Daily Darwin

It's always a good idea to load up a shopping cart full of cement blocks and go down a steep hill...

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

<title>Daily Darwin: Wednesday, January 17, 2024 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Daily Darwin: Wednesday, January 17, 2024

 It's always a good idea to load up a shopping cart full of cement blocks and go down a steep hill...

Image depicting a missing headshot of a Cowboy State Daily team member.

Gail Symons

Opinion

CSD Columnists

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Anger Is Easy. Governing Is Hard."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":" "}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Wyoming’s primary election is Aug. 18."}]

We’re about to see more mailers, Facebook posts, endorsements, and candidates’ last-minute claims about their opponents.

Here’s the question worth asking before marking a ballot: Is this candidate telling me how they intend to govern, or mainly giving me something to be angry about?

The distinction matters: campaigning and governing require different things.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Campaigns reward simple messages."}]

Governing requires decisions about budgets, taxes, schools, health care, local governments, property rights, infrastructure and economic development. Those decisions involve competing interests and consequences.

Grievance politics focuses on who is responsible for what’s wrong. The message emphasizes threats, betrayal, loss, ideological enemies and political purity.

Some candidates love to tell voters who must be stopped.

But governance politics looks different. It names a problem, says what government should do about it, explains what should happen as a result, and owns the cost.

Anger alone doesn’t make a campaign grievance politics. Government deserves criticism when policies fail. The distinction is what comes next.

Sheridan County’s legislative races provide useful examples because the campaigns cover the full range.

Some campaign messages warn about “socialism,” Democrats “infiltrating” the Republican Party, “true conservative values” slipping away, “real Republicans,” or threats to Wyoming’s way of life.

Mark Jennings’ campaign, for example, leans heavily on warnings about socialism, forced charity and Democratic infiltration but also provides specific proposals such as capping state spending and placing conditions on future data-center development.

Having proposals doesn’t automatically make a campaign governance-focused. The real question is what receives the emphasis.

Other candidates spend more time discussing property taxes, school outcomes, health care access, housing, local services or how state decisions affect local governments. Those subjects don’t automatically make a candidate a good legislator either. They do give voters something more concrete to evaluate.

A legislator eventually has to choose between competing priorities. Property-tax relief affects revenue. Spending reductions require deciding what gets less. Education funding carries constitutional obligations. Economic development brings questions about infrastructure, taxes, water and power. Ask a county commissioner what a smaller mill levy means, and the answer isn’t abstract. It’s road grading. Ambulance coverage. Library hours.

The old concept of local control raises another question: which level of government should make that call? A candidate who talks through those tradeoffs is showing you how they think about governing.

There’s also a third category: candidates who simply don’t tell you enough.

Some Wyoming candidates have no campaign website. Some Facebook pages contain little beyond endorsements, photos, and slogans. Others rely on broad phrases such as “fiscal responsibility,” “local control,” “strong schools” or “protecting families” without explaining what those words mean in legislative terms.

A thin campaign record doesn’t prove the candidate lacks knowledge or serious ideas. Still, if someone is asking for your vote, they owe you enough information to judge how they’ll use it.

Don’t fill in the missing platform for them.

If a candidate says “fiscal responsibility,” don’t assume what gets cut. If a candidate says “local control,” don’t assume which decisions stay local. If a candidate says “support education,” don’t assume what funding or policy choices follow.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Ask one simple question: Then what?"}]

Cut property taxes. Then what happens to the lost revenue?

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Reduce spending. Then what gets reduced?"}]

Stop government overreach. Then which law, regulation, agency or authority changes?

Protect Wyoming values. How is the Legislature going to do that from Cheyenne?

From there, use four questions for any major campaign promise.

What specific Wyoming problem is being identified?

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"What government action is proposed?"}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"What result should follow?"}]

What cost, consequence or tradeoff is acknowledged?

If a candidate answers those questions, you’re learning something about governance.

If the message repeatedly returns to who should be feared, blamed, defeated, exposed or excluded, you’re getting pummeled with grievance politics.

If the candidate offers almost no answers, that's teaching you something too. 

