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[{"type":"text","text":"Now let's all watch a dog ring the doorbell at 4am"}]

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Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>Daily Smile: Wednesday, August 9, 2023 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Now let's watch a dog ring the doorbell at 4am...

Daily Smile: Wednesday, August 9, 2023

 Now let's all watch a dog ring the doorbell at 4am

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's business and tourism reporter, Renée Jean

Renée Jean

Energy

Green

CHEYENNE — Protests and rallies are something f

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"In fact, Thursday marked a first for him."}]

Stephens, whose family has what he describes as a “modest” cow-calf operation south of Glenrock that’s been there since 1910, said he’s spent most of his life avoiding microphones and politics. 

But as wind projects have encircled his part of the county, he felt he could no longer afford not to get involved.

“We’ve got surrounded by wind farms,” he told a crowd gathered Thursday at the Wyoming Capitol in Cheyenne to call for more study of a wind wall that’s sprung up across a 200-mile swath of southeast Wyoming. 

“If you look at Converse County right now, between the farms that are there and the ones that are proposed, it’s 200,000 acres,” he said. "That’s a lot. And then this 

 showed up. Half of it’s going to be on state land. That was enough for me.”

When he started talking to neighbors, Stephens learned how widespread wind farms had become. That made him feel uneasy. 

So, he decided to come and be part of what was his first-ever rally, even though it meant his family’s ranch would be short-handed that day. 

“I have talked to ranchers all around,” he said. “I’ve talked to 68 ranchers, and there’s 50-some against it, three who won’t say, and six who are for it,” he said. “And this is the ranchers all the way around me. And they don’t have to save the ranch. They’ll go to work and do whatever they need to do to make it.”

At a State Board of Land Commissioners meeting in Douglas that Stephens helped arrange, he saw 200-some people in the crowd, with another 100 or so on Zoom, all against more wind in Wyoming. 

More Than 3,500 Signatures On Petition So Far

For the rally on Thursday, Stephens brought his daughter-in-law Kelsey and two grandchildren, Emory and Acelynn, to Cheyenne. 

“My husband and I built our home with our own two hands alongside family and friends,” Kelsey told the crowd. “We chose this place intentionally for the land, the view, and the life it allows us to live. 

"Picture a summer evening on our front porch — crickets and frogs singing, the smell of freshly cut hay in the air, and the red hills glowing as the sun sets. That’s a view that will take your breath away.”

And it’s exactly where a new wind farm plans to locate.

A petition the family has helped circulate has so far gathered 1,778 signatures from Converse County residents alone, Emory told the crowd, with another 500 from Douglas and another 1,241 coming from Glenrock and nearby areas. That’s more than 3,500 signatures so far.

About 98% of those are from Wyoming residents, Emory added. 

“Based on the most recent available data, Converse County generates approximately 43% of Wyoming wind power and electricity, but only receives 12% of the wind generation tax revenue,” she said. “That’s a small fraction of the benefits compared to what it produces for many residents.”

For her, the point of the rally in Cheyenne was all about making sure Wyoming people, including ranchers, have a say in the decisions that are affecting them.

On a map taped to her kitchen table, Cheyenne Realtor and Dereemer Ranch family member Wendy Volk has plotted an informal picture of what Wyoming’s wind tower surge looks like on the land. 

She started the map a little more than a year ago after receiving a letter notifying her that one or more neighbors planned to rezone their land from agricultural to industrial. The map she received with the notice was all but incomprehensible.

There was a dot for Cheyenne in the right-hand corner of the page and another dot in the lefthand corner for Laramie. Chugwater floated near the top of the page.

“Smack dab in the middle of that was this postage-size stamp, depicting this project,” she said. “And I’m a real estate agent, but I couldn’t make heads or tail of that map.”

A different page offered an enlargement of the postage stamp, a 56,000-acre tract dotted with 189 wind turbines, crisscrossed with access roads and transmission lines, as well as symbols for substations. 

But it was still impossible to tell where her family’s property was in relation to all of that.

She reached out to the company for a better map, and that wasn’t as straightforward as she had expected.

