It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming for Thursday, July 17th. I’m Wendy Corr, bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily newsroom - Brought to you by Cheyenne Frontier Days. Kick off Cheyenne Frontier Days' first weekend - July 18‑20 - with Wyoming’s own Ian Munsick and Travis Tritt, Jordan Davis with Brett Young, and Bailey Zimmerman with Josh Ross. Country music’s biggest stars, only at Cheyenne Frontier Days! Don’t miss the 129th Daddy of ‘Em all, July 18-27th.
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As Wyoming aspires to be an energy powerhouse, a new generation of cybersecurity defenders is training in Wyoming and at the Idaho National Lab.
Cowboy State Daily’s David Madison reports that as AI booms, this state-of-the-art cybersecurity training represents a critical, but often overlooked, component of any energy boom.
“Laramie County Community College is one of the leading places in the country to learn how to protect the infrastructure, the grid, the operating system of any energy venture out there in Wyoming. And so as we report on all these different sectors expanding alongside them is expanding this world of cybersecurity. Luckily, Wyoming has this great resource at L Triple C and the Idaho National Lab is that it's kind of the Pentagon. It really is the kind of overseeing this whole protecting our electrical and energy sector.”
Wyoming has already experienced cyber-related threats. In June 2021, Eastern Wyoming College in Torrington was the target of a cyberattack that disabled the institution's computer, phone and email systems for several days.
Read the full story HERE.
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The man killed in an officer-involved shooting Monday in Worland has been identified as Worland resident 37-year-old Derek Fyffe.
The Worland Police Department said officers found him standing outside his vehicle, and he darted into his vehicle as they approached. When he did exit, he fought officers, produced a handgun and fired at the four police officers on scene. Two officers shot back, and he died on scene.
But Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that this was not the first time Fyffe was involved in an altercation with police.
“I did find an incident of violence toward police back in 2017 around New Year's Day, when he tried to bite a deputy that came to help secure him in a restraint chair, because he was being very aggressive once taken into the jail… he was sentenced to four years probation on that one, and he was released from probation in 2021. He also had a probation stemming from another drug charge that was only two years and it was around the same time.”
One police officer sustained non-life-threatening gunshot injuries in the incident, and was briefly hospitalized at the Washakie Medical Center. The two officers who shot Fyffe are on paid administrative leave during the investigation.
Read the full story HERE.
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Attorneys for a landowner in Wyoming’s famous “corner-crossing” dispute took their first step Wednesday toward bringing the case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Cowboy State Daily’s Mark Heinz reports that if the Supreme Court decides the case is worth hearing, the outcome would decide once and for all whether it’s legal for hunters and others to “hop corners” between checkerboarded private and public land parcels.
“That corner crossing case has dragged on forever. Started back when those hunters hopped between a corner between private and public land in 2021 up there by elk mountain. It's been through all the lower courts. So far, the courts have all decided up the line in favor of the hunters, but the landowners and the holding company decided they want to take it all away so they filed the petition before the Supreme Court. Now all this does is put it on the extremely long list of the cases the Supreme Court will decide whether they're even going to hear.”
It could take until mid-October before the high court decides whether to take the case.
Read the full story HERE.
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Folks in northern Wyoming are dealing with more aftermath from last fall’s Elk Fire, which burned nearly 100,000-acres, as heavy rains are causing mud and rocks to flow down onto local roads.
A section of U.S. Highway 14 in the Bighorn Mountains was closed overnight Tuesday after a debris flow covered both lanes and damaged infrastructure near the Crystal Springs Rest Area between Burgess Junction and Dayton. Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi reports that it’s been a particularly problematic area since the fire last fall.
“Crystal Springs Rest Area has been a spot of concern since the fire, because it's a steep slope. The fire burned there very long and very intensely. So it was a spot where everyone was anticipating debris flows to occur, and several have occurred. This is the first one that was significant enough to cause a partial closure of us 14 while WYDOT and the Dayton volunteer fire department were out there cleaning it up. So it was caused by an afternoon thunderstorm saturating the ground, causing the earth to move and lots of rocks and trees to spill out onto the highway.”
The highway was reopened by Wednesday morning after WYDOT and personnel from the Dayton Volunteer Fire Department spent most of the night clearing the mud and rocks from the road.