Before Aug. 18, look at whatever each candidate has chosen to provide. Review their website. Check their Facebook page. Read their mailers. Visit voter information websites  

Then ask yourself: After reviewing this candidate’s campaign, do you understand what they want government to do, what they want you to be angry about, or have they told you too little to know?

The better test isn’t simply, “Does this candidate have proposals?”

Ask what the candidate wants you thinking about when you enter the voting booth: what they plan to accomplish, or who they want you to fear gaining power.

Ask the four questions before you fill in a single bubble. Then decide: are you hiring someone to govern, or just someone to keep you angry?

Campaigns end on Election Day. Governing starts after that. Send someone ready for both.

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<title>Gail Symons: These Candidates Better Have More Than Fear And Blame To Give | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Columnist Gail Symons writes: "If a candidate answers your questions, you’re learning something about governance. If the candidate only says who should be feared, blamed, defeated pr excluded, you’re getting pummeled with grievance politics."

Gail Symons: These Candidates Better Have More Than Fear And Blame To Give

Heinz mark

Mark Heinz

Outdoors

Around Wyoming

If a 970-megawatt pumped-water power station at Seminoe Reservoir opened now, it wouldn’t have enough water to work, critics say, and scientists warn low water levels could be a long-running trend. 

Seminoe Reservoir, in Carbon County, was at roughly 30% capacity this week, according to the Bureau of Reclamation. 

The Utah-based rPlus Hydro company wants to build a $3-4 billion pumped-water storage facility there. 

Company representatives previously told Wyoming legislators and Natrona County Commissioners that the project could 

 during its expected five-year construction phase. 

Also, the project could help meet Wyoming’s power needs and keep residents' power bills low, they say. 

The earliest construction might start in 2029, according to rPlus Hydro. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Long-Term Water Woes?"}]

Even with the project that far out, it’s evident that once it’s in place there might not even be enough water in the reservoir for it to work, Patrick Harrington, Wyoming government relations director for Trout Unlimited, told Cowboy State Daily. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"He’s been an outspoken critic. "}]

Harrington and others have expressed concern over how the project might affect the prized Ferris-Seminoe bighorn sheep herd. 

And also, that the pumped-water storage facility might cause higher temperatures on the North Platte River, damaging the world-class Miracle Mile trout fishery. 

Wyoming State Engineer Brandon Gebhart on Thursday told the Wyoming Legislature’s Select Water Committee that the entire state is at some level of drought. And that much of the West has been in drought for about 25 years. 

Bryan Shuman, a professor in the Department of Geology and Geophysics at the University of Wyoming, and Cathy Whitlock, professor of earth sciences at Montana State University, told Cowboy State Daily the trend probably won’t end anytime soon. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The New Normal"}]

This year has been exceptionally bad for water because of high temperatures and a lack of precipitation, Shuman said. 

“It’s really an off-the-charts, one-off kind of year,” he said. 

And although conclusions can’t be drawn from a single year, the overall, long-running trend is toward drying conditions, he said. 

“There is this trend where things are getting warmer, so the snow accumulates later in the year and melts sooner in the spring,” he said. 

While there doesn’t seem to be a trend toward less precipitation, the trend toward warmer temperatures might cause water to evaporate faster, he said. 

Whitlock said rivers that rely on snowpack, such as the North Platte, will remain vulnerable to low flows. 

She said not too much can be made of a single year, but “the longer trend is toward drying.”

Research indicates that warmer temperatures and lower water levels are the new normal, Whitlock said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Project On Track"}]

The Seminoe pumped-water storage project needs a license from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). 

“The project appears to be on track going forward to get a license,” probably later this year, Harrington said. 

That means one avenue of objection is likely closed. 

However, the public still has a chance to weigh in, he said. 

The next step is for the Bureau of Land Management to amend its Area Resource Management Plan (RMP) to allow for the project. 

And that will require a public comment period, Harrington said. 

“That’s where the public will most likely be engaged in the process,” he said. 

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<title>Critics Say Proposed Seminoe Power Project Won’t Have Enough Water | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Seminoe Reservoir in Carbon County is so low a proposed pumped-water storage project wouldn’t work and could devastate Wyoming's famous Miracle Mile trout fishery, critics say. Scientists say the drought won't end any time soon.

