It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming, for Tuesday, June 3rd. 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.
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The U.S. Department of Education on Monday announced it’s investigating the University of Wyoming because it “allowed a man to join a campus sorority,” referring to the UW-campus-based sorority chapter of Kappa Kappa Gamma, which inducted a transgender member in 2022.
However, Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that UW was not the entity responsible - the campus-based chapter of of the sorority did that itself, by a vote of its members in 2022. That vote is now the subject of ongoing litigation, in which six women accuse the sorority of tweaking normal election processes to pressure members into voting to induct Artemis Langford.
“It's unclear what the US Department of Education is trying to do here, because the sorority is a private organization… in 2023 Judge Johnson was like, this is a private group. They can dictate their membership. And you know, well, whether they dictated their membership in terms that were in ways that were appropriate is still being disputed. But at no point did the sorority women sue the University of Wyoming, because… the university doesn't dictate the sorority’s membership. So it's unclear what the federal department is trying to do investigating the university, which has always drawn a bright line between itself and the sorority.”
Langford was not living in the sorority house at the time but was permitted access to the women’s living quarters. The lawsuit complaint alleges awkward encounters between Langford and the other members at a slumber party and other events.
Read the full story HERE.
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Sawyer Costa was a fierce friend, loved animals and shared a family passion for hockey.
That’s how her mother, Kim, said she’ll remember the Laramie 10-year-old who died Saturday, a week after a devastating collision with a truck while she was selling lemonade with her best friend. Kim told Cowboy State Daily’s Greg Johnson that Sawyer suffered a traumatic brain injury May 24 when she was hit by a truck while crossing a road near the local golf course.
“From all accounts… Sawyer Costa was just really a real spunky girl. Her mother called her a firecracker. Had a passion for hockey, and was even though she was a tiny 10 year old, she she was playing on a co-ed team with some of the boys who are, like a good foot and a half taller than her, and her coach said that she just had no fear… it's just a heartbreaking story for this family and for the whole hockey community, and especially for the family, because… This comes about 15 months after her father was permanently paralyzed in a rollover crash… the thing that they came up with for the family is just, it's unfair.”
Wyoming Highway Patrol Lt. Brock Weitzel said there is an active investigation into the incident, but that he couldn’t share any information until that’s been completed.
Read the full story HERE.
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On Monday afternoon, Mike Stephens was out moving cattle on his family's Converse County ranch, appreciating the sweeping views of the Laramie Mountains stretching across the horizon.
That view is one of the reasons why Stephens is taking legal action against the Wyoming Board of Land Commissioners, which approved a lease for the Pronghorn H2 wind project, that would span roughly 46,000 acres total, when including private lands. Stephens told Cowboy State Daily’s David Madison that he also believes the Board didn’t follow proper procedures when it approved the lease by a vote of 4-1.
“I spoke to Stephens’ attorney, they aren't ready to reveal exactly the problem they have with the way this lease for the Pronghorn development came to be, but they have until late June to provide the specifics in a follow up brief to the court… The concerns they raised were typical of energy development where there's worries like, Well, hey, what if the company goes out of business? Am I going to be left with state land that has non operating windmills on them, and, you know, some other concerns about the wildlife on the on the land, sage grouse, mule deer. But I think it's a lot to be determined here, as far as the particulars in their complaint.”
Stephens said he’s planning to attend an event on Saturday, June 7, when Secretary of State Chuck Gray will continue his outreach tour, meeting with opponents to the Pronghorn and Sidewinder projects.
Read the full story HERE.
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A static webcam overlooking Black Diamond Pool in Yellowstone National Park has already captured footage of an eruption, only two weeks after it was installed.
This Saturday, Black Diamond Pool in the Biscuit Basin sent hot, muddy water several feet into the air. The eruption only lasted a few seconds, but it sent a torrent of water out of the crater before subsiding.
The eruption wasn’t anything on the scale of the hydrothermal explosion that occurred on July 23, 2024, but Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi reports that it’s a sign that the pool is active and erratic.
“They know it's been erupting since that big explosion. They've only witnessed two of those eruptions, so they wanted a camera there to see what was going on, so they could monitor it and get an idea of what the new behavior is and what the pool's doing. And in two weeks, since they installed that webcam on May 31 8:39pm, they caught an eruption of Black Diamond pool. So it's already paying for itself, in that sense, because it's giving these scientists really valuable information about what the pool is doing and what it might do in the future, and those are essential questions to answer before biscuit basin is reopened to the public.”