“I kept being very tenacious, asking questions, and then the gentleman said I have to go through legal,” she said. “He eventually sent me a better map, which he thought didn’t show that we were even touching.”

With the improved map, though, Volk finally verified that the project was about 1,000 feet off of her property line, as well as some of her neighbors. That’s when she started looking for a bigger picture. 

She hadn’t set out to become an expert on Wyoming’s industrial siting laws or federal permits. She just wanted to see a master map of all the projects to understand their overall footprint on the land. 

She’d noticed, now that her own property was directly affected, that there were an awful lot of wind projects popping up all over the place. She figured someone, somewhere would already have created such a map at the state level.

Nope. And further, there had been no state-level look at the cumulative effects of all these many wind projects.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"So she decided to make her own."}]

“I started putting pink sticky notes on a Wyoming map anytime someone mentioned a wind or solar project,” she said. “All of a sudden, the sticky notes were like connecting dots. And that’s when I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, this is an entire wall of wind projects that will stretch easily from Casper to Cheyenne and from Cheyenne to Rawlins. It’s just going to fill in and create a triangle.'”

It will be a massive “wind wall” that industrializes well over 200 miles of southeastern Wyoming rangeland and migration corridors, she said.

In Volk’s mind, the problem with that isn’t just any one wind farm in particular. It’s that no one at the state level is looking at the whole picture. 

Across southeast Wyoming, ranchers like Volk and her family rarely show up at hearings in their own communities, much less drive hours to Cheyenne to attend Industrial Siting Council meetings or stand on the Capitol steps for something like a rally.

Making time to be in Cheyenne means leaving their families shorthanded for tasks involving animals and fields. 

But Thursday, Stephens and Volk were there with other ranching families to help make a statement about what they feel is unprecedented and unconstrained growth of wind towers in Wyoming.

“These are not protest kind of people,” fourth-generation Wyomingite and Albany County Conservancy founder Anne Brande told Cowboy State Daily. “But they are calling me from Niobrara County, from Chugwater, from Wheatland, from Casper, from Goshen. 

"People are just tired of these (wind turbines) in these rural communities. They want to have a state conversation about it.”

Brande’s group isn’t asking to stop every wind turbine, but they want tougher siting scrutiny, as well as a cumulative impact review that looks at how so many wind turbines showing up all at once will affect wildlife, migration corridors, viewsheds, agricultural land, and rural communities across Wyoming. 

Wind turbines have already killed a number of golden eagles, Brande said. 

“We’ve been trying to place a golden eagle nest cam,” she said. “We think that’d be a fun project, but we’re having a hard time locating a viable nest, a viable golden eagle nest, and that’s a very different narrative than what we had even two, three years ago.”

Federal policy analyst David Wojick has spent the past two years digging into what wind development is doing to golden eagles across the American West.

He says the Eagle Protection Act is misnamed and is actually a license to kill a certain number of golden eagles every time a project gets a permit. That’s because each permit allows a certain amount of eagle “take” or deaths.

“There’s supposedly a program whereby every eagle that’s killed by a wind turbine, 1.2 golden eagles are saved from electrocution, because the wind people pay to have power poles somewhere in the country fixed,” he said. “As far as I’m concerned, that’s all false, by the way. And that’s the thing that I’m the most focused on.”

Wojick has been involved in broad environmental impact assessments of offshore wind in Wales for the last six or so years, and said that’s what he believes Wyoming needs to do about its wind wall.

“We’ve got this huge number of projects, some of which are built, some of which are under construction, and a whole bunch of which have been applied for in various processes,” he said. “And they’re being treated individually. The cumulative effect is obvious, and could be devastating.”

Wojick sees an “ecological death trap” phenomenon with such a widespread swath of land being taken up by wind towers. 

“Somebody’s got to be looking at that,” he said. “The feds should be looking at it. I don’t know if there’s some provision in Wyoming wildlife law for this, but if there isn’t, then the governor should just like convene a task force or committee to look at this.”