Critics Say Proposed Seminoe Power Project Won’t Have Enough Water

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

Renée Jean

Tourism

Will Grant still has the two horses, Chicken Fry and Badger, that he rode across Wyoming in the summer of 2019 when he retraced all 2,000 miles of the Pony Express trail. 

Chicken Fry was born in New Mexico, and no one knows for sure how old he is.

“He’s had some hard miles on him,” Grant said. “Not a hard life, but plenty of work. So we rope off them a little bit, but not too much, and they’re like trail horses.”

Some of those hard trail miles happened in a landscape that deeply respects its roots. Wyoming, Grant told Cowboy State Daily,  has cared for its Pony Express Trail better than other states.

“You can see it there,” Grant said. “It’s very well marked in Wyoming. Very well marked.”

Mosquitoes in Jeffrey City are particularly bad, while South Pass can be freezing cold even in July. 

That’s left Grant wondering how Pony Express riders kept their feet and their hands warm, given that they were riding through South Pass in January of 1861.

“The winds through there are no joke,” he added.

These are just a few of the gritty details Grant learned about Wyoming as he rode through it on the back of a horse, surrounded by a vast, windswept sea of sagebrush. 

He had known from the outset that he would face the same brutal elements the pioneers did — shifting mud, relentless wind, desert conditions, mosquitoes, and the like.

But, as he wrote in his book, “The Last Ride of the Pony Express,” thinking about the hardships ahead of time and experiencing them firsthand are two very different things. 

That point became starkly clear under the flash of a sudden Wyoming summer storm. Grant and his two horses, he realized immediately, were the highest point on the landscape. They were walking targets clad in iron horseshoes. And there was nowhere for them to take cover. It was just miles of open sagebrush in every direction, as far as his eyes could see.

The crack of thunder overhead filled him with dread as he rode across the land in that gathering storm. He also gained a new appreciation for the 1860s couriers who wrote of learning to read the landscape in between blinding pulses of lightning strikes.

“I learned that the Pony Express as a mail service was a really impressive display of American entrepreneurship,” he said. “There’s no other country in the world that could have done the same thing given the same environmental parameters. There were no horses out there. There was no infrastructure on which to set up a fast horse mail relay over 2,000 miles to deliver a letter in 10 days.”

There were wild horses, and they were a huge danger to a lone rider managing two horses. Grant writes about that in his book, how careful he was to avoid either inciting an attack or losing his horses to that stallion’s wild harem.

The Mongols and the Romans and the Persians did have ancient horse relays to quickly traverse their kingdoms. But these were created in already civilized areas that their empires controlled, and those relays were fed and maintained by the full resources and might of those empires. 

America’s Pony Express was a business venture started completely from scratch, with no empire behind it at all, traversing a vast and empty land that was openly hostile. There were no resources from a surrounding empire to help them through all the places that lacked food, water and shelter. 

Pony Express riders didn’t wait for perfect conditions, though. They rode in all kinds of weather, making a 2,000-mile trip in a just 10 days. 

Grant took his time, compared to them. His journey lasted 142 nights.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Modern-Day Station Masters"}]

He also had something else the original 1860s riders didn’t. Wyoming ranchers — many of them descended from original homesteaders — who helped him all along the way, as did members of the modern-day Pony Express riders. The ranchers, in particular, were an informal network of modern-day station masters, ready and willing to help him all along the way.

Time and again, just as weather threatened to overwhelm him and his small string of horses, Grant would ride up on a private gate to find it already opened to him. The rancher before had let the next farm know he was on the way and to watch out for him.

These ranchers didn’t just grant him passage through their land. They would actively pull him out of a storm, offering secure pasture space and protection from the elements. There were often hot meals and a dry bunkhouse were included, as well as their stories.

“The traveling horseman still finds a lot of hospitality in Wyoming, I’ll tell you that,” Grant said. “People were good to me. Opening pasture gates, no worries. Really good people all along the way.”

There was the time a well-meaning rancher tried to talk him into taking an ornery mule with him … 

But warm hospitality and cheerful dinners and storytelling were more common. It was a powerful reminder that while the physical shelters of the 1860s may have crumbled, the human infrastructure of mutual aid remains intact across the Wyoming plains. It’s been actively kept alive behind the closed gates of modern cattle ranchers, many of whom are still living by the unwritten code of the West, handed down from one generation to the next.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Write What You Know"}]

Grant’s Pony Express ride wasn’t just a history fascination for him. He found in the ride a perfect intersection for the two halves of his life.

