It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming, for Wednesday, September 25th. I’m Wendy Corr, bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily newsroom - brought to you by the Cowboy State Daily Morning Show with Jake! Launching October 1st at 6 a.m., Cowboy State Daily’s Jake Nichols is making morning radio cool again. Tune in from wherever you are for the latest news, weather, sports and in-depth conversations that matter to you.
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After hearing that the San Jose State University women’s volleyball team has a transgender player in its lineup, the University of Wyoming women’s volleyball team discussed the matter and decided to play its scheduled match against the undefeated California school on October 5th anyway.
Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that the controversy erupted this past week when a San Jose volleyball player joined a group of women's lawsuit against the NCAA.
“Her premise for joining is that she was grooming with and training with a transgender member on her team, and just found out about it not too long ago. In fact, she went some time without knowing about it, and the lawsuit says that she's concerned for some of the women's safety, and she's also concerned that having the transgender player gives her team an unfair edge.”
In an email Tuesday, the California school told Cowboy State Daily that no other teams have canceled their volleyball matches against San Jose State.
Read the full story HERE.
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Devils Tower National Monument is investigating what led to the sudden death of 21-year-old Stewart Porter, who fell while descending Devils Tower Sunday evening.
Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi reports that while the investigation will ultimately reveal what likely happened, to cause the fall, a climbing death is something that reverberates throughout the climbing community.
“As one of the Devil's Tower climbers I spoke to said, the risk is real, but the thrill is real as well. So … it's not about skill, and it's not about anything like that. This can happen to any climber on any route. It's more a question about, you know, preparedness and redundancies, or what many people said, and that's just the unfortunate nature of these sort of things.”
In more than a century of people climbing America’s first national monument, Porter’s is only the seventh climbing-related death on Devils Tower.
Read the full story HERE.
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The future of University of Wyoming athletics became murkier Monday when Utah State University said it’s leaving the Mountain West Conference for the Pac-12 Conference.
Cowboy State Daily’s Leo Wolfson reports that the Aggies are the fifth school to leave the Mountain West this month, which now only has seven teams left, including UW.
“This is probably not going to mean the death of the conference, though, which is what Gary Crum told me. He's a former UW football star and running for the Wyoming Legislature right now. He thinks the schools that are truly loyal to the Mountain West will stick around, and the fact that the conference is getting a large sum of money as far as the exit fees and poaching fees it's receiving as a result of all these schools that are leaving.”
The Pac-12 conference lost all but two of its members in 2023 in an exodus initiated by the universities of Oregon and Washington.
Read the full story HERE.
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The 22-year-old concession worker who vanished last week after summiting Yellowstone National Park’s highest peak is an amateur mountaineer who’d been talking about the climb for weeks.
Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland spoke to Austin King’s best friend, Desmond McGroarty. King and McGroarty have been friends since kindergarten. King called his friend from the top of the mountain on September 17th - and hasn’t been heard from since.
“He said it helped to have some family members come in early this week. That helped that way, they're, you know, they're together at least. But one tiniest sliver of hope is that when the searchers found King's campsite, his sleeping bag was not there, so there's just this lingering hope that maybe he's curled up in it somewhere… Yellowstone put out a statement today saying they're still hoping for the public's help where possible.”
The top of Eagle Peak is 11,361 feet above sea level, and the mountain is known for its brittle and shifting footholds.
Read the full story HERE.
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Texas-based Uranium Energy was already North America’s largest uranium-focused company with several Wyoming assets in play.
But Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports that it’s about to get an even bigger Wyoming footprint, with the $175 million acquisition of Wyoming’s only conventional uranium processing mill and its assets.
“Wyoming only has one of these uranium processing production facilities. It's rated for… 4.1 million pounds of yellow cake a year. That's 3000 tons a day. So it's a pretty hefty amount of production… So it's kind of a no brainer to pick this up, really. They already have 20 some odd locations in Wyoming. Wyoming has some of the world's largest reserves of uranium, so they are really getting set up here to be the king of uranium production in this new energy economy that the world is moving to, whether we want them to or not.”