Wojick has seen studies showing the number of golden eagles killed by wind turbines has doubled in the Rocky Mountain West. 

He’s also heard ornithologist and bird biologist Bryan Bedrosian’s say that Wyoming’s golden eagle population has dropped by 30% over the last 20 years. Bedrosian is founder of Sporting Lead-Free, as well as conservation director at Teton Raptors Center.

“When you’ve got around 1,500 turbines at this point and with another 1,500 coming, I mean you could wipe (golden eagles) out, quite literally,” Wojick said. “You need to have a moratorium until somebody decides how many eagles you’re prepared to kill.”

What’s The Legacy For Future Generations?

For ranchers like Stephens and Volk, the wind wall isn’t theoretical. It’s either become the view from their front porches, or will be soon.

They’re not asking to turn back the clock on every wind turbine in the state. They just want a thoughtful look at the big picture, instead of a piecemeal approach.

“Governor Gordon’s recent executive order just yesterday regarding data center development recognizes many of these same concerns,” Volk said. “It acknowledges the importance of stewardship, water resources, wildlife, local communities and the entire region. 

"If Wyoming recognizes the need to evaluate cumulative impacts associated with large-scale data center development, then we should be willing to examine the cumulative impacts of industrial corridors forming across southeastern Wyoming.”

The rally, she added, is not about protesting energy development. 

“It’s about making sure Wyoming residents have a voice and the cumulative effects of these projects are honestly evaluated before our landscapes are permanently changed,” she said. “Today, I respectfully ask our city council members, our county commissioners, our state legislators, our state agencies, governing boards to consider the bigger picture, because southeastern Wyoming is not an empty space on a map. 

"It is ranch land, it is wildlife habitat, it is open space, and it is our heritage.”

Wyoming has a responsibility, she added. to be good stewards of that land, and to consider carefully the legacy that will be left to future generations, a legacy she’s sketched out in pink sticky notes that paint what she feels will be a disquieting story.

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<title>Wyoming Ranchers Rally Against 'Wind Wall' Of Turbines Across The State | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Wyoming ranchers rallied at the state Capitol on Thursday demanding action against what they call a “wind wall” of turbines across the state. “We’ve got surrounded by wind farms,” said one rancher about wind power and its impact on Wyoming’s rural future.

Wyoming Ranchers Rally Against 'Wind Wall' Of Turbines Across The State

Heinz mark

Mark Heinz

Outdoors

Public Lands

President Donald Trump’s decision to lift restrictions on motorized use of federal lands dating back to the 1970s has some Wyoming motorsports enthusiasts saying the move prioritizes much-deserved public access.

Others worry that it will cause a wildlands disaster, subjecting wildlife and non-motorized users to noise and destruction of habitat.

The Trump administration on Friday rescinded Executive Order (EO) 11644, issued in 1972 by President Richard Nixon, along with President Jimmy Carter’s 1977 EO 11989, which amended and strengthened Nixon’s order.

Throughout the ensuing decades, those orders shaped how federal land agencies managed the use of ATVs, dirt bikes, snowmobiles, and other motorsports vehicles.

The orders directed the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to designate where off-road vehicles could and could not be used.

The stated goals of the orders were to protect resources, mitigate user conflicts, and minimize environmental damage.

Trump’s move is good news for Sweetwater County Commissioner Taylor Jones.

An avid off-roader and snowmobiler, he’s been a vocal critic of the controversial BLM Rock Springs Resource Management Plan, which he argues is too restrictive for motorized use.

"Certainly, I’m thrilled,” Jones told Cowboy State Daily. “I've always been a strong proponent for public access to public lands.

“There are a lot of areas in the national forest and in the mountains that should be open for access,” added Jones, who sits on the Wyoming State Trails Advisory Council.

Jones said he understands the misgivings of hikers, birdwatchers and others who seek isolation and silence on public lands.

As he sees it, the current restrictions push off-roaders into certain areas. That increases friction between motorsports enthusiasts and other public lands users, Jones said.