“I’m a journalist, and I mostly have been writing for magazines,” he said. “What I really wanted to do is write a book. The Pony Express emerged as a topic that I thought I could shed some light on because I worked as a horse trainer and a cowboy.”

Grant, born and raised in Littleton, Colorado, spent his summers cowboying on a ranch between Chugwater and LaGrange in Wyoming, studying under a foreman named Tim Sussex.

“Those were good years for me because Tim really showed me how to handle horses in a lot of different ways, but really how to be quiet with a horse,” he said. “That is the best thing you can do, get a ranch hand job on the wide open prairies of Wyoming.”

His first degree program was forestry and geology in Tennessee, after which he went back to horses, breaking colts in Larkspur, Colorado, then working for a ranch in Texas. 

In 2008, he went back to school to study journalism at University of Montana School of Journalism.

“I needed it,” he said. “I’d been training horses and doing ranch work for like eight years. I had to use a different part of my brain.”

When he went hunting for a book idea, the old writer’s advice — write what you know — stuck.

“I saw the Pony Express as a way to overlap my expertise with horses and write what you know,” he said. “I decided to dive into the Pony Express and I thought, ‘Well, obviously, I’m gonna have to just ride it. Travel it by horseback.’”

That, he added, was the “best summer of my life.” 

Even if it was the summer of 2019 — not the summer of ’69.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Trail Logic And Life"}]

Spending five months on the back of a horse gave him new perspectives on hardships and life. 

“When things are bad, you can expect they are going to get better,” he said. “If you have a bad camp, then the next night is almost certainly going to be better. And if you have two bad nights in a row, then your odds are even better that you’re headed for greener pastures.”

That simple trail logic helped him keep his morale intact through the inevitable stretches of cold and wet, hot and thirsty, tired and hungry all along the way.

He also learned more about his horses than he expected.

“I’ve been around horses my entire life,” he said. “But I learned a lot about their nonverbal communication. I learned you can tell a lot about a horse by listening to the way they walk.”

Any discomfort comes out in the sound of the hooves striking the ground.

He also noticed things about humans as well, including that they seem to care more about someone who is riding on the back of a horse than they do about someone who is on foot.

“They’re more likely to offer support because of the horses,” he said. “People cared about the wellbeing of the horses more than they cared about the wellbeing of me for sure. Having the animals with you opens up a lot of doors.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Next Book"}]

These days Grant lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where Chicken Fry and Badger have the run of the place, and Grant spends more time “wrangling sentences” than he does cattle.

He’s already knee-deep in his next book, which is about the ancestry of the American cowboy.

The research has already taken him to Mexico, Spain, and soon Morocco. Next summer he’ll tackle history that’s “closer to home.”

Whether that brings him back to Wyoming remains to be seen. But Wyoming will have its thread in the book regardless.

“I’ve got a lot of good Wyoming material built up over the years,” he said. “Horsebacking it across Wyoming for the Pony Express gave me a pretty good look at the country.”

And being a wrangler near Chugwater was a whole other dimension of the state and its cowboys.

After riding the Pony Express across Wyoming and sleeping under its stars, Grant may have left tracks that already blew away. But the stories Wyoming whispered to him in the night still live on, indelible memories that explain the code of the West in ways words never could.

Will Grant 7 N8 A8831 8 9 26

<title>Cowboy Rides All 2,000 Miles Of Pony Express, Says Wyoming Weather Overwhelming | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Cowboy and journalist Will Grant rode all 2,000 miles of the Pony Express trail on horseback. He said the trip gave him a newfound respect for Wyoming weather. Mosquitoes in Jeffrey City are bad, while South Pass can be freezing cold even in July. 

Cowboy Rides All 2,000 Miles Of Pony Express, Says Wyoming Weather Overwhelming

Kolby fedore

Kolby Fedore

Agriculture

Four generations of one family farmed the land beneath the western face of the Tetons before Darren Rude ever laid eyes on it.