The mill, which is about 40 miles northwest of Rawlins, belonged to global mining and metallurgy giant Rio Tinto. The purchase includes around 175 million pounds of existing uranium resources, ready and waiting to be captured.
Read the full story HERE.
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Colorado’s wolf woes continue, as another wolf has been found dead of undetermined causes.
Meanwhile, it’s been confirmed that a rancher’s cow and calf have been killed in the same area a pack of wolves had been trapped and removed for killing cattle. That’s according to outdoors reporter Mark Heinz.
“We reported previously on the fact that they trapped and relocated an entire pack, the Copper Creek Pack… and the reason those wolves were removed was for killing cattle. And it sounds as if some other wolves have come right in, right behind him, and killed a cow and a calf. So that problem might still be ongoing.”
Colorado has struggled to find wolves for its reintroduction program. But Colorado Parks and Wildlife has announced that up to 15 more wolves could be brought in from British Columbia, Canada.
Read the full story HERE.
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A rancher from Shawnee was fined $500 Tuesday in Douglas Circuit Court, after pleading no contest to starving horses he’d earlier claimed were poisoned.
58-year-old Joe Bright was charged Nov. 8 with five counts of failing to feed or water the animals. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports the citations followed a viral online post Bright made via his ranch’s Facebook page, in which the ranch offered a $10,000 reward for the arrest and conviction of anyone connected to, quote, “the murder” of their horses.
“Joe Bright still maintains his innocence… he still is seeing evidence that it could have been someone else, you know, there are other people who could have had that opportunity or that that urge to hurt his horses, according to his attorney, so he pleaded no contest, which acts like guilty plea for the purposes of ending that criminal case. But you don't have to give a confession, and you may spare yourself a lawsuit, if applicable, because you haven't given a confession.”
The Bright family had put up a GoFundMe page and had raised $583 toward its offered reward. Any donors requesting reimbursement will have their requests honored, and any money left will be donated to the Wyoming Horse Rescue Program.
Read the full story HERE.
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As distrust of voting machines continues in conservative circles in Wyoming and across America, Wheatland Representative Jeremy Haroldson is planning to bring legislation in the upcoming 2025 session that would clarify hand-counting ballots is legal in Wyoming.
Cowboy State Daily’s Leo Wolfson reports that over the past few years and particularly this summer, there has been a growing movement for hand-counting ballots in Wyoming as opposed to using electronic vote tabulators.
“I spoke to Malcolm Irvin, the president of the County Clerks Association of Wyoming and the Platte County Clerk. He said they're not necessarily opposed to having some hand count. Things happen in Wyoming elections, but the clerks really want advanced notice and to be able to work hand in hand with this type of legislation. Irvin said this can be at the very least, the state's gonna have to change its deadlines for certifying elections.”
Secretary of State Chuck Gray said he fully supports hand-count elections and will continue to advocate for them.
Read the full story HERE.
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As the air turns chilly and night is more reluctant to let go, many in Wyoming turn to old traditions to prepare for the cold and snow.
For Longmire creator and Johnson County resident Craig Johnson, this time of year brings the much-anticipated “Wood Week.” The author told Cowboy State Daily’s Jackie Dorothy that the lure of Rainier beer on a crisp fall day, with the added promise of good times, brings in Johnson’s faithful Wood Week crew.
“Wood week is just Craig Johnson's way of saying it's time to gather wood… and he's got friends that actually fly in from across the country to help him stack his wood, and they celebrate, of course, with Rainier beer… every year he makes up T shirts for his work crew, and this year he had a little bit of fun, and they call it the Absaroka County inmate work crew, and he's already getting requests from people who want their own T shirts and their own versions of this.”
Johnson said preparation for wood burning is crucial. And beer never hurts the process.
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.
