It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming, for Wednesday, April 16th. I’m Wendy Corr, bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily newsroom - Brought to you by Wyoming Community Gas. The Choice Gas selection period ends on Wednesday April 23rd – This is your opportunity to select your Natural Gas Provider for the coming year. For more information, visit Wyoming Community Gas dot ORG.”
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President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration has hit the University of Wyoming.
Chad Baldwin, spokesperson for the school, confirmed to Cowboy State Daily’s Leo Wolfson on Tuesday that a few international students have had their visas to be in the United States revoked. Baldwin also said federal immigration officials have not communicated with the university about why the visas were revoked, which appears to be in line with what’s happening at universities across the country.
“None of these students have been deported yet, or arrested or anything like that… the way it works with these visas getting revoked, is actually the students kind of can self deport, is the way it goes, and they have the opportunity to do so, and then in some instances, they are, they're allowed to stay to where they just can't leave the country because they obviously wouldn't get back in. So it's an interesting thing. This is a phenomenon that's occurring on college campuses all across the country.”
A review of university statements and correspondence with school officials shows that at least 600 students at more than 90 colleges and universities have had their visas revoked or their legal status terminated in recent weeks.
Read the full story HERE.
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The U.S. Department of the Interior announced on April 10 it will no longer require the Bureau of Land Management to prepare environmental impact statements for approximately 3,224 oil and gas leases across seven Western states.
Cowboy State Daily’s David Madison reports that these changes will level the playing field between states like Wyoming, where energy development happens mostly on public land, and “private land” states like Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana, where energy producers say the leasing process is less hindered by lengthy environmental impact studies.
“A whole bunch of those leases going back to 2015 were just exempted from further environmental review in the leasing process. And depending on who you ask, that's a good thing or a disturbing thing. You know, environmentalists are concerned that the safeguards protecting our public lands are being kind of run rough shod, and the industry saying, heck yes, this is finally a streamlining of a process that's too cumbersome. And so we talked to experts on both sides and and Wyoming really does fall right into the bullseye of this story with so many of the leases here, because Wyoming has so much public land.”
Jeremy Nichols, senior advocate Center for Biological Diversity, said it's too early to tell whether the BLM will change its approach to NEPA analysis when it comes to leasing parcels of public land for oil and gas development.
Read the full story HERE.
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Enjoy the unseasonably warm April weather while it lasts, because it’ll be gone by Thursday.
A slow-moving cold front will move across Wyoming between Wednesday night and Friday. When it does, Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi reports that temperatures will drop up to 50 degrees in some places, and the entire state will get some snow.
“We are going to see snow across most of Wyoming, just a couple of inches, but that's enough and it's going to be cold enough that that snow could freeze and turn into black ice on roads and highways. So we're in April, and the last couple days have been great with warm temperatures. That's not sticking around. We're going to see a drop. We're going to see more winter weather… Cowboy State meteorologist Don day always says that we're not out of the woods of winter weather until after Mother's Day, and there's still a lot of time between now and Mother's Day and this incoming winter weather system needs to be taken seriously, because it's going to take us seriously.”
Thursday night and Friday morning temperatures could be in the upper teens and lower 20s, and Day said he wouldn’t be surprised to see subzero temperatures in Yellowstone National Park.
Read the full story HERE.
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In the first reported major human-grizzly conflict this year, a man who was hunting for shed antlers in north-central Montana shot and killed a grizzly which he claimed charged him
Wildlife officials say the man was on a brushy hillside on Friday when he first spotted the grizzly, described as a 250-pound female thought to be about 13 years old. Cowboy State Daily’s Mark Heinz reports that as he was leaving the area, the bear charged him, so he shot and killed it.
“I guess a guy was out shed hunting and was charged by a grizzly and subsequently ended up killing it with his handgun, you know. And this is, we've kind of reported on the grizzly activity up in that area. That's that general area where … the Grizzlies have kind of been moving back out onto the prairies… the elk and deer start shedding or dropping their antlers this time of year, and that's a big favorite outdoor activity of a lot of people that go out and pick up the shed antlers. Well, the thing you have to be aware of is this also it kind of corresponds with Grizzlies coming out of hibernation. So the potential for conflict is there.”
The bear had no history of conflict with humans, according to wildlife officials. The agency didn’t report that the female had cubs with her, or what type of firearm the man used.
Read the full story HERE.
