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Although not for everybody, the Darwin Discount Tree Service does have some availability for the Memorial Day weekend...

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

<title>Daily Darwin: Wednesday, May 22, 2024 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Daily Darwin: Wednesday, May 22, 2024

 Although not for everybody, the Darwin Discount Tree Service does have some availability for the Memorial Day weekend...

Heinz mark

Mark Heinz

Outdoors

An elk calf made a decision that could have been fatal by ignoring a wildlife-friendly panel on a ranch fence and trying to plow through the middle of another section, only to become hopelessly entangled.

Luckily for the calf, the ranch hand and his wife were out for a walk and found the calf in time to free it. 

Apparently wiser after its near-fatal mishap, the calf scrambled toward the crossing panel and leapt over it to freedom. 

The ranch hand, Logan Wilson, told Cowboy State Daily that as far as he’s concerned, freeing the calf was just part of his job. 

“We care about all of the wildlife living out here,” he said.

Wilson is a former resident of Buffalo and frequently hunted mountain lions in the Big Horn Mountains. He’s since moved to the Diamond Cross Ranch near Birney in southeast Montana. 

The ranch is in prime wildlife habitat, with ample numbers of elk and deer. 

Wilson said he and his wife were “going on a daybreak walk” when they happened upon the calf. Its back legs were entangled in fence wire, and it was squealing loudly. 

“That sucker was caught. It wasn’t going anywhere,” he said. 

While his wife took video, Wilson went about freeing the calf. 

He started by placing a jacket over its eyes to calm it. 

That’s an effective tactic. Wildlife researchers frequently blindfold animals to keep them calm during field examinations or transport by helicopter. 

Willson freed the calf in short order. Once it got its feet underneath it, the calf took off running. 

This time, in the right direction, toward the panel designed to help elk cross the fence safely. 

“It’s a panel with a ramp on the elk side (outside of the field) to assist herds in crossing," he said. 

The ranch installed the elk crossing panels to help ease some pressure on the fence and to protect elk. 

“The elk go into the fields at night and back out in the morning,” Wilson said. 

Most of the time the herd funnels toward crossing panels. But not always. 

“We had a bull caught in the fence once. A big bull, but we got him out,” Wilson said. 

It’s kind of chaos when a herd of elk get to a fence and they get all balled up,” he said. 

“They can tear up the fences and eat the hay crops,” Wilson said. “It’s a constant thing; we have to follow around and fix fences behind the elk.” 

Wilson said he doesn’t resent that at all. 

He loves seeing the elk, “and they bring in a lot of revenue” from hunters and outfitters given permission to hunt on the ranch, he said. 

Wildlife-friendly fencing has been a boon for game herds across Wyoming and the West, biologist Kevin Monteith told Cowboy State Daily. 

Fences can be built in several ways to make them safer for wildlife. That might include smooth lower wires to allow pronghorn to crawl under. Or upper wires strung at heights that allow deer to jump over, said Monteith, a biologist with the Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources at the University of Wyoming.

“Anything that can enhance the freedom of movement” helps herds find the best habitat and migration routes, Monteith said. 

The calf getting stuck in the middle wires of a fence sounds typical, he said. 

“Especially when they’re young like that, they try to pass through the middle of fences,” he said. 

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<title>Hooray! Ranch Hand Rescues Squealing Elk Calf Entangled In Barbed Wire | Cowboy State Daily</title>

An elk calf got entangled in barbed wire over the weekend at a ranch in southern Montana but thankfully a ranch hand from Buffalo, Wyoming, heard it squealing and rescued it. “We care about all of the wildlife living out here,” he told Cowboy State Daily.

Hooray! Ranch Hand Rescues Squealing Elk Calf Entangled In Barbed Wire

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's Feature Reporter, Andrew Rossi.

Andrew Rossi

Wildlife

A bison carcass in Yellowstone National Park attracts the usual crowd of grizzlies, wolves, ravens, and tourists. One recently attracted a pack of bear management staff, who thoroughly dismembered it before carrying the pieces away.

Joseph “Jojo” Kaul, owner of Kaul of The Wild Yellowstone Tours, 

 in the Lamar Valley near Soda Butte Creek on Monday. The female bison, which died of natural causes, was around 220 yards from the road.

“It wasn’t really close, but with the proximity of fly fishermen and hikers, it presented a situation that was possibly chaotic,” Kaul told Cowboy State Daily. “They wanted to know how to speed up the process of this bison being consumed.”

Using three sharp kitchen knives, three men from Yellowstone’s bear management started “quartering” the carcass, according to Kaul.

