It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming for Monday, March 23rd. I’m Mac Watson.
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Wyoming's U.S. Attorney Darin Smith on Friday said federal, Wyoming, and Idaho law enforcement have taken down a Jackson-area drug ring with ties to a Mexican drug cartel. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that Smith said cooperation was the key to taking the bad guys off the street.
“The US Attorney for Wyoming, which was the top federal prosecutor for this district, Darren Smith held a press conference on Friday where he announced the latest sentencing. There was a sentencing earlier this month for one of the defendants, whose nickname is post trade dessert, and at that time, he said that, then, this activity is tied to a Mexican drug cartel, and that cocaine, you know, even though there was this fentanyl boom, cocaine is still very much an issue.”
The press conference followed the most recent sentencing in a years-long case marked with older and newer sentencings – and a controversy that erupted during the legislative session over whether Wyoming should pass a bill penalizing local police for helping federal agents enforce federal gun laws.
Read the full story HERE.
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The town of Kemmerer is booming. Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports that TerraPower will soon be moving in hundreds of workers to build the actual nuclear plant. At its peak there will be 1,600 construction workers.
“Some are very ambivalent about the idea of growing. And like the mayor told me, he doesn't want to grow too much. He doesn't want to get past 6000 people. He feels like that would be plenty of growth. The other camp, I think, is just a lot of the people who are worried about how this is being managed. They're afraid that rents are going to skyrocket because people are not thinking about the demand big enough.”
The key construction permit from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been granted, and concrete and steel are already moving on the site for its precursor Test and Fill facility.
Read the full story HERE.
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It may be one of the most beautiful places to have a fireworks display, but not everyone is happy about the upcoming show at Mount Rushmore for the nation's 250th birthday. Cowboy State Daily’s Kate Meadows reports that some Native Americans say the ground is sacred while others cite fire danger.
“The Lakota people have long held that the land belongs to them. They were here first. They are the tribe that you know, named the Black Hills. They called them the Paja Sapa. And they argue that the hills were just illegally taken. So a lot of the Native Americans don't like Mount Rushmore. There will be a National Park Service Incident Management Team and trained structural and wildland fire crews will be on site for the event. However, the Black Hills are very dry. We are in a drought like a lot of Wyoming is, and even just this last week, there were two forest fires in the Black Hills.”
The National Park Service, along with the state of South Dakota are putting on the fireworks display. A spokesperson at the South Dakota Department of Tourism tells Cowboy State Daily that they are still working on contracts for the event and should know soon how much the fireworks celebration will cost.
Read the full story HERE.
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In 1983, 24-year-old welding student John Boutin vanished from Rawlins after raising concerns about misconduct at his shop. Cowboy State Daily’s Jen Kocher reports that authorities and his family believe he was killed and are still seeking answers in the unsolved case.
“The prime suspect in his case is a guy named Jerry Williams who was running a welding shop where John was a student, and John had accused him and his family of nefarious doings such as falsifying their timesheets and also having the boys steal things from the oil field. Jerry Williams moved to Texas where he was arrested for homicide, and he spent 10 years in prison for homicide. When I asked Carbon County Sheriff Alex Bakken, who has since inherited this case, whether or not an investigator went down there after William's arrest to interview him, he wasn't sure, because he doesn't have the case file. The case file is stored in one of three places, and they haven't been able to find it yet.”
Though considered at first to be a missing person, Boutin’s case reverted to a suspected homicide at some point over the years, according to his missing person record in the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation database.
Read the full story HERE.
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I’ll be back with more news from Cowboy State Daily right after this.
Cowboy State Daily news continues now…
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Sheridan-based Ramaco is accusing its former director of critical minerals of emailing trade secrets to himself before jumping to a rival. Cowboy State Daily’s David Madison reports that the company is asking a federal judge to seize personal devices and any equipment issued by his new employer.
“On July 11, there was a celebration of rare earth at Ramaco between Ranchester and Sheridan. They have a facility there. They have a mine nearby. Everybody came, the Secretary of Energy, the governor, you know, the whole delegation from Washington. And now Ramaco, also internally, suing a former employee for allegedly stealing trade secrets. And so it went from a really big celebration to a lot of turmoil in the courts.”
The complaint, filed March 16 in U.S. District Court for the District of Wyoming, alleges that Alex J. Moyes — who served as director of critical minerals and planning at Ramaco from January 2024 to October 2025 — emailed more than 40 sensitive technical and financial documents to his personal Gmail account in the months before resigning, then took a vice president position at rival USA Rare Earth Inc.
Read the full story HERE.
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A new study finds Yellowstone’s ravens don’t just follow wolves but use mental “maps” to predict likely kill sites. Cowboy State Daily’s Mark Heinz reports that researchers say the birds’ memory and human food sources may shape their scavenging habits.
“Apparently, ravens have a good enough memory. They call it a cognitive map. In their head, they go, oh, there's food here. There's food here. So they go around to where there's reliable food spots, and where the wolves happen to make their most kills, just happens to be one of those reliable food stops. Doug Smith told me that some of the ravens, They tracked him, like, like, they'd have stops all the way up in Billings Montana, where they'd go and, you know, because, hey, there's this garbage dump, I know there's going to be food there. So they just, they're working from memory, and they just go around and kind of run a circuit.”
For decades, wildlife biologists thought that ravens were following wolf packs around, waiting for them to kill an elk, bison, or some other big animal.
As it turns out, ravens are much more intelligent than scientists assumed.
Read the full story HERE.
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Even though the jackalope is mythical, Wyoming was home to an actual prehistoric rodent with two large horns on its head. Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi reports that the prehistoric animal is one of the only horned- burrowing mammals in Earth's history.
“What's interesting about Serato Gallus is that after studying the horns, they determined that they weren't for digging because they weren't structured or shaped the right way, and they weren't for mating because they probably were too blind to see them, so females couldn't find the size of a male's horns attractive. They used their horns to go head-first into any confrontation they needed to have with a predator. Ceratogallis fossils have been found in Central Wyoming. They're not as common as they are in other spots, like Nebraska, but they do turn up here, so Wyoming can claim some ownership of cerrado Gallus.”
Ceratogaulus is the smallest horned mammal in the fossil record and went extinct 5 million years ago.
Read the full story HERE.
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Casper native Dean Conger spent 30 years at National Geographic traveling the globe taking photos of presidents, astronauts and world leaders. Cowboy State Daily’s Dale Killingbeck reports that Conger was working at the Denver Post when National Geographic Magazine came calling and he never looked back, traveling and taking award-winning pictures all over the world.
“He took photos of presidents, was assigned to cover NASA, has some iconic shots with the Mercury astronauts that were part of the first space program in America. And so Dean Conger really lived a life that maybe a lot of us, you know, would like to live. He went to Russia, and his son told me that he didn't really like Russia as one of the places he wanted to go, but that was his job. So he went to Russia. And those trips resulted in a book that National Geographic published in 1977 that chronicled all those different trips.”
Following his death in 2023, the award-winning photojournalist left his career’s work of 100,000 unedited 35mm slides with middle son and his wife, Kurt and Robyn Conger who reside in Oregon.
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 watching - I’m Mac Watson, for Cowboy State Daily.
