It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming, for Thursday, May 22nd. I’m Wendy Corr, bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily newsroom - Brought to you by the Wyoming Community Foundation, who asks you to give back to the place you call home. “5 to thrive” is YOUR opportunity to leave a legacy for generations to come. Support the community nonprofits you care about with a gift through the Wyoming Community Foundation. Visit wycf.org to learn more.
A pair of controversial wind projects that promise to spread out over more than 180,000 acres in Niobrara and Converse counties has deeply divided these eastern Wyoming communities, locals say.
The projects were approved 4-1 last month by the Wyoming State Land Board. But a town meeting hosted by Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray showcased the opposing views on these green energy projects. Cowboy State Daily’s Greg Johnson was at the meeting.
“The people here are pretty upset, and to the point that a former commissioner said that… friendships are ending over this. The people…that you know they don't help each other out the way they did because of their stances on… these wind projects. And the big issue, it seems like, in addition to some people just being against… wind, because wind is subsidized and it competes with our legacy fossil fuels… they're divided over the property rights issues… I talked to a guy who is a fourth generation rancher… he said that this will just destroy the value of his land. It'll destroy his view. He held up a picture of the view he has, which is an amazing view, but he said it'll just be full of turbines if it goes through.”
Throughout the meeting, some in the audience expressed frustration with Gov. Mark Gordon for his voting for the project, and Gray elaborated, saying the governor is, quote, “out of touch” with Wyomingites.
Read the full story HERE.
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The Wyoming Democratic Party’s chair of eight years is leaving his position to take a role with a nationwide group that supports state Democratic parties.
Party Chair Joe Barbuto is stepping down from his seat Thursday, to begin a new role with the Association of State Democratic Committees. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that the last eight years have seen quite a few changes for Wyoming Democrats under Barbuto’s leadership.
“What really came out, as he was recounting those eight years, is what a wild ride it's been for Democrats in Wyoming. They lived to see their own, revere Liz Cheney as a hero for standing up to Trump, which I think a lot of Wyoming Democrats would never have predicted. They lived to see the alleged infiltration of their ranks by far right operatives… And you know, when I interviewed his vice chair, who's going to be acting chair while he's out, and before the election in June, she was like a lot of what we do is just letting Democrats know that they're not alone, that they should organize, that they should gather, that they're not some freak breed out there in rural Wyoming.”
O’Doherty told Cowboy State Daily she knows of potential candidates for the chairmanship, but declined to name them Wednesday. Elections will be held June 1 in Rock Springs.
Read the full story HERE.
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Three Wyoming counties are teaming up to get a better handle on the hidden wildfire threat lurking beneath the surface of northeastern Wyoming.
Coal seam fires occur when underground coal deposits ignite and smolder, often for years. When the fires burn through their covering soil, they can spark wildfires in nearby vegetation, particularly during hot, windy days.
Cowboy State Daily’s David Madison reports that Campbell, Johnson and Sheridan counties are applying for grant funding to map coal seam fires across the region - a project officials hope will help mitigate wildfire risks that have plagued the area for years.
“A coal seam is exposed coal on the surface of the earth, and if it catches fire, it can burn for more than a century. I read today in a report put out by the emergency folks in Johnson, Sheridan and Campbell counties that one such coal seam fire was started during the James Buchanan administration way back in 1859, so these go for a long time, and the counties are combining forces to map them. There could be hundreds that they don't know about.”
A Coal Seam Fire Mapping Project stakeholder meeting is scheduled for 5:30 this evening at the Campbell County Courthouse.
Read the full story HERE.
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When it comes to wildlife-related social media sites, Wyoming grizzlies have been the stars of the show so far this spring. Popular sites, particularly those centered on Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks, have been flooded with photos and video clips of bears, particularly females with cubs.
That led outdoors reporter Mark Heinz to wonder - are there more bears than ever, or just more people following them and taking pictures?
“I just noticed lately that on my Facebook feed, anyway, into the wildlife related pages, it's just been grizzly photo after grizzly photo. It's just wall-to-wall Grizzlies everywhere, all the time. So I reached out to some wildlife photographers that I know, and they said, Yeah, that is true. It's not necessarily that there's many more Grizzlies… Grizzlies are getting a lot of attention. They're getting a lot of photos taken of them, and people love to share these images online… even though we lost 399 last year, we lost the big queen of celebrity bears, grizzly bears in general, and a few grizzly bear like, there's, there's still Raspberry and Jam, Snow, and, you know, there's still a lot of celebrity bears out there. And there's the this trend doesn't show any sign of slowing.”
Late spring and early summer are the best time to catch lots of grizzly action near roads and in other highly-visible areas. One photographer said she spotted at least 15 grizzlies in Yellowstone on Tuesday, including five at one time.