“They cut off all four of her legs at the joint, and dragged them to four different areas, probably about 100 to 150 yards away from the main carcass,” he said. “Then, they opened up her belly and backside to expose more flesh and blood for the predators to smell.”

Within 30 minutes, the bison had been butchered, and the three bear management men were back at their vehicles.

Kaul described it as “the best-case scenario” under the circumstances, which he explained to the crowd of people watching it unfold.

“There were around 30 people there, and I explained that they were doing everything they could to allow us to enjoy this,” he said. “Instead of completely removing the carcass, they left it so the wildlife watchers and enthusiasts of the park could enjoy it.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Butchering Bison"}]

Carcass management is a critical component of managing Yellowstone's natural landscape. 

 are the go-to tools, but sometimes rangers have to get their hands dirty.

 is familiar with dismembering carcasses in Yellowstone. During his tenure as a Yellowstone ranger, he did it multiple times.

“Most people I worked with didn't like doing it, and I did, so I ended up doing a heck of a lot of it,” Henry told Cowboy State Daily. “I found the physiology and forensics interesting.”

. Every spring, he’d document every bison, elk, and other animals that died over the winter as they began to thaw out of the deep snow.

Usually, the carcasses were left for the grizzlies to devour as they emerged from hibernation. On occasion, Henry and his peers were asked to get hands-on and take carcasses apart.

One instance stands out: In December 1986, Henry single-handedly butchered a bison at Fishing Bridge Junction to an audience of television cameras and Yellowstone’s top staff.

“There was a grizzly bear, Bear 83, that refused to den that year,” he said. “She stayed around Lake Village late into the fall. She chased me when I was on my snowmobile once.”

After Grizzly 83 and her cub were captured and relocated, Henry was given a new assignment: shoot and dismember a bison and scatter the pieces across Pelican Bay.

“The powers that be sent me and another ranger out to shoot a bison,” he said. “We found and shot a bull near Indian Pond and dragged it back to Fishing Bridge.

By then, the grizzly relocation and bison butchering had become a national news story. Several news agencies traveled to Fishing Bridge to see it, as did “a lot of National Park Service big shots,” according to Henry.

“They came from Mammoth to be involved, but when it came time to cut up this bull bison, none of the so-called GS99s wanted to step forward and do the dismemberment. So, it all fell on me.”

Using nothing but his personal five-inch hunting knife, Henry cut up the entire bull. Because that part of the park was closed to traffic at the time, he did it right in the middle of the Fishing Bridge Junction while everyone watched.

After a lot of sweat and blood, Henry had butchered the bison into several smaller pieces. He boarded a helicopter to scatter them across Pelican Bay, so any active grizzlies would head that way rather than wander around Lake Village.

[{"type":"text","text":"“I don't think anything like that would happen nowadays,” Henry said."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Fast Food"}]

Yellowstone personnel try to maintain a “hands off” approach inside the park, letting things play out naturally. On the occasions when they do have to take an active role, there’s usually a good reason.

According to Herny, carcass dismemberment is employed when dead animals are close to tourist hot spots but not easily accessible for the preferred methods of disposal.

“Whenever an animal died in a developed area or on the roadside, we'd have to move it away,” he said. “Sometimes, maintenance people would come out with heavy equipment, pick up the whole carcass with a front-end loader, put it on a truck, and we'd haul it away.”

Front-end loaders and winches are easier and faster, but sometimes they aren’t viable depending on the terrain and location of the carcass. That’s when you cut it up into manageable pieces that you could load onto a pickup truck with muscle power.”

Kaul said the terrain where the female bison died wasn’t ideal for the easier, faster options to be viable. Dismembering the carcass was the only option.

“She died along Soda Butte Creek and Lamar River,” he said of an area commonly known as "The Confluence." “Dragging it out and removing it would be a very, very hard process. It was treacherous for the three gentlemen to walk out there just to get to the carcass. Trying to haul away the 1,000-pound carcass with a pulley system from a winch would be even harder.”

The bear management personnel told Kaul that by dismembering the carcass and scattering the pieces, Yellowstone’s wildlife could utilize the immense resource while speeding up its consumption. That further reduces the risk to visitors.

Usually, carcasses are transported to one of the “secret spots” where they can be safely left to be consumed far from visitors.

“They have certain spots, out of the way of the public, where they like to dump carcasses,” Henry said. “They like to continue dumping carcasses in the same spots so that bears and other scavengers get used to finding meat there.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Still In Service"}]

Henry wasn’t surprised to see Yellowstone rangers dismembering a carcass, but he was curious if they had any prior experience doing so.

