It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming for Thursday, September 4th. I’m Wendy Corr, bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily newsroom… Brought to you by Wyoming Interventional and Vascular Associates. WIVA offers the best solution for treating tired, aching and swollen legs, at Wyoming's only IAC-accredited vein facility. With virtually no downtime and minimal risks, if you’re ready for relief, see what WIVA can do for you. Schedule a consultation at Casper Medical Imaging dot net, forward slash WIVA.
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Wildfire is recognized to have a cleansing and renewing role in nature, but allowing it to take its natural course is considered too risky in Wyoming.
Cowboy State Daily’s Mark Heinz reports that most state and federal agencies in charge of public lands have a standing policy to go after every blaze with everything they’ve got, as soon as possible.
“The Wyoming state forester, she mentioned on our radio news program recently that that agency has a zero tolerance policy towards wildfire. In other words, there's no let it burn policy in their playbook, fire springs up on their land, they're going to go try to put it out… the only place where a fire might be allowed to burn naturally is in a wilderness area under the US Forest Service jurisdiction. The potential problem with that, as we saw with the pack trail fire last year, sometimes those natural fires can blow out of or escape the boundaries of the wilderness and burned a lot of the forest around them.”
But no agency or landowner is expected to stand alone. When a fire breaks out, it typically doesn’t matter whose land it’s on - firefighters from the local, county, state and federal levels all pitch in to put it out.
Read the full story HERE.
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Wyoming and 45 other states and territories are being warned against keeping what the Trump administration calls "gender ideology" in their sex-education curricula — on the threat of losing federal money.
Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that a group of Wyoming Republican lawmakers have publicly asked Gov. Mark Gordon to explain the curriculum President Donald Trump’s administration is now demanding be removed.
“On the one hand, we have the Freedom Caucus riled up, like, we are out of compliance with Trump's agency, and we're touting this gender ideology, and how is this okay, Wyoming. And then on the other hand, you have Governor Mark Gordon's spokesman, like, the Department of Health just had to choose from federally approved materials under the Biden administration… according to the governor's spokesman, it's not like there was some sinister social agenda here. It's just Wyoming trying to keep up with federal grant requirements.”
Gordon’s office said the state is being whiplashed from the expectations of one federal administration to the next.
Read the full story HERE.
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Wyoming Republican U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman took to the House floor Wednesday to advocate for Congressional Review Act resolutions that would overturn three Bureau of Land Management resource management plans.
Hageman argued that the Biden-era policies amount to "mineral withdrawals in disguise" that restrict energy development across millions of acres. However, Cowboy State Daily’s David Madison reports that the novel use of the Congressional Review Act to challenge land management plans has drawn significant opposition from legal scholars and environmental groups that warn the action could destabilize decades of federal land management policy.
“This is a big deal when it comes to how Bureau of Land Management lands are managed. Critics say they're taking the management out of the BLM, proponents like representative Hageman say this is long overdue. We need to clear the way for more energy development on public land.”
Changing restrictive federal land use policies has been a longstanding priority for Wyoming leaders across all levels of government, who argue such plans hamper the state's energy-dependent economy.
Read the full story HERE.
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State Rep. Bill Allemand of Casper now goes by the nickname “Mr. No-Nuclear.”
It’s a title he earned from his fellow representatives, due to his fierce opposition against plans by energy developer Radiant Nuclear to bring nuclear microreactors, and their spent nuclear waste, near Bar Nunn.
Cowboy State Daily’s Jackson Walker reports that Allemand is just one of a growing number of voices trying to make themselves heard in the debate, which most recently spiraled into a public shouting match during a Bar Nunn Town Council meeting Tuesday night.
“At a meeting of the Bar Nunn town council on Tuesday night, we saw State Representative Bill Allemand come in and deliver testimony to Mayor Peter Boyer, and that sort of sparked an argument. Things got very fiery, and the two are not on great terms… this argument that they're having stemmed from a nuclear project that is trying to move into the area, and it's going to be storing nuclear waste near bar none. So Mayor Peter Boyer, he's very much in favor of this. He thinks it's going to help elevate not only his city, but the state and Representative Allemand is almost on the other side, saying we can't support this because of its nuclear waste.”