Read the full story HERE.
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In the bar stool economics that rules the world for bartenders and other service industry workers, a server never knows what kind of tip they’re going to get when a customer sits down in front of them.
So the No Tax on Tips Act, which unanimously cleared the U.S. Senate on Tuesday, has Wyoming servers in a wait-and-see mode. The ones who spoke with business reporter Renee Jean had a wide range of reactions.
“With any bill, there are always unintended consequences, right? The one gal that I finally got to talk to me about this was wondering how it's going to interact with her financial aid… one of her questions was, why did wages have to be so low anyway? Why can't we just have a normal wage for people who are servers?... And another one wondered, you know, is it really going to be that big of a deal? You know, how much more income is it really going to be and then we still have to report tips, which is a big pain in the butt anyway… But I think by and large, even though they have a lot of questions, they're still hopeful that this could be a boost to their income.”
The Senate’s version of the No Tax on Tips bill would exempt the first $25,000 in tips for workers whose individual incomes are less than $160,000 a year. From the Senate, the bill goes over to the U.S. House of Representatives, which is in the midst of negotiating Trump’s One, Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Read the full story HERE.
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Walmart is asking Wyoming’s lawmakers to bolster the state’s anti-theft laws against sophisticated, multi-person organized theft attacks.
The legislative Joint Judiciary Committee during its Tuesday meeting in Torrington voted to draft bills that would increase the penalty for misdemeanor theft, decrease the monetary threshold for charging felony theft, and create other penalties that could address what Walmart officials say is a growing problem. That’s according to crime and courts reporter Clair McFarland.
“Walmart actually approached the Wyoming legislature on Tuesday, like, we have these organized heists, where people will stage distractions, or do look out or do other things as part of a scheme to steal super valuable things and go and resell them, and hit the store potentially more than one time. So it's an operation, right? And they weren't alone. The liquor industry of Wyoming and the Chamber of Commerce and the law enforcement lobby, Wyoming association of sheriffs and chiefs of police, also said, Yeah, we should do something about this, because it's kind of just a hit and flee type of crime that's pretty hard to deal with.”
The committee has about eight months to fine-tune, change or reject this bill draft ahead of the Feb. 9 lawmaking session.
Read the story HERE.
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Even after both Wyoming and Utah lifted catch limits on smaller lake trout at Flaming Gorge Reservoir, the trout are still gobbling too many of the reservoir’s prized kokanee salmon.
That’s what a marina owner told outdoors reporter Mark Heinz. Tony Valdez, owner of the Buckboard Marina, said bringing in a commercial fishing operation to net massive numbers of lake trout might be the only option at this point.
“For a few years now, there's been concern over Lake Trout just gobbling up coconut salmon, and Kokanee salmon being the more desirable trophy fish, and there's been some efforts to try to balance that out a little bit… But I spoke with a person who runs a marina there… He actually advocates for them, going in and getting a commercial outfit to net massive amounts of lake trout out of the lake, as they did in Yellowstone Lake.”
An assistant aquatic manager with the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources said he doesn’t yet have enough data in his new position to determine whether commercial netting of lake trout would be a good idea. But even if it was, it’s incredibly expensive, possibly costing about $1.7 million to conduct a mass netting of lake trout at Flaming Gorge.
Read the full story HERE.
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It’s been a bad tornado season across the United States. Over the last few weeks, multiple tornadoes have caused deaths and tremendous property damage in several states.
While Wyoming’s weather and topography makes the state relatively safe from the most damaging of tornadoes, we still do get twisters in Wyoming. Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi reports that funnel clouds were spotted in Laramie County on Sunday and four tornadoes touched down in eastern Colorado.
“We're not in Tornado Alley, which is that swath of the Great Plains that stretches from South Dakota to Texas, but we are on the periphery of it, and we share borders with a lot of states that are in Tornado Alley. So it's not as potent a threat in Wyoming as it is in other states… You need moisture and warmth to create tornadoes, and the most likely spot where the conditions are right where you'll get a severe thunderstorm with a funnel cloud coming off the bottom of it, are in Eastern Wyoming. So we're talking Platte, Goshen, Laramie counties, that's the most likely spot for tornado to form, but there have been tornadoes recorded in Grand Teton National Park before. It's harder for tornadoes to form with mountains, so it's less likely in Western Wyoming than Eastern Wyoming. But that doesn't mean any part of Wyoming is safe.”
On Sunday, a massive funnel cloud was spotted touching down near Bennett, Colorado. The tornado tore through central Colorado, avoiding the Denver Metro area but damaging over 20 homes in its path.
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.