“There aren’t many people (in the park) who are good at it anymore,” he said. “Most of today's rangers are more law enforcement–oriented, from urban and suburban backgrounds, than they were in my time. That's not being derogatory about anybody. It's just an observation.”

Kaul said the bear management staff he’s observed are “a well-oiled machine.” Their goal was to get in, get out, and move on as quickly as possible. ‘

“They're usually really efficient, working simultaneously, but it’s still a process,” he said. “Each of those legs weighed 100 to 150 pounds, so dragging those away wasn’t easy. For them.”

Henry enjoyed dismembering carcasses because it was akin to doing an in-field autopsy. By cutting into a dead animal, he could learn more about its life and death.

“I don't want to sound like I'm bragging, but I probably evaluated 1,500 or 2,000 winter kills in my career,” he said. “Cutting them up is a good way to analyze what it was exactly that killed them.”

He specifically mentioned the value of examining bone marrow, as the color of the marrow can reveal whether an animal died of malnutrition.

Kaul has seen multiple instances of on-site carcass dismemberment, which is why he took this opportunity to educate people on why it needed to happen.

“This is not ideal for the National Park Service,” he said. “If the bison was hit by a car and was close to the road, they might be more inclined to pull it. This bison died naturally in a difficult spot, and they wanted to let the wildlife consume it, so they created the best scenario. It’s better than having no access to it.”

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<title>Yellowstone Tourists Watch As Rangers Use Kitchen Knives To Dismember Bison | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A crowd gathered in Yellowstone's Lamar Valley on Monday as three rangers used kitchen knives to dismember a bison carcass. "They opened up her belly and backside to expose more flesh and blood for the predators to smell," one tour guide said.

Yellowstone Tourists Watch As Rangers Use Kitchen Knives To Dismember Bison

Employee kate meadows cropped

Kate Meadows

Education

A parent in Sweetwater County School District No. 1 has asked for the Board of Trustees to remove chair Cole Wright from his position, claiming the board violated her rights to free speech by amending its public-comment policy last fall.

At the school board meeting in Rock Springs on Monday, Cherell O’Driscoll presented the board with a signed petition calling for Wright’s removal on grounds that he has violated the district’s ethics policy, committed open-meeting violations and behaved unprofessionally.

O’Driscoll’s primary concern is that according to the amended policy she can’t publicly criticize personnel but can publicly praise them.

She said she began circulating the petition in April and collected signatures by reaching out on social media and talking to people around town.

“Like my dad always told me, we have to stand up for what we believe in,” O'Driscoll said.

Wright was not at the board meeting in person but attended virtually because he was out of town for personal reasons, he told Cowboy State Daily.

"There is nothing I can provide at this time other than the board will respond to the petition pursuant to statute," he said.

Once that happens, Wright said, he'll be happy to share the board's decisions "so that you can appropriately tell the full story."

Calls and emails to Superintendent Joseph Libby seeking comment were not returned before publication.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Background"}]

The school board implemented changes to its public comment policy at its August 2025 meeting.

While comments related to district operations, policy or programming are welcome, Wright said that “comments regarding employment or performance of individual staff members cannot be addressed publicly by the board due to privacy protections under the Wyoming Public Records Act and due process rights under the Wyoming Teacher Appointment Law.”

At that same board meeting, Wright reported that action regarding the superintendent’s contract had been taken in executive session two months earlier.

“I want to begin my message with transparency and accountability,” he said at the beginning of the August meeting. “At the June 9 board meeting, I stated I do not anticipate any action upon our return regarding the executive session. That statement turned out to be incorrect. When the board reconvened, we did take action. 

"All trustees present voted to extend Dr. Libby’s contract. I recognize the confusion this caused and I take full responsibility for that miscommunication.”

According to contract documents viewed by Cowboy State Daily, Libby was hired for the 2024-2025 school year with an approved annual salary of $178,000, for both the 2024-2025 and 2025-2026 school years.

An amendment to the contract, effective July 1, 2025, extended his employment contract through June 30, 2028 and raised Libby’s salary to $195,000, effective July 1, 2025, to June 30, 2026, with increases each year thereafter. 

According to the amended contract, he will be paid $205,000 for the 2027-2028 school year. 

The amendment further increased Libby's car allowance to $1,500 per month from $800, as laid out in the original contract – an increase of 87.5%.

O’Driscoll learned about the amended contract when she discovered a file marked “Confidential” that she said had been uploaded to the public Board Docs website by mistake.

The document, one page labeled “Executive Session Minutes,” is dated June 9, 2025, and references “Personnel discussion was held to discuss The Superintendent’s Contract.”

