CSD Staff

Daily Cartoon

Cartoon 2 4 2 26

Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>Daily Cartoon 2: Thursday, April 2, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Daily Cartoon 2: Thursday, April 2, 2026

Heinz mark

Mark Heinz

Wildlife

A northern Colorado rancher who lives near one of the state’s reintroduced wolf packs said she and her neighbors are becoming increasingly frustrated because when wolves aren’t threatening livestock, coyotes are.

Amanda Cerveny said she spotted and took video of a lone canine crossing her property near cattle.

She thought at first it could have been a small or young wolf, but also thought it might be a coyote.

Her latter suspicions were confirmed by biologist Doug Smith, who texted “100% coyote” to Cowboy State Daily after viewing Cerveny’s video.

Cerveny told Cowboy State Daily after seeing the first coyote she returned to her house to retrieve her rifle.

As in Wyoming, it’s legal to shoot coyotes on sight to protect livestock.

By the time she returned, the animal was gone.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"‘Two Knuckleheads’"}]

A short while later while walking down a lane on her property, “that’s when I saw these two knuckleheads attacking a calf," she said.

About 250 yards away, Cerveny saw two canines chasing and harassing one of her neighbor’s calves. She took video of that scene as well.

At the time, she was reasonably confident those two canines were coyotes.

But, as she noted, in Colorado, anything less than 100% certainty over whether the critter is a coyote or a wolf can be good reason to hold your fire.

"At 250 yards, how can I be absolutely certain whether it’s a coyote, or an uncollared wolf pup, or yearling?” she said.

Smith, who led the wolf program in Yellowstone National Park for nearly three decades, told Cowboy State Daily this year’s wolf pups wouldn’t leave the immediate area of the den this early in the year.

Pups don’t usually start venturing out until September or October, he said.

However, “come winter or fall,” it might be difficult to discern a coyote from a wolf pup at a great distance, he added.

Cerveny said her hesitancy to open fire on the canines she saw harassing the neighbor’s calves, even at a time when she could be reasonably sure they were coyotes, is indicative of the quandary she said she and her neighbors face.

Wolves remain protected in Colorado, and killing one, even by accident, could result in thousands of dollars in fines, Cerveny said.

It is legal for Colorado ranchers to shoot wolves if they catch them “directly in the act” of attacking cattle, she said.

But in most cases, the burden of proof is so high, ranchers might hesitate. And in her case, she said, it caused her to not even shoot at coyotes.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"‘More Aggressive’"}]

Cerveny said that as far as she knows, her neighbor’s calf wasn’t seriously. Even so, she worries coyotes getting away with attacking a calf might embolden them to keep doing so.

Cerveny said that she, her husband and others in the area think that coyotes might be getting "more aggressive."

She said she showed the video of the coyotes attacking the calf to her husband.

“He said, ‘in 30 years of doing this (ranching) I’ve never seen anything like that',” she said.

There have always been instances of coyotes darting in to attack a sick or wounded calf, or “going after the afterbirth” during calving season, she said.

But nobody in the area seems to recall many instances of coyotes, which are usually opportunistic hunters, going directly after healthy livestock.

Smith said coyotes generally favor small prey, such as rodents. They do tend to “hunt in pairs” and will on rare occasions go after something bigger, such as sheep or a calf, he said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Are Wolves To Blame?"}]

Cerveny said she and her neighbors wonder if coyotes are more aggressively going after cattle “because of competition from wolves” for other prey.

Smith said that almost certainly isn’t the case.

“Coyotes do what coyotes do, and wolves do what wolves do," he said. "They’ve lived alongside each other for hundreds of thousands of years. One doesn’t force the other to do anything.” 

Smith added that wolves returning to an area where they’ve been absent for a while, such as Colorado, doesn’t change that dynamic.

“Pull them (wolves) away for a few decades, and that’s not really going to change coyote psyche and behavior,” Smith said. “It’s the ghost of evolution past."

Wolves are thought to have wandered into Colorado from Wyoming and formed a pack in about 2020.

The state also began reintroducing wolves in December 2023.

Smith said elk might leave an area this time of year to move to higher elevations, and leave both coyotes and wolves in the low country.

But as he sees it, both canine species can get by without elk.

Outside of rarely taking an calf, coyotes don’t rely on elk as a prey source, he said. And wolves’ dependence upon elk might also be greatly overestimated.

Wolves are actually lousy elk hunters, Smith said, succeeding only about 5% to 15% of the time they set out to kill elk.