The 432-acre ranch outside Alta came with weathered barns, irrigated fields and a century of Wyoming agricultural history.

Rude, founder of the nutritional supplement company Youtheory, said it was exactly what he and his wife spent years looking for — a place where their children and 13 grandchildren could someday gather, surrounded by cattle, hay fields and Wyoming's wide-open spaces.

[{"type":"text","text":"Now that dream sits at the center of a Teton County land-use battle."}]

The Teton County Board of County Commissioners voted 2-1 last week to deny Rude permission to build a 6,438-square-foot agricultural barn on the property, siding with neighbors who argued the building was never intended to serve agriculture at all.

[{"type":"text","text":"Within minutes of the vote, Rude announced he intends to sue."}]

"This case is illuminating a defining question and a fork in the road for Teton County," neighboring landowner Ken Fritschel told commissioners.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"More Than A Barn"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Both sides insist they support agriculture."}]

That much became clear during nearly four hours of testimony before the county commissioners.

Neighbor Sharon Shopper opened public comment by telling commissioners Alta has always been an agricultural community.

"This petition was not circulated because these folks oppose agriculture," she said. "Alta is an agricultural community. We live beside working farms and ranches." 

Kristen Fritschel told commissioners she had no issue with the bar at first, but after a conversation with Rude's ranch hand, Malin Strong, she became concerned. 

Rude told Cowboy State Daily the ranch hand was placing stakes to mark the proposed barn site when neighboring property owners asked what was planned.

"He said, 'We're building a barn here, and I'm going to live here, and we're going to almost have an amusement park. It's going to be so fun for kids," Rude recalled.

Rude said Strong described his own vision for the property with a zip line from the property's historic grain barn, a pond and other family activities.

Those comments, he says, reflected Strong's personal ideas, not the project's actual purpose.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Wildlife Versus Working Land"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Other opponents focused on wildlife."}]

, who identified himself as a wildlife ecologist with more than four decades of experience, described South Leigh Creek as a critical wildlife corridor connecting habitat used by moose, elk, mule deer and other species.

"A large permanent structure," he argued, "can affect that wildlife movement through that South Leigh corridor." 

Another ecologist said historical aerial photographs showed little evidence of sustained agricultural activity at the proposed building site during the two decades before Rude applied for his permit.

[{"type":"text","text":"He argued the creek bottom had largely returned to natural habitat. "}]

One opponent questioned whether the seven-acre area surrounding the proposed barn could naturally support cattle, and another argued the application changed repeatedly during the approval process, creating ambiguity over what was actually being proposed. 

Neighbor Charles Baldwin pointed to electrical systems, plumbing and other features he believed looked more consistent with recreation than livestock.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"'That's All BS' "}]

The loudest defense of the project came from Jim Beard, who has worked the property for decades.

Standing before commissioners, Beard said the ranch continues to produce potatoes, grain and hay while supporting cattle.

"We're going to continue farming there," Beard said. "We could use the barn there to store hay."

He said generations of ranchers traditionally placed barns in the creek bottom because they were protected from Wyoming's fierce winter winds.

Beard also said he couldn't "believe all the hoopla going on," adding, "Everybody gets a little piece of paradise, and then they want to shut it down for other people."

What about claims the site would become a racetrack or recreational playground?

[{"type":"text","text":"\"That's all BS,\" Beard told commissioners. "}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Lawyers Clash, Commissioners Divide "}]

Rude's attorney, Nicole Fleck, argued the county should evaluate the application based on what was actually submitted — a non-habitable agricultural structure — rather than speculation about future recreational uses.

The neighbors' attorney, Christine Kosydar, countered that the Planning Commission committed fundamental legal errors by recommending approval.

She argued the proposed building site itself was not actively farmed when the application was filed and said later revisions to the application could not cure those deficiencies. 

Her presentation also argued the proposed barn sat too far from the property's primary agricultural activity and was too large relative to the existing operation.

An Alta-area ranch owner says he plans to sue after Teton County rejected his plan to build a huge 6,500-square-foot barn on his land. Some neighbors also don’t want it, calling it more of “an amusement park” than a working barn.

Daily Darwin: Wednesday, January 17, 2024

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