After the discovery, she reached out to the Goldwater Institute, a conservative public policy think tank and litigation organization that monitors free speech and public records issues nationwide.

The Goldwater Institute has also represented fellow Sweetwater County School District No. 1 parent Kari Cochran in lawsuits brought against her by two school district administrators. Cochran 

lost her 18-year-old son to suicide in 2023

 and has been trying to retrieve his records from the district since.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Petition"}]

Five signatures are required to present a petition to a school board. O’Driscoll’s petition contained 105 signatures.

“We gave Wright the opportunity to change and he has not,” O’Driscoll told the board Monday. “I told Dr. Libby and Cole Wright in a meeting in May that if they were to keep coming and we were not going to be able to work together I was going to put my feet into the sand and come back and fight back. And here I am.

[{"type":"text","text":"“I may be as stubborn as a mule. But I am as patient as an ox.” "}]

[{"type":"text","text":"She said she was nervous as she stood in front of the board Monday."}]

“It’s confrontation,” she told Cowboy State Daily. “To go face-to-face and call somebody out, it was very stressful.”

O’Driscoll emphasized she was asking for Wright to be removed from his position as chair and not completely removed from the board.

[{"type":"text","text":"“He is failing in the position he was elected to do,” she said"}]

Wright was not present at Monday’s meeting. Board member Danielle Schumacher, who led the meeting in Wright’s place, acknowledged receipt of the petition and said O’Driscoll would receive a response within 30 days.

[{"type":"text","text":"O’Driscoll said she was not surprised by that."}]

“I would love a response to be in writing,” she said. “It’s very difficult to get things in writing from them.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Legal Side"}]

Last week, The Goldwater Institute opined on its website that the Sweetwater County School District is misusing its recently revised public comment policy to “unconstitutionally silence critics.”

According to Parker Jackson, an attorney at the institute, Sweetwater County No. 1’s Board of Trustees amended its public comment policy to prohibit any written or in-person comments that negatively address individual employee performance or employment. But comments praising individual employee performance are welcome.

He used O’Driscoll’s experience as an example, saying she was cut off by Wright and her written comments were redacted when she attempted to publicly criticize the district’s assistant superintendent in April.

“However, she was allowed to make written and in-person comments praising other school employees,” Jackson said.

This, Jackson argues, is viewpoint discrimination that violated the First Amendment.

He elaborated in an email to Cowboy State Daily: “Under the First Amendment, government officials cannot engage in viewpoint discrimination. That means that when public comment is taken on agendized matters in a public meeting, the board cannot pick and choose which opinions to hear.”

Jackson further said the school board is in violation of the Wyoming Public Records Act. When the institute requested copies of O’Driscoll’s unredacted written public comments, the district refused, claiming the comments were confidential personnel files.

“The district’s interpretation of ‘personnel files’ is so broad that it could encompass any record the district has that names or criticizes an employee or that the district chooses to place in a personnel file,” Jackson said via email.

The Goldwater Institute sent two letters to the school district asking them to reverse course. The institute has not received a response to either letter, Jackson said.

According to Jackson, the district faces possible litigation if it does not fix the alleged violations.

That could mean lawsuits in state or federal court – or both – based on violations of the First Amendment and state law.

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<title>Sweetwater Schools Parent Demands Board Chair Removal Over Free Speech Policy | Cowboy State Daily</title>

At the school board meeting in Rock Springs on Monday night , a parent presented the Sweetwater County School District No. 1 Board of Trustees with a petition calling for Cole Wright's removal as board chair. The petition was signed by 105 people.

Sweetwater Schools Parent Demands Board Chair Removal Over Free Speech Policy

Around Wyoming

This story was updated at 6 p.m. Tuesday.

The Weiser Knoll wildfire southeast of Lander, sparked by an overheated trailer wheel bearing Sunday afternoon, exploded to roughly 16,300 acres by late Tuesday afternoon and was 0% contained. 

The fire, the largest of the summer so far in Wyoming, prompted an evacuation order for residents in the Twin Creek Drainage area, east of Wyoming Highway 28. More than 200 fire personnel were fighting it, according to the federal government's InciWeb wildfire tracking website.

Area rancher Rhett Abernathy told Cowboy State Daily that by about noon Tuesday he and others hoped the worst was over, as winds calmed and “slurry bombers” continued to drop water and fire retardant on the blaze.

Sunday night was awful, he said, as the fire was driven by strong winds.

“That first night, the wind picked up and the fire started running down the ridges. Everybody was just waiting for their places to go up,” Abernathy said.