When elk leave an area, it’s probably not because wolves scared them, Smith said.

“Elk stay where they want to stay because of food,” he said. “They aren’t hype-afraid of wolves, because if they encounter a wolf they’re likely to live.”

Coyotes and wolves 7 3 26

<title>Rancher Says Wolves Making Colorado Coyotes More Aggressive With Livestock | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Ranchers in northern Colorado wonder if the growing wolf population is causing coyotes to be more aggressive toward livestock. "In 30 years of doing this, I’ve never seen anything like that," a rancher said about two coyotes attacking healthy livestock.

Rancher Says Wolves Making Colorado Coyotes More Aggressive With Livestock

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's business and tourism reporter, Renée Jean

Renée Jean

Energy

When Wyoming oilman Howard Cooper finally got word he could drill two 2.5-mile-long horizontal wells in the Powder River Basin, it wasn’t just a triumph of geology. It was a marathon for the key federal lease that made his wells economic. 

Those two leases were but thin slices of the 2.5-mile-long lateral that made up each horizontal well, cutting across the line, but might as well have been the Great Wall of China as far as Cooper was concerned.

Cooper, who owns Three Crown Petroleum, told Cowboy State Daily he can permit and drill a typical oil well on private minerals in about five weeks in Wyoming, at least on paper. That’s two weeks for state permits, one week to build a pad and move in a drilling rig, and two weeks to drill. 

But when federal leases are involved, timelines can stretch dramatically, particularly if litigation and additional environmental reviews are triggered. 

That makes any well with a federal lease a gamble with million-dollar stakes.

Cooper’s two-well program is a case study in how even the tiniest sliver of federal land can hang up a drilling project, tying up capital while the operator misses out on economic opportunities vital to keeping smaller companies afloat. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Lease That Sat For Years"}]

The story starts long before Cooper, with a federal lease that sat in limbo for years. 

The lease was originally issued to Anschutz as part of a series of federal sales between 2015 and 2020 across several western states, including Wyoming, which accounted for 1,232 of the 1,323 leases sold during that time. 

The leases were challenged by conservationists, who said the environmental analysis of water usage, sage-grouse protections and greenhouse gas emissions were inadequate.

A judge agreed, ordering a 200-page supplemental environmental review to redo aquifer and sage-grouse analysis for the sales, which also included some areas in Nevada, Utah and Montana.

Bureau of Land Management spokesmen said at the time that such reviews have been required under the National Environmental Policy Act in similar cases to ensure impacts are fully considered before development moves forward.

To create a viable oil and gas well, Cooper needed to add Anschutz’s disputed lease to existing leases he already held in the area. He had already put together enough leases for a 1.75-mile and a 1.25-mile well, but for the project to be economic, Cooper said he needed each well to have a lateral of at least 2.5 miles.

“That essentially doubles your reserves,” he said. “But doesn’t add that much more to the cost.”

So Cooper signed an agreement to purchase Anschutz’s lease, despite the ongoing legal and regulatory uncertainty tied to it, on Nov. 4, 2025. 

They were the last two puzzle pieces he needed for a viable project. 

From then until now, when he’s finally received the go-ahead to drill, it’s been eight months. 

Taken together, though, that thin slice of federal minerals — from its original lease sale years ago to final permitting today — carries a timeline of roughly seven years. 

That piece was essential, however, to extending Cooper’s wells to 2.5 miles, making the overall project economic.

During that time, Cooper estimates he committed in excess of $1 million across the two Powder River wells — money he had to pay up front 

 while also keeping his business afloat. 

Putting a well together involves is an exercise in a bit of business gymastics, with a dash of mathematics and puzzle making thrown in.

Cooper sited his well pad just outside of the sage-grouse corridor Wyoming has established, saving him an additional $375,000 per well by not having to purchase sage-grouse credits. 

Cooper also bundled two other wells in nearby Johnson County into his Powder River project to further lower the cost of drilling. So, even though the Johnson County wells didn’t have the same federal complications, they couldn’t move forward either until the entire package was ready to go.

“By signing a four-well drilling program, we save a considerable amount of money,” Cooper said. “So we went down this road of one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight months of our capital is tied up. 

“It’s a lot of capital tied up. We know the oil is there, if they would just let us drill and produce it.”

Meanwhile, the market shifted substantially. 