Read the full story HERE.
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A wide-reaching legal effort to use permits issued for oil and gas wells in Wyoming and New Mexico to wage a broader battle against climate change hit a significant roadblock Tuesday when a federal appeals court unanimously ruled against a coalition of conservation groups.
Cowboy State Daily’s David Madison reports that the groups had argued the 4,000 individual drilling permits across Wyoming's Powder River Basin and New Mexico's Permian Basin would contribute to climate change impacts, affecting species and habitats spanning from coral reefs in Fiji to polar bears in the Arctic.
“Nothing about this ruling denies that climate change is a problem, that species and ecosystems that are represented in the plaintiff's filing, those are real problems. What came down yesterday was a decision saying, the way you're going about this, conservation groups, it doesn't match up to current law… You're trying to use these permits in Wyoming and New Mexico to make a huge global point about how we need to be concerned about climate change.”
The three-judge panel found that while the plaintiffs had identified potential harms from oil and gas development, they failed to link those injuries to the specific permits they sought to challenge.
Read the full story HERE.
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With “aye” votes from Wyoming’s two U.S. senators, a recissions bill scheduled to claw back around $1.1 billion from publicly funded media, cleared a committee Tuesday evening, and reached the Senate floor for debate.
Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that, facing a Friday deadline to hit the president’s desk, the bill would strip the next two fiscal years’ funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, impacting outlets like PBS and Wyoming Public Media.
“Wyoming's two senators were actually key Tuesday night in advancing what was a very narrow vote to move the rescission bill to the floor. 50-50, Vice President JD Vance had to come and do the tiebreaker… without their two votes, it would not have survived those two procedural votes to get into the debate stage… I talked to heads of different public outlets on Wednesday who will be affected if this goes through the Senate and then the house approves any changes, and you know, most of them are like, they're accusing us of bias, but there's actually guardrails, and there's actually things that are preventing us from being biased that actually commercial outlets don't necessarily fall subject to.”
Wyoming PBS receives a rough annual average of $1.4 million — about a third of its operating budget. General Manager Joanna Kail told Cowboy State Daily that losing that money would force significant restructuring within the outlet and other entities that receive that money as dues from stations.
Read the full story HERE.
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Montana is considering setting a wolf kill quota of 500 for the 2025-2026 wolf seasons, allowing hunters and trappers to take as many as 15 wolves each.
If hunters and trappers fill the quota, it would cut Montana’s wolf population roughly in half, leaving about 550 of the predators, according to outdoors reporter Mark Heinz.
“Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks Commission is proposing a wolf quota of 500 wolves for the upcoming hunting season, which could add up to roughly half of the state's wolf population. And depending on who you ask, it's either a great idea or a horrible idea. I don't get the sense that anybody expects that wolves are going to be relisted as an endangered species in Montana again anytime soon. But you know, this is a controversial move by Fish, Wildlife and Parks up there… some people argue that it's terrible, that's killing way too many wolves. And some people are saying, now that's what we need to get things balanced back out and kind of restore balance to the ecosystem.”
During last year’s wolf seasons, Montana hunters and trappers killed 289 wolves.
Read the full story HERE.
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Archaeologists use obsidian to determine how far people traveled on ancient trade routes across Wyoming. Each flake of the shiny, black-glass mineral bears a unique volcanic fingerprint that points to its place of origin, which can be hundreds of miles away.
Cowboy State Daily’s Jackie Dorothy spoke with Wyoming State Archaeologist Spencer Pelton, who has found a significant number of obsidian tools, jewelry and other relics at the Willow Creek campsite, located northwest of Tie Siding.
“The significance of Willow Creek is that it's a travel corridor. They've known it's been used for thousands of years, and so they've been trying to trace back where these people are coming from. By having the obsidian, they were able to determine the locations that the rocks came from, because each volcano has its own fingerprint, if you will… these pieces of obsidian have been traced back to Idaho, New Mexico. You can look on our site and you can see the map that traces it back and shows you the long distances people actually traveled to get to this oasis in the middle of Wyoming.”
For the past 60 years, archaeologists have continued to make new discoveries at the dig site. Using new technology, old discoveries are now also revealing new clues about the people who once were at the campsite.
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.