Bar Nunn Mayor Peter Boyer, according to Allemand, had previously been his good friend, and had even served on Allemand’s election committee. Now, in the wake of his nuclear advocacy, Allemand says Boyer won’t return his phone calls.
Read the full story HERE.
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Uranium Energy Corp. has announced plans for a state-of-the-art uranium refining facility that would be the nation's largest.
Cowboy State Daily’s David Madison spoke to a representative from the company, who said that Wyoming is on the short list to be home to the processing complex.
“I spoke to the Vice President from a major nuclear symposium in London, England today, and he announced that Wyoming is one of a few states they're considering… to site, what is essentially a uranium refinery. The same way crude oil gets changed into gasoline… it's this refining step that there's a bottleneck on currently. Globally, we've depended on Russia and other countries to get us through this step in the nuclear fuel cycle… this next one that Uranium Energy Corp wants to build will be the biggest one in the United States, and it could be in Wyoming.”
Once the new facility is complete, no matter where it’s located, it will likely help supply the refined atomic ingredients needed to fuel every type of reactor, including microreactors like those Radiant hopes to manufacture in Bar Nunn.
Read the full story HERE.
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A 46-year-old Casper man charged with starting three fires around the city since May — and suspected in others — allegedly told police he turns to arson when he gets mad at his landlord over having to pay rent.
Dallas Ray Smith appeared Tuesday in Casper Circuit Court on two counts of fourth-degree arson stemming from two fires he’s accused of starting Friday. Cowboy State Daily’s Dale Killingbeck reports that if convicted of all the charges, Smith could face over 20 years in jail.
“He's been charged with three so far, and the police are saying that he may be charged with some others as well. But what he is charged with is setting a fire inside a building where… homeless people were living… And the reason he does this, he told police, is because when he goes to pay rent, the landlord doesn't treat him well, so he gets angry, and he has to go start a fire.”
According to court documents, Smith told investigators he typically gathers leaves together and lights them on fire. Although the fires scare him, he said they provide some relief to emotions he doesn’t otherwise know how to deal with.
Read the full story HERE.
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A cosmetic surgeon who worked formerly for a clinic in Casper denies wrongdoing in a lawsuit brought by two women, accusing him of leaving them disfigured and sickened in 2023.
Afton Jennings and Casi Duncan in July sued Dr. Christopher Stewart, a cosmetic surgeon who previously worked for Casper-based New Beautiful You. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that the plaintiffs claim they suffered devastating outcomes after Stewart performed cosmetic surgeries on them, including infection, necrosis, permanent disfigurement and loss of bodily function.
“You have these women claiming that they were disfigured and badly. One woman, she lost her nipple after just such infection that they had to put maggots in her breast, in this ruptured open breast to feed off of the necrotic tissue. And you know, the other one saying she had a mommy makeover, and she was just wracked with fever and chills and issues and ruptures and problems for a long time after that.”
In a court filing Friday, Dr. Stewart denied that his actions or inactions breached the applicable medical standard of care, or resulted in the women’s alleged injuries or damages. The case is ongoing.
Read the full story HERE.
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With a key component of the 2020 Great American Outdoors Act set to expire at the end of this month, the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources is set to meet Friday in Grand Teton National Park to consider whether to continue funding infrastructure in national parks.
The committee, which includes Wyoming Republican Rep. Harriet Hageman, is scheduled to hold an oversight hearing at the Jenny Lake Visitor Center. Cowboy State Daily’s Mark Heinz reports that the main topic will likely be the Legacy Restoration Fund section of the Great American Outdoors Act, which was signed into law by President Trump in 2020.
“There's actually two parts to it. One part is geared towards the acquisition of new waters and new lands. A big chunk of that money was used, for example, to secure the public access to the Kelly parcel just outside of Teton National Park… The other part of the funding that goes into infrastructure and repairs in national parks and some other federal lands that had a five year time limit on it.”
Hageman told Cowboy State Daily that the purpose of the hearing is to scrutinize the Great American Outdoors Act and its effectiveness so far. She said “questionable projects” were authorized under the act during the Biden administration.
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.