“If we could have drilled these wells three months ago, we would have had three months of oil at $100 a barrel,” he said. “Now we’ve lost 30% of value. It’s gone from $100 a barrel to $70.”

Cooper estimates that, taken together, the four wells would have produced around 300,000 barrels of oil during that three-month period of $100 oil. He bases that figure on production from nearby offset wells, which have already extracted roughly 100,000 barrels each.

“We’re still going to get a return on our investment,” Cooper said. “But we’d have gotten a much better return … if we could have drilled these wells three months ago.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Reform Push Underway"}]

Getting his permits required more than waiting. 

“We worked with Gov. Mark Gordon’s office, Western (Energy) Alliance, both U.S. senators and House representatives,” he said. “We had to work with everybody to get this stuff, which should not be necessary. Why should I spend all that time when, if I drill on private minerals, I don’t have to do any of that. It takes a lot of my time, which I prefer to be focusing on putting together additional drilling deals, as opposed to spending a lot of time with all these different entities to try to get our permits issued.”

Industry leaders say Cooper’s experience is increasingly common. Wyoming Petroleum Association’s Ryan McConnaughey told Cowboy State Daily litigation has become common where federal leasing i involved, often due to the checkerboard nature of mineral leases in most western states. 

“I believe under President Biden’s administration was the first time that every lease sale was challenged,” he said.

While conservation groups have argued those challenges are necessary to ensure federal agencies fully comply with environmental law and account for cumulative impacts, McConnaughey said lawsuits are often filed late in the process, at the 11th hour, as a way to increase financial pressure on operators. 

“This isn’t really about making sure that the federal government is doing their due diligence,” McConnaughey 

said. “It’s become a concerted effort to stop oil and gas drilling on federal lands.”

Environmental reviews conducted for permits in many cases are now taking nearly a decade to complete, he said, which makes the flood of 11th-hour lawsuits even more troubling.

“Delays have become a hallmark of drilling on federal land,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “And that’s one of the reasons we have been advocating for reform.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Building At SPEED"}]

McConnaughey supports legislation from Wyoming’s congressional delegation called the Let America Build Act and the SPEED Act, which sets deadlines for legal challenges and allows states to take larger roles in administering the permitting process. 

McConnaughey said the change would improve efficiency without removing federal requirements. Critics, however, have raised concerns that tighter deadlines could limit legal oversight.

“It should be about making sure that the federal government is following the law,” McConnaughey said. “If that’s the case, those challenges need to take place immediately.”

Taking over regulatory oversight doesn’t reduce or eliminate any existing restrictions, he added. It just means state agencies are helping eliminate a bureaucratic chokepoint.

“That way the work is being done by local people who understand the industry, understand what is required, and could really speed up the process,” McConnaughey said. “I think that would be a game-changer for the industry here in Wyoming.”

Looking over the history of the new wells he’s about to drill, Cooper sees a sharp contrast between federal and state processes. 

“It’s absolutely insane,” he said. “We are moving pretty fast now, but this is one of those things where … it would be really helpful going forward if the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Energy are focusing on streamlining the permitting process with the federal government. I would like to see it more in line with the way the state of Wyoming moves forward. fter you acquire the lease, then you approach the state of Wyoming and file for your permits. If you own the lease 100%, then it takes basically a two-week period from the time you apply for your permits to when they’re issued.

"After that, a rig moves onto the location, a well pad is built, and you’re “good to go.

“Then you just drill the well and tie your well to an existing oil line and an existing gas line, and you sell your product into the existing oil and gas lines and that’s how it works. It’s very efficient, and that’s what the federal government should strive for, because then it would generate a lot more revenue for the federal government.”

Three Crown Petroleum Campbell County 7 3 26 JPG

<title>Wyoming Company Missed Out On $100 Oil With 7-Year Wait To Drill On Federal Land | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A Wyoming oilman says it missed out on $100-a-barrel oil during a seven-year fight to get the OK to drill on federal land in the Powder River Basin. "We would have had three months of oil at $100 a barrel,” the owner said. “Now we’ve lost 30% of value."

Wyoming Company Missed Out On $100 Oil With 7-Year Wait To Drill On Federal Land

Kolby fedore

Kolby Fedore

Crime & Courts

Courts

A Florida woman who owned a behavioral health clinic in Cheyenne has been ordered to pay back more than $870,000 to Wyoming Medicaid for bilking the federal agency with fraudulent claims.

Federal prosecutors say her daughter helped carry out the scheme by assisting with billing and falsifying service documentation while working for the clinic.

