It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming, for Thursday, August 29th. I’m Wendy Corr, bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily newsroom - brought to you by ServeWyoming - Wyoming's center for volunteerism and AmeriCorps service for the last 30 years! For volunteer opportunities, visit ServeWyoming dot org"
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For crews fighting large wildfires that have burned nearly 460,000 acres across northern Wyoming and southern Montana, timber is the enemy.
Like a yule log on a fireplace, it burns longer than grass and is harder to put out. That has made for persistent hot spots in the Flat Rock Fire burning west of Gillette, and Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that the deep forest cover has made the Fish Creek Fire in northwest Wyoming impossible to approach in some areas.
“if you are wanting to go and chop down a tree in a forest packed with beetle kill standing dead trees, you try to chop one down, they could all fall on you. There's no safe evacuation route for you… So what they're doing is just a lot of indirect tactics. The lines that they're gouging out through the vegetation don't necessarily abut these fires perfectly. They're having to use natural features and other tricks to build the fire lines.”
Cowboy State Daily’s Jen Kocher was part of a packed crowd attending a public informational meeting about the devastating northeast Wyoming fires at the Cam-plex in Gillette on Tuesday night. She reports that communication has been an issue for both firefighters and residents anxious for the most up-to-date information on the Flat Rock fire.
“There was a lot of tensions during the thick of the fire, when the firefighters were out fighting fires and weren't adequately communicating what was happening on the ground to the community. So in that kind of void of information, there was a lot of tempers flaring, and people are understandably frustrated and scared, in some cases, because … the evacuation and pre evacuation order simply weren't clear, and people didn't know what that meant exactly. So the chief addressed that publicly and said that the communication is definitely an area they're going to work on.”
Read the full story HERE.
Where fires have scorched grasslands and destroyed livestock - as well as the feeding grounds those livestock are dependent on - ranchers have joined together to help each other. Clair spoke to a rancher in Douglas who started a Facebook page called Wyoming Rancher Fire Relief.
“You see these ranchers coordinating like we need someone to deliver. Hey, here we've got an enclosed barn. Here we're donating medicine for cattle that are going to have trouble wintering now. So you're seeing just this hub of activity where these ranchers, a lot of home, have known each other for a long time and are super familiar with each other. Are just planning things out.”
Read the full story HERE.
While a regional team fighting four large wildfires in northeast Wyoming is urging people to call 911 if they see smoke or fire near those blazes, some local law enforcement agencies report people keep calling 911 to deliver confusing accounts of the wildfires already being fought.
“Several people were calling authorities to report the wildfires that were already being fought. They'd see dust and ash kicked up from a burn scar, or they'd see a plume of smoke way up on the horizon, and they'd report it. And to this, the the Buffalo Chief of Police said, Look, we don't want to tell people not to call 911, because we are concerned about this, but maybe just give really specific details and locations when you call that way, we can figure out how big of an emergency it is.”
Overall, though, firefighters are making headway. The Remington Fire, which has consumed nearly 200,000 acres in Sheridan County and into Montana, is considered 50% contained; and the House Draw Fire in Johnson County, which at last reports had burned nearly 175,000 acres, is considered nearly fully contained.
Read the full story HERE.
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There wasn’t a cloud in the skies over Wyoming on Tuesday. Literally.
For much of the day Tuesday, there was no cloud cover over the Cowboy State anywhere, prompting the National Weather Service office in Riverton to call out the “unusual” phenomenon and post a satellite photo showing a clear image of a completely cloudless Wyoming.
Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi explains that the clear skies are a result of an unusually large high pressure system.
“It was such a large system that moved in that it kept the entire state devoid of cloud cover for most of the day on Tuesday. But as Cowboy State Daily meteorologist Don Day explained it, there are brooms, if you will, systems that sweep in and out. So the stormy system that we had earlier this week was swept out by this surge of dry air from Canada, I believe, and then that's what created the cloudless conditions on Tuesday. But then that system is going to be swept out by another system of moisture, and this is what we expect in Wyoming as the seasonal transition begins.”