Lifting restrictions could disperse motorized users across the landscape and ease tensions, Jones said, adding that it could make it easier to maintain a balance between those user groups.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"‘Terrible’ Idea"}]

Avid mountain biker, hiker and skier Amber Travsky of Laramie told Cowboy State Daily that lifting motorized restrictions is a “terrible” idea.

“There are roads and trails designated for ATVs, and I have no problem with that,” she said. “There is so much opportunity already for off-road vehicles, I don’t see why it needs to be everywhere."

Off-road vehicle use can have wide-reaching effects on other uses, Travsky said, because of noise and potential damage to the landscape, particularly fragile areas such as wetlands.

Travsky has long been an advocate for the non-motorized Medicine Bow Rail Trail in Albany County. She said she’s not sure how Trump’s rescinding of the previous executive orders will affect that trail.

However, there’s been “chronic” unauthorized motorized use of the rail trail for years, so she wonders if lifting restrictions will just make that worse.

She understands why motorized users are tempted to jump on the rail trail. A nearby route intended for motorized use is in horrible shape, she said.

“We’ve sat down with the off-road vehicle people and worked toward a solution,” she said, which could entail improving the ATV trail.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Low-Impact Dirt Bikes"}]

Jason Harris of Lyman has participated in long-distance dirt bike races and said he welcomes Trump’s decision.

“If it means that I can ride my dirt bikes in some new places, then I’m stumping for it,” he told Cowboy State Daily.

He’s also happy to see less federal control over public lands.

Harris said he’s seen vegetation “recover quickly” from dirt bike use because the motorcycles are lighter than other off-road vehicles, and cut only a single track.

As he sees it, more widespread use of dirt bikes and more freedom for riders won’t damage Wyoming’s prized landscapes.

“I’m an enthusiast for all motorsports, but my area of specialty is dirt bikes,” he said.

Relaxing motorized use restrictions could have unintended consequences for hunters, Sierra Club spokesman Nick Gevock of Butte, Montana, told Cowboy State Daily.  

“It’s going to dramatically push elk down onto private ranches where they cause fence and crop damage” while also reducing public hunting opportunities, said Gevock, the Sierra Club’s organizing strategist for Northern Rockies wildlands and wildlife.

“Large-scale use of ATVs on public lands” can also spread noxious weeds, push sediment into mountain springs and disturb delicate wildlife habitat, he said.

“This is indicative of the Trump administration’s attitude toward public lands,” Gevock said. “There was no reason to do this, other than to give a nod to the ATV crowd that we’re going to give you free rein over public lands.”

He also worries that it will lead to many more “user-created (motorized) trails” cropping up in isolated areas.

Public land should get the same level of respect that private land does, Gevock added.

“I’m a fair-chase elk hunter, and never once has a rancher who has granted access to public hunting said, ‘’Well you can go anywhere you want,’” he said.

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<title>ATV Riders Cheer Trump Opening Access To Federal Lands, Critics Expect Disaster | Cowboy State Daily</title>

President Trump’s lifting of restrictions on motorized use of federal lands dating back to the 1970s has some Wyoming motorsports enthusiasts cheering a move they say prioritizes public access. Others worry that it will cause a wildlands disaster.

ATV Riders Cheer Trump Opening Access To Federal Lands, Critics Expect Disaster

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's general assignment reporter, Clair McFarland.

Clair McFarland

Crime & Courts

Courts

The Wyoming Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected the self-defense argument of a Weston County man who shot and killed his neighbor, then told police the neighbor had charged toward him while driving a skid steer.

Paul Manders is serving a sentence of 16-20 years in the Wyoming Department of Corrections for manslaughter. He was sentenced Feb. 27, 2025.

But the spat between Manders and his neighbor, Vernon Clyde, had turned deadly nearly four years earlier in the summer of 2021.

The neighbors had an ongoing dispute over Clyde’s goats escaping onto Manders’ property, and Manders shot one of the goats, the Wyoming Supreme Court’s Wednesday opinion on the case says.

On July 27, 2021, Manders called 911 to report he’d killed Clyde, the document adds.