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Federal deportation authorities Monday arrested a Mexican national in Teton County, who has been removed from the United States seven times in the past 20 years.
Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that Jorge Perez-Romero could be removed from the country an eighth time, if he's convicted of illegal reentry, which is what Wyoming Assistant U.S. Attorney Cameron Cook charged him with on Friday.
“Illegal re entry is a deportable offense, right? So even though it says, Oh, we can put you in prison for up to two years if you're convicted this, a lot of times I see them deport guys and so I mean this one, he's gotten ties to Teton county that day, back to 99 but according to the affidavit, he was like, removed, removed, removed for a stretch there in the early 2000s sometimes multiple times a year, and is now facing removal once again, if convicted.”
Perez-Romero is set for a Wednesday hearing in Casper’s U.S. District Court for Wyoming.
Read the full story HERE.
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Star Plunge in Thermopolis shut down in mid-January, after a dispute between the state and its operator.
But the legal limbo that’s been keeping the Star Plunge closed is having a negative effect on tourism in Hot Springs County. Audra Dominguez, a member of the Hot Springs County Travel and Tourism Board, told Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean that numbers for lodging taxes are down about $4,000 year over year.
“The numbers do show for the month of February, which was the full month of of after the star plunge was closed January 14… They were down about $4,000 went from 11,000 down to 7000 you know, maybe that's not all due to the star plunge. There are other things kind of going on there. They lost a campground that became a Dollar General Store, some of those kind of things… some of the folks in Thermopolis are questioning, yeah, sure. We understand there's a dispute between you, the state and the owner. We get that. But do you have to keep it closed? Can't it be open during this ongoing legal case?”
The park is one of the state’s most popular, drawing between 1.2 to 1.9 million visitors a year, according to state statistics, and state officials have said previously they believe the park could be a much bigger draw, if it had the right updates.
Read the full story HERE.
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Wolves in Yellowstone National Park have been increasingly preying on bison, but going after them can be a dangerous undertaking, as the Junction Butte wolf pack recently learned.
One wildlife photographer watched the pack play a game of cat-and-mouse with a group of bison last week, waiting for a vulnerable baby bison to separate from the herd. Julie Argyle told outdoors reporter Mark Heinz she’s familiar with the Junction Butte pack, and knows that they’re experienced bison hunters.
“She caught some really cool video clip of the Junction Butte pack, that's one of the more famous wolf packs in Yellowstone, chasing down, or trying to chase down a yearling calf bison with its mother… the bison did make it. They made it back to the main group. And then, of course, the adult bison started, you know, charging and kicking at the wolves. And the wolves are like, Okay, this is too much. We back out… But it's really interesting because the Junction Butte pack, that was a pack that was led by 907F which was that really famous, extremely long lived wolf that died last year… this pack was formed by wolves that broke away from her pack, and then they got a in a fight with her, which resulted in her death. And now some of them have rejoined the Junction Butte pack, and they're all hunting bison again.”
Argyle said that as near as she could tell, all the wolves and bison walked away from the encounter intact. The wolves didn’t sink their teeth into any bison, but also managed to escape the angry bison’s potentially crushing blows.
Read the full story HERE.
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The Laramie County Sheriff’s Office set up a closed course lawnmower driving demonstration at Cowboy State Daily’s offices in Cheyenne last December to show the effects of impaired driving in real time.
Now, Laramie County Sheriff Brian Kozak told Cowboy State Daily’s Leo Wolfson that the demonstration will be presented at the International Association of Chiefs of Police’s Impaired Driving and Traffic Safety Conference in August.
“We had a well known columnist, Rod Miller, drive a lawn mower through a course of cones while getting increasingly more and more drunk. He did this under the supervision of Laramie County Sheriff's Office deputies, and it was all very kosher, very safe event. But the response that Sheriff Brian Kozak has received from hosting this event in the Cheyenne public has now moved on to a national stage… they will now present this at a conference in Chicago on kind of traffic enforcement and the dangers of drunk driving. And really the purpose of this presentation is to showcase how law enforcement agencies can utilize the media to get their messages across in particularly unique ways.”
The presentation will be part of a class the sheriff’s office will be conducting called “The West Wasn’t Won By Sitting On Your Porch: Effective Strategies For Leadership In Traffic Safety.”
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, or listen to us on your favorite podcast app. Thanks for tuning in - I’m Wendy Corr, for Cowboy State Daily.
