It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming, for Thursday, June 12th. 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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Yellowstone National Park has long been considered a bucket list destination for many international visitors, particularly Chinese, European and Canadian tourists.
They might soon be paying more to visit the park. Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports that Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is proposing an additional surcharge for foreign visitors to the nation’s parks.
“I think part of it Wendy is just the idea that we Americans, we pay taxes to support these national parks. Foreign visitors, you know, they're impacting the resource, but they're really not paying a, quote, ‘fair share.’ They're not paying taxes toward it, and they're paying the same entry fee that Americans pay… I think also it's way to raise additional money to support the parks. There's, I don't know how many billion in deferred maintenance… that the parks have needed, and there have been various efforts to try and get that taken care of… So you know this, this proposal to charge foreign visitors more is actually part of a much broader budget proposal.”
The exact amount of the foreign visitor fee isn’t stated in Burgum’s plan, though it estimates the fee would generate around $90 million.
Read the full story HERE.
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In what could foreshadow fireworks during the Wyoming Legislature’s 2026 session, tempers flared Wednesday during a debate in a legislative committee over whether ranchers and farmers should be able to sell their landowner hunting tags.
On one side of the debate are those who say that letting agricultural landowners put their hunting tags up for sale could provide much-needed income. However, Cowboy State Daily’s Mark Heinz reports that hunting advocate groups seem dead-set against allowing tag sales, claiming it would amount to monetizing Wyoming’s wildlife.
“There were some terse exchanges… between legislators on the committee, and also between them and some of the people who came to testify… the sportsmen are kind of looking at this as… it would violate the North American model of game management to put wildlife up for sale… the other side of the perspective or argument is that landowners really deserve compensation for providing all the habitat and forage that they do for these animals, as well as the damage that they can cause. You know, elk tearing up fences or tearing up irrigation pipe, things like that.”
The Wyoming Game and Fish Department’s landowner hunting tag program began in 1949. The program is intended to reward landowners for providing forage, water and habitat for wildlife.
Read the full story HERE.
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A Gillette 18-year-old has learned that even joking about bombing the Pentagon on social media is a bad idea.
He got a visit from the Campbell County Sheriff’s Office on Tuesday evening after an agent at the Pentagon asked the department to look into the post on X. Cowboy State Daily’s Greg Johnson reports that the post said, quote, “It’s time to bomb the … Pentagon,” endquote, and was traced to a Gillette IP address.
“If you ever wondered if people were paying attention to social media, if Big Brother is out there, the answer is yes… a Gillette teenager learned that the hard way on Tuesday, when the sheriff's office, a bunch of deputies showed up at his house because they got a call from the Pentagon, and that's because this 18 year old who was unidentified, because he hasn't been charged with anything… posted on X, formerly Twitter, that maybe someone should bomb the Pentagon… They quickly determined that he didn't mean what he said… and that he had no means to actually pull it off, so they didn't ticket him.”
However, that doesn’t mean the book is closed. Federal agents may still want to talk to the young man.
Read the full story HERE.
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More than a dozen women and children wearing “Justice for Haleigh” T-shirts gathered in front of the Campbell County Courthouse on Wednesday afternoon to peacefully protest in honor of 33-year-old Haleigh Martinez, who was shot and killed by her half-brother in January.
Cowboy State Daily’s Jen Kocher spoke to family and friends of Martinez, who say that what happened that night, which led up to Vincent Hackett shooting Martinez at point-blank range, is confusing to all of them.
“There's more complexity between the relationship between Haleigh Martinez and her brother Vincent Hackett, who shot and killed her in January… they were actually very close and she considered herself his protector…the protesters who were there are very much against Vincent Hackett saying this was self defense… they don't know what happened that night. Obviously, something went terribly wrong, but they believe that he should take accountability for his crime, and to just say, Yes, I shot my sister instead of hiding behind a self defense claim.”
To claim self-defense, the defendant must prove that the person illegally entered the home, that the person was the initial aggressor or involved in illegal activity, and there was a perceived reasonable presumption of fear.