Tera Marie Campbell, 47, of Maitland, Florida, owned The Olive Branch LLC, a behavioral health clinic that provided autism services in Cheyenne and Minot, North Dakota, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Wyoming said Thursday in a statement announcing the women’s sentences for conspiracy to commit health care fraud.

Campbell used the business to submit fraudulent Medicaid claims over several years, including claims for services provided by employees who lacked required certifications, claims that were upcoded to higher-paying services and bills for appointments that never occurred, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Investigators said some of those claims were submitted for dates when the clinic was closed and even while Campbell was out of the country on vacation.

Campbell's daughter, Tayler Ann Krauss, 27, of McDavid, Florida, worked as the clinic's medical biller between December 2020 and October 2022. She was instrumental in providing service documentation used to support fraudulent claims.

The investigation concluded the clinic relied extensively on untrained employees, falsified certification and supervision records, and knowingly billed Wyoming Medicaid for services that did not meet Medicaid requirements, according to prosecutors.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Joint Investigation"}]

The case was investigated by the Wyoming Attorney General's Office Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Department of Defense's Defense Criminal Investigative Service.

U.S. Attorney Darin Smith said in a statement that Medicaid fraud "steals taxpayer dollars from programs that millions of Americans depend on and undermines care for vulnerable patients.

"I am committed to holding accountable those who exploit these programs for personal gain."

Smith said his office will continue working with federal and state partners to investigate and prosecute health care fraud, saying the effort is aimed at protecting public resources and preserving confidence in the healthcare system.

Wyoming Attorney General Keith Kautz added in the statement that the prosecution and conviction of Campbell and Krauss demonstrates the value of cooperation between state and federal law enforcement agencies and praised the work of his office's Medicaid Fraud Control Unit.

Smith nor Kautz responded to Cowboy State Daily's request for an interview beyond the prepared statements released by the U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Sentence Handed Down"}]

U.S. District Judge Kelly H. Rankin sentenced Krauss on Monday and Campbell on Tuesday in federal court in Cheyenne.

Campbell and Krauss were indicted May 21, 2025, and both pleaded guilty April 9 to conspiracy to commit health care fraud.

Campbell was sentenced to 36 months in federal prison followed by three years of supervised release. Krauss was sentenced to two years of home confinement.

The judge ordered the women to jointly pay $735,717.63 in restitution to Wyoming Medicaid. Campbell was also ordered to repay $135,890.91 to the military's Tricare health care program.

The court ruled Krauss is jointly responsible for up to $71,509.44 of that amount.

Campbell was separately sentenced in January in a related North Dakota Medicaid fraud case.

In that case, she received a three-year suspended sentence, three years of supervised release and was ordered to repay an additional $225,000 to North Dakota's Medicaid program.

Federal courthouse cheyenne 9 28 23

<title>Florida Woman, Daughter Ordered To Pay Back $870K They Stole From Wyoming Medicaid | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A Florida woman who ran a Cheyenne behavioral health clinic, and her daughter, have been ordered to pay back more than $870,000 they stole from Wyoming Medicaid. They funneled fraudulent claims through the clinic for years, say federal prosecutors.

Florida Woman, Daughter Ordered To Pay Back $870K They Stole From Wyoming Medicaid

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's Feature Reporter, Andrew Rossi.

Andrew Rossi

Outdoors

A lucky photographer managed to get a once-in-a-lifetime photograph of a solar halo 

 in case of being in just the right place at just the right time.

The Beyond Earth Institute shared the photo

 of the 22-degree solar halo that appeared Wednesday when the sun was directly over Devils Tower. 

"One of nature's most beautiful optical displays" lasted for only a few minutes before the clouds changed, and the halo faded away,” said the nonprofit group, which says it’s mission is "enabling human migration into the solar system."

When Cowboy State Daily meteorologist Don Day saw the photo, he was immediately concerned it might be an AI-generated image. After review, this one checks out 

and has a scientific — not science fiction — explanation.

It’s not a callback to the time an alien ship famously hovered over Devils Tower in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind."

“It’s the clouds,” Day said. “Those are the perfect clouds at the right altitude and the right sun angle. It's a spectacular picture.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Perfect Angle"}]

The phenomenon in the photo is a 22-degree solar halo. Day said that 22-degree angle is the crucial component.

