, and sometimes I would cry," Mooring said. "I couldn't believe how inspiring some of these stories and the research were."