Manders told police Clyde “came at” him with a skid steer, which prompted the shooting.

Weston County Sheriff’s Office deputies and Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation agents converged on the scene and found Clyde dead in the skid steer — which they found about 20 feet east of Manders’ home.

Clyde had been using the skid steer to move rolls of fencing to fix the fence between their homes earlier that day, says the document.

Investigators found four rolls of wire fencing to the rear left of the skid steer.

Officers also learned, reportedly, that there was a dispute over ownership of the strip of land where the skid steer was during the shooting.

Clyde believed that to be a public alley or road running between their property. Manders believed it was part of his own property and Clyde wasn’t supposed to be there due to a no-trespass warning from the sheriff’s office, says the document.

[{"type":"text","text":"A debris pile of corrugated pipe and rubble sat on the strip of land."}]

Neighbors told investigators they saw the skid steer near the fence, then heard one gunshot, a pause, then three more gunshots, the document says.

Law enforcement noticed tracks in the dirt indicating the machine was going in reverse before it came to rest. The control stick had blood spatter on it, which indicated Clyde’s hand was not on the control stick when he was shot, says the opinion.

[{"type":"text","text":"Two of the shell casings sat farther away than the other two."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Police arrested Manders at the time on suspicion of second-degree murder."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"The Self-Defense Argument"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Manders asked for a John’s hearing."}]

That’s a chance for a defendant to show that he acted in self-defense, and for the state to try to overcome that with evidence that makes the opposite look more likely than not.

Manders showed, at first glance, that he acted in self-defense, arguing that his fear was reasonable because according to him, Clyde entered Manders’ driveway and drove the skid steer toward Manders.

But the case prosecutor overcame that showing of evidence with more evidence.

The prosecutor showed that there was no evidence Clyde was entering Manders’ home, so a castle doctrine provision letting people defend their homes wouldn’t help Manders. The state argued Manders’ use of deadly force wasn’t reasonable, either.

Weston County District Court Judge James Michael Causey held a three-day hearing.

The skid steer was turned on when police arrived, but the idle was turned all the way down and the parking brake was engaged, the state’s physical evidence expert noted in the hearing.

Some bullet casings sat on top of tracks in the dirt, indicating that the casings had been put there after the skid steer came to a stop, notes the opinion.

There was also a blood pool on the left tread of the skid steer indicating the blood landed there either during the shooting or directly afterward, “and the skid steer was not in motion when the blood was deposited,” says the high court’s opinion.

The Weston County Assessor’s Office map showed the “road” as a public access point which, whether correct or not, imbued Clyde with the belief that he had a right to be there, the document says.

The judge denied Manders’ request for the case to be dismissed early on self-defense grounds, and left the matter up to a jury.

But rather than go to trial, Manders settled with an Alford plea, which is a way of pleading guilty without admitting wrongdoing.

Manders reserved the right to appeal the judge’s finding on his self-defense argument, and he did.

The evidence doesn’t show that Clyde was unlawfully and forcefully entering Manders’ home, so the castle doctrine doesn’t rescue Manders’ self-defense claim, says the opinion. 

It notes that even if that strip of land was Manders’ driveway, the law doesn’t include someone’s driveway in that provision.

“We therefore decline Mr. Manders’s invitation to extend the statutory definitions of ‘home’ or ‘habitation’ to include driveways, yards, and other areas outside of a structure or occupied dwelling,” says the opinion.

Turning to the question of who the initial aggressor was, the court noted that multiple witnesses testified Clyde was in a good mood just minutes before the shooting. 

He’d spoken with multiple neighbors about helping him fix the fence that weekend, and people saw him transporting the fencing materials just before the shooting, the document says.

“Evidence shows it is more probable than not Mr. Clyde went to the disputed area with the intention of fixing the fence, not to threaten or attack Mr. Manders,” the court wrote, adding that “The undisputed evidence showed the skid steer moved into reverse until it came to a stop.”

The physical evidence “could” support finding that Manders was the initial aggressor, the opinion says.

There was a dispute in this case about whether Clyde threatened to “smash” Manders’ home when Clyde came out to confront him about allegedly trespassing.