A cloudless day over Wyoming is a rare chance to take in the whole, unobstructed beauty of summer in the Cowboy State. Day called the National Weather Service’s satellite image “gorgeous.”
Read the full story HERE.
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Solo elk hunts are a bad idea for wolves. At best they end with the wolf going away hungry, and frequently the wolf gets stomped.
One study showed that lone wolves hunting elk have a about an 8% success rate, and the experts that outdoors reporter Mark Heinz spoke to said that might even be a high estimate.
“Humans who hunt elk like I do, they can be really tough to hunt, and they can be even tougher for wolves to hunt, and they can be really tough when a wolf tries to hunt an elk by itself… the bottom line there is wolves just do better hunting in packs, even though once in a while, one gets really brave and tries to get an elk on his own, generally, doesn't work out very well for the wolf.”
Wyoming Game And Fish Large Carnivore Specialist Dan Thompson told Cowboy State Daily that most wolves are good at figuring out when they’ve tried to bite off more than they can chew.
Read the full story HERE.
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The big news coming out of the uranium industry in central Wyoming this week is Canada-based Premier American Uranium Inc.’s preliminary findings of nearly 8 million to 12.6 million pounds of the critical ore in Wyoming’s Red Desert.
Premier announced Monday that more exploration is planned over the next year on the Red Desert’s Cyclone project, according to energy reporter Pat Maio.
“What's most interesting here is that a hedge fund out of back east in the New York area has… purchased 10s of millions of shares of stock in uranium companies that are big time players. And in central Wyoming's red desert, which is where basically all the uranium is, think Jeffrey City, and that's where it's all at. They own about a third of this company.”
The Red Desert find is significant because the ore is needed as fuel for nuclear reactors, a hot new market emerging in the United States as part of the energy transition from legacy coal-fired power plants to nuclear and alternative forms of wind and solar generating sources.
Read the full story HERE.
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There wasn’t much drama or any election shenanigans reported about last week’s primary during Wednesday’s meeting of the Wyoming State Canvassing Board, but that didn’t stop Secretary of State Chuck Gray from using the platform to say the Cowboy State’s elections still aren’t secure enough.
Politics reporter Leo Wolfson says since taking office, Gray has maintained that Wyoming’s elections aren’t secure enough, and urged consideration for more changes to Wyoming’s election rules.
“He brought up some of his past initiatives to have ID required to prove residency and US citizenship. He brought up some of his efforts to ban ballot drop boxes… and he also brought up a law that he helped pass in 2023 that stops people from changing their party affiliation after the candidate filing period opened, known as the crossover voting law. When he brought this up, Marissa Carpio of the … equality State Policy Center said that this is just disingenuous to claim that this is good for elections. She blamed that new law as part of the reason why there was a relatively low voter turnout in last week's election.”
The purpose of the biennial meetings of the Canvassing Board is to certify the results of each election held in Wyoming. There were no allegations of voter fraud or serious irregularities reported by the state elections director.
Read the full story HERE.
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Only eight months after being reintroduced to Colorado, a pack of wolves is being trapped and possibly relocated because they’ve killed too many sheep and cattle.
Cowboy State Daily’s Mark Heinz reports that between April and mid-July, 16 cattle and sheep were confirmed killed by wolves in Colorado, many of them in Grand County in the northern part of the state, which is where the Copper Creek wolf pack is located.
“Colorado Parks and Wildlife came to the decision … they're going to be trapping these wolves and relocating them. Now they're not specifying where they're going to put them, where the new location is going to be, and whether there's going to be a holdover time in captivity, or whether they're going to go straight to the wild… it's kind of a big, unprecedented move that they're going to trap and relocate an entire pack.”
The Copper Creek pack has at least three pups that are about 3 months old.
Read the full story HERE.
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And that’s today’s news. Get your free digital subscription to Wyoming's only statewide newspaper by hitting the Daily Newsletter button on Cowboy State Daily Dot Com - and you can watch this newscast every day by clicking Subscribe on our YouTube channel.
I’m Wendy Corr, for Cowboy State Daily.