Poland and other scientists are trying to understand “the new normal” for Black Diamond Pool, post-explosion. They believe the event last July permanently altered the pool’s behavior and plumbing system, and that the pool has yet to establish its new pattern of behavior.
Read the full story HERE.
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Seating just eight delegates in the 93-member Wyoming Legislature and having weathered tough losses in the 2024 national elections, the Wyoming Democrats’ strategy is to plunge into rural communities and help people on the ground.
That’s what multiple party officials told Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland at the party’s officer elections meeting in Rock Springs on Sunday.
“The Democrats that I interviewed at that, that state party meeting Sunday said… We just need to connect with people more on the ground level. We need to go to local board meetings. We need to volunteer. We need to show people … with our actions rather than our words, what we're here to do for them. That was the statement that was given to me over the course of multiple interviews.”
Newly-elected state party Chair Lucas Fralik said county parties are already “energized” toward volunteerism, and it’s time to mobilize in more Wyoming communities.
Read the full story HERE.
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More than three weeks after 15 of their cattle fell over, suffered seizures and died in a single day on a Colorado ranch, the cattle’s owners remain completely baffled as to the cause.
Kerri Higgs told Cowboy State Daily’s Mark Heinz that she and her husband have been raising cattle for about a decade on their place near Coal Creek in Fremont County, Colorado, and they’ve never seen anything like this.
“She said that they started falling over and suffering seizure seizures and Dying, apparently symptomatic of some sort of brain swelling, but it's it's been weeks now they have not been able to determine a cause of what killed these cow killed these cows, and it's interesting, because nearly all the cows that died out of the herd were were first time heifers. Most of their calves survived, and the bull from that bunch survived, and most of you know, most of the yearlings and steers too. So it’s just a really weird case. She said they tested the water initially, they thought it was sulfate poisoning, but they ruled that out.”
The Colorado Energy and Carbon Management Commission plans to send personnel to test for gasses and soil contamination in the pasture. And Higgs said she’d also like a thorough necropsy done on at least one of the cattle carcasses, but that hasn’t happened yet.
Read the full story HERE.
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Add Wyoming’s congressional delegation to the outraged voices asking how an Egyptian national in the United States illegally could pull off a targeted attack on Americans with a homemade flamethrower and Molotov cocktails.
45-year-old Mohamed Soliman is being held on a $10 million cash-only bond after allegedly burning 12 people in a crowd that had gathered to raise awareness of Israeli hostages in Gaza.
Wyoming’s US Representative Harriet Hageman told Cowboy State Daily’s Greg Johnson that the fact that the suspect was in this country illegally after overstaying a B2 nonimmigrant visa issued under the Biden administration, is, quote, “unacceptable.”
“Both Harriet Hageman and Cynthia Lummis responded to questions about that, saying that it's an example of just how bad Biden's immigration policies have been and that they're still having to deal with it… he apparently yelled Free Palestine as he fired a makeshift flame thrower into the crowd and tossed a couple of Molotov cocktails. And that when they nabbed him pretty quickly and they found that there was he had 16 other unused Molotov cocktails at the ready. Uh, and that he afterward, had said that he planned it for a year and that he wasn't sorry, and then he would do it again.
In a statement to Cowboy State Daily on Monday, Senator Cynthia Lummis doubled down on the need to tighten immigration policy.
Read the full story HERE.
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A visit to Yellowstone National Park is a multi-sensory experience of sight, smell, and sound.
One sound that always thrills and chills in Yellowstone is the distant howling of wolves. But while anyone can find and listen to a mud pot or a waterfall, there isn’t a venue or a set schedule that will lead visitors to a guaranteed chorus of wolves.
So, what’s the best way to hear wolves in Yellowstone? Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi reports that it depends on the time, the season, and the reason.
“The best times to listen for them are dawn and dusk, because they're corpuscular, which means they're most active at dawn and dusk. Wolves howling is territorial. So if you want to hear wolves howling, you want to go at the time when they're establishing territory, which tends to be winter. So not summer, that’s not the best time of year to hear them. And naturally, you want to go to the spots where the wolves are just hanging out, and that tends to be the northern section of the park along the Lamar Valley.”
The entirety of the Northeast Entrance Road from Mammoth Hot Springs to Cooke City, Montana, has higher chances for wolf howling. According to the National Park Service, there were at least eight different wolf packs with territory along the road in 2023.
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.