Even if rough words were exchanged between the two before the shooting, verbal attacks don’t make someone the initial aggressor in an altercation, the high court wrote in its analysis.

A footnote in the opinion notes that the state’s experts opined it would have been extremely difficult for Manders to hear what Clyde was saying if the skid steer was running at full throttle and moving.

Even if the court were to assume Clyde was the initial aggressor, the opinion says, the state showed it’s more likely than not that Clyde was trying to withdraw from the altercation before he was shot.

Manders could have raised his self-defense claims at trial, had he gone to trial, the opinion concludes.

Weston County vote IMG 3158 10 22 24

<title>Goat Dispute Turned Deadly: Supreme Court Rejects Self Defense Argument Over Man Who Killed… | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Two neighbors in Weston County had a longstanding dispute over goats. It escalated when one man shot and killed the other. The Wyoming Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected the self-defense argument of the man who said the neighbor charged him on a skid steer.

Goat Dispute Turned Deadly: Supreme Court Rejects Self Defense Argument Over Man Who Killed Neighbor

Jen kocher

Jen Kocher

Law Enforcement

For more than 30 years, the body of an unidentified woman discovered in the remote desert along Interstate 80 in rural Nevada has kept her secrets hidden.

The woman, known colloquially as “Shafter Jane Doe,” had been beaten and shot in the chest and back.

Her nude body was posed on the ground, arms extended to either side in the shape of a cross with legs slightly parted.

Less than a week after her death on Nov. 16, 1993, a geologist who had pulled off at the remote Shafter exit off I-80 to stretch his legs discovered her body, according to news reports from the time.

Later investigation in 2010 revealed that the woman had spent seven months in Afton, Wyoming, which was determined through the isotope testing. 

For years, her donated headstone has read, “Who Am I?”

Now more than 32 years after the gruesome discovery, authorities finally have an answer.  

Her name is Marion Hertha Alexander, who was a German immigrant who moved to California with her family in 1972.

After a decades-long investigation, members of the Elko County Sheriff’s Office and other law enforcement partners told the Elko County Commissioners on Thursday afternoon that they identified her through the use of advanced DNA testing and forensic genetic genealogy.

The decades-long investigation also revealed the woman was in Afton, Wyoming, for about seven months before she was murdered. 

Alexander left home around age 18, and her family told investigators that Alexander was a free spirit who liked to drift around.

Her family questioned where she had gone, but given her lifestyle, they did not report her missing to law enforcement.

Her living family members were notified of the identification in January of this year, Elko County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Douglas Fisher stated, and continue to be in touch with law enforcement.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"No Justice"}]

Her suspected murderer, however, will not see justice.

Authorities were closing in on Roger Lee Durkee of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who was identified through semen found on a vaginal swab that yielded a full DNA profile, authorities said.

The profile was run through the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) but did not result in a match, so the Elko County Sheriff’s Office contracted a private group to perform forensic genetic genealogy analysis in February 2022 that led to Durkee as a potential suspect.

Further investigation indicated that Durkee was likely the murderer, but as detectives began planning their trip to Wisconsin to make an arrest, they learned that Durkee had died on Nov. 13, 2025.

He died within 14 days of detectives learning Alexander’s identity.

Now, however, Alexander will be properly laid to rest.

The Elko Sheriff’s Office asked the commission — and were granted — money to buy a proper headstone to finally put her to rest.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Piecing Together Mystery"}]

Authorities worked for decades to identify Alexander through the use of several forensic tools.

Initially when she was discovered, Alexander’s face was beaten beyond recognition, so the FBI created a computer-generated image of her likeness to help local authorities attempt to identify her, according to a 1993 article by the Elko Daily Free Press.

Along with her image, authorities had little else to go on.

More than 32 years after her body was found along I-80, the woman known as “Shafter Jane Doe” has been identified, officials announced Thursday. Her nude body was posed on the ground, arms extended to either side in the shape of a cross.

Daily Smile: Wednesday, August 9, 2023

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