Read the full story HERE.
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A tourist accused of buzzing an osprey nest with a drone in Yellowstone National Park could face stiff penalties, including six months in jail and/or a $5,000 fine.
Flying drones is illegal in Yellowstone, as is harassing wildlife. But a California resident who frequently visits the park told Cowboy State Daily’s Mark Heinz that he caught the drone pilot in the act last Thursday and reported his antics to the National Park Service.
“Vince Botkin… was in the Park on Thursday observing some Osprey and said that somebody started buzzing the nest with a drone… he said he yelled, get that drone out of the sky. And then found the pilot, confronted him, had a little bit of - not physical, but had an exchange of words with the pilot, and he said, at one point, the pilot actually hovered the drone over his head, so he threw his cowboy hat at it, and then, after that, got back into his vehicle, drove to where he had cell service, and immediately gave the Park Service the information.”
Botkin said it was extremely gratifying when the rangers later visited to report that they’d nabbed the alleged perpetrator. He said he checked on the raptors the next day, and they seemed no worse for wear after being buzzed.
Read the full story HERE.
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The Bureau of Land Management's latest quarterly Wyoming oil and gas lease sale Tuesday took in $7.7 million dollars - a fraction of the $173 million Wyoming reaped in the best lease sale year of Trump’s first administration.
Cowboy State Daily’s David Madison spoke to several representatives of the oil and gas industry in Wyoming, who say that reality hasn’t yet caught up to President Donald Trump’s pledge to, quote, “unleash American energy.”
“In spite of all of the efforts that the Trump administration is putting forth, you know, rolling back regulations, opening up more lease sales and prioritizing drilling in Wyoming, they still haven't gotten back to where the first Trump administration had the industry and had the leasing. And I guess the producers are really a little bit disappointed in that… Even though the Trump administration is just pulling out all the stops, they still have not achieved the same level of leasing that the Obama administration and the first Trump administration achieved.”
The Tuesday sale leased 29 parcels totaling about 23,000 acres, with the BLM adding that the sale supports domestic energy production and American energy independence.
Read the full story HERE.
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As the latest example in a growing trend of text scams that impersonate state agencies, residents are being targeted by fraudsters posing as the Wyoming Department of Transportation.
It’s a fake ticket scheme that highlights how hackers have gotten smarter. That’s what law enforcement and cybersecurity experts told Cowboy State Daily’s Zakary Sonntag.
“The scammers have created a interface that looks a lot like the Wyoming Department of Transportation website, and it alerts people that they have unpaid traffic tickets that have resulted in warrants, and if they don't take action now, their license and driving privileges are going to be revoked, and then they're prompted to follow a link that takes them to a destination that looks not unlike the Wyoming Department of Transportation website… Agencies across the board are raising the alarm as soon as they find out… we don't have any confirmed reports of the scam being successful, and they attribute that to a pretty rapid response.”
Wyomingites have proven susceptible to digital scams.The FBI’s Internet Crime Center’s latest report shows online swindlers stole more than $43 million from Wyoming residents in 2024, the third highest scam losses per capita.
Read the full story HERE.
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The U.S. Air Force so far only has five of its new EA-37B Compass Call electronic warfare planes, making it one of America's newest and rarest advanced aircraft. One of them landed at the Casper/Natrona County Airport on Tuesday.
Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi spoke to Airport Director Glenn Januska, who said he didn’t even know it was there until it was preparing for takeoff.
“He told me that he doesn't always know which planes are hanging around the airport… you can get private, military and business planes coming in and out at will without much notice. So he was just walking through the terminal, looked at the observation deck and saw this plane. And he said, in his 37 years in the aviation industry. He had never seen a plane that looked anything like this, and it's perfectly understandable why. Because this plane only was delivered to the US Air Force last August… it's still brand new to the world and to the military.”
Only five of the aircraft are in service as of May 2025. The 10 aircraft ordered by the U.S. Air Force are designed to give a critical advantage in the ever-evolving world of modern warfare.
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.