According to state and federal fire agency reports, the fire was sparked at about 2:15 p.m. Sunday on Highway 28 about 13 miles southeast of Lander.

The overheated bearing caused three initial fires to spring up alongside the road at a spot known as Johnnie Lee’s Corner, according to reports. 

Rancher and outdoors business owner Ron Hansen, who lives about 7 miles northwest of Lander, told Cowboy State Daily late Tuesday that he was worried about another possible wildfire. 

That blaze appeared to be growing about 5 miles southwest of Fort Washakie, he said. 

“If this one blows up, it’s going to come straight for us,” Hansen said. 

With hot, dry conditions persisting, he said he’s worried about how bad the fires might get. 

“I hate to say this because I’m in the outdoors recreation business. But I’m almost to the point of begging people to not go outside, to not go out into the hills,” Hansen said. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"‘Five-Foot Flames’"}]

Lander resident Michelle Motherway told Cowboy State Daily  she was camping with family Sunday and drove back into town after the fire started. 

“There were five-foot flames right on the side of the highway,” she said. 

The smoke in town wasn’t terrible Tuesday, but late Sunda, it was miserable, Motherway said. 

“Two nights ago, it was really reminiscent of the (1988) Yellowstone fires, where you could see that the moon was orange and the sky was orange. It was just eerie,” she said. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Rangeland Scorched"}]

Abernathy said that during its initial stages, the fire tore through ranchland on the Abernathy Ranches and Bureau of Land Management allotments leased by the ranch. 

It was touch-and-go for a while, he said, as they scrambled to move cattle out of the flames’ path. 

Luckily, Abernathy said, nobody was hurt and no cattle were killed. 

“We had a couple of old log cabins and old barns burn, but they were of no function,” he said. 

However, a significant amount of rangeland was rendered useless for grazing, he said.

“It will be the year after next before we can graze any of it again,” Abernathy said. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Feeding the Firefighters"}]

Motherway owns Mr. D’s Food Center in Lander, which has been helping to feed firefighters. 

“When the fire broke out on Sunday, I got hold of the fire incident command, and we arranged to get food for them,” she said. “We fed 65 people Sunday evening.” 

But as local Wyoming State Forestry and BLM crews were called in, the number of firefighters needed three meals a day delivered to them ballooned.

“We’re feeding 200 people breakfast, lunch, and dinner,” she said. 

With only three full-time staff at the store, meeting demand requires “an army of volunteers,” Motherway added. 

Codi Jorgensen, a local teacher, volunteered to help prepare firefighters’ meals, along with her 11-year-old daughter. 

“We were there (at the store) for four or five hours, putting meals together,” Jorgensen said. 

Motherway stepping up to help is “just Michelle being Michelle,” Jorgensen said. So, she and her daughter were happy to pitch in.

She added that while the smoke hasn’t been so horrible in town, the fire still has an ominous presence.

“We can see it from our back deck at my house. You can see the flames,” Jorgensen said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"‘Lookie-Loos’"}]

Motherway said there have been some “lookie-loos” showing up to try to get a look at the fire, which can impede firefighters and cause safety problems. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"The BLM concurred. "}]

“Twin Creek Rd. is closed to the public and only open to area landowners. Highways WY 28 and US 287 remain open, but please remain alert and yield to fire traffic and crews working in the area. For public and firefighter safety, the public is asked to remain out of and away from the fire perimeter,” the agency stated in a fire update Tuesday afternoon. “Red Flag conditions, characterized by strong gusty winds, low relative humidity, and elevated temperatures, contributed to heightened fire activity yesterday (Monday).” 

On Tuesday, ground crews were “constructing direct containment lines," as aircraft continued to drop water and fire retardant. 

“Coordination continues with local power companies to restore power to the area,” the BLM reported.

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<title>UPDATE: Fire Near Lander At 16,530 Acres And 0% Contained, Prompts Evacuations | Cowboy State Daily</title>

The Weiser Knoll fire near Lander, started by an overheated wheel bearing on Highway 28 on Sunday, exploded to Wyoming's largest at 16,530 acres and was 0% contained late Tuesday. “Everybody was waiting for their places to go up,” a local rancher said.

UPDATE: Fire Near Lander At 16,530 Acres And 0% Contained, Prompts Evacuations

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

Renée Jean

Long before he built his cabin in Savery, Jim Baker led two dozen men in an 1841 fight that gave Battle Mountain its name. Now his far-flung descendants and a tiny museum are fighting time, money and rotten logs to save the frontier scout’s last home.

Daily Darwin: Wednesday, May 22, 2024

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