“Those are cirrostratus clouds,” he said. “They’re thin, high-altitude clouds with hexagonal-shaped ice crystals inside because they’re so high, and that hexagonal shape causes 22-degree angles. That’s how you end up getting a circle.”

Cirrostratus clouds tend to form between 20,000 and 43,000 feet in the atmosphere. They’re well known for 

 and other optical phenomena when sunlight shines through them.

What’s remarkable about the Beyond Earth 

 image is that the sun was at the perfect angle for the photographer to see the full circle, Day said. That’s the trickiest part of capturing a full solar halo.

“The best analogy I have is a rainbow,” Day said. “If you’re in the right spit with the right sun angle, you’ll see the whole rainbow from end to end. Solar halos happen more often than you’d think, but the cloud conditions and sun angle might only give you a partial halo.”

The sun is always at the center of a solar halo. The fact that this solar halo appeared when the sun was perched 

 the summit of Devils Tower was a brilliant stroke of luck for the photographer.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Cloudy With A Chance"}]

Most atmospheric halos are the result of light shining through ice-laden clouds. Even rainbows and 

 are halos, though they appear as arcs because the light is diffracted from water droplets above the ground.

“We get halos through water droplets like in the fog, ice crystals from clouds, or ice crystals in really cold air,” Day said. “For 22-degree solar halos, you need the right sun angle and these high cirrostratus clouds, and you don’t get them all the time.”

Even in the heat of summer, Day said it can easily be cold enough for clouds loaded with ice crystals to form over Wyoming.

“You'd be surprised how quickly it gets cold at this time of year,” he said. “It’s usually around freezing at 15,000 feet and well below freezing at 20,000 feet and above.”

Day expected that many of Wyoming’s outdoor and wildlife photographers have seen partial or full solar halos during their long sojourns in the wilderness. Nevertheless, this solar halo above Devils Tower is something special.

“They probably see these things more often than your average Joe, just because they put themselves in those situations,” he said. “But I'm sure all those photographers will tell you that their best photos were the ones they didn't plan, and this is definitely one of those. It’s a gorgeous photo.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Angels, Devils, Or Extraterrestrials"}]

Hundreds of thousands of people reacted to Beyond Earth’s solar halo photo with varying perspectives.

Many saw it as an angelic symbol crowning Devils Tower with divinity, while others wondered if this was a harbinger of what Steven Spielberg depicted at Devils Tower in 1977’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”

Day’s expertise on sky-related systems doesn’t extend to celestial, extraterrestrial, or heavenly forces, but he didn’t require any of them to understand the solar halo.

“When you get these cirrostratus clouds moving in, there’s the opportunity that this will happen,” he said. “This appears to be an earth-based phenomenon.”

Devils Tower halo 7 2 26

<title>‘Spectacular' Solar Halo Spotted Over Devils Tower | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A lucky photographer got a once-in-a-lifetime shot of a solar halo over Devils Tower on Wednesday. “It’s a spectacular picture,” said meteorologist Don Day. “Those are the perfect clouds at the right altitude at the right sun angle."

‘Spectacular' Solar Halo Spotted Over Devils Tower

You Still Here

[{"type":"text","text":"The last time dad played hide and seek......"}]

You still here no play 6 29 26

<title>You Still Here? Monday, June 29, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

The last time dad played hide and seek......

You Still Here? Monday, June 29, 2026

Bill Markley

The American West

Warning: You may not want to read any further if you don’t like the idea of a legend being debunked. Many legends swirl around Wild Bill Hickok. Three of these are associated with his stay in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, in 1876.

There’s the love affair with Wild Bill and Calamity Jane, the cards Wild Bill held when he was killed — the infamous Dead Man’s Hand — and Wild Bill’s death chair.

[{"type":"text","text":"The Calamity Jane\/Wild Bill Love Affair"}]

The rumor that Martha “Calamity Jane” Canary and Wild Bill Hickok were lovers is false. It never happened. There is absolutely no evidence Wild Bill and Calamity Jane had an affair.

Wild Bill and Calamity Jane first met when Wild Bill and five friends were traveling from Cheyenne, Wyoming Territory, to Deadwood, Dakota Territory, and stopped at Fort Laramie around July 1, 1876, to join a larger party waiting to make its way through hostile country to Deadwood. The fort’s officer of the day had a request for Hickok and his friends.

There was a young woman in the guardhouse who he asked they take with them. Hickok’s friend Joseph “White Eye” Anderson said, “It was just after payday and she had been on a big drunk with the soldiers and had been having a hell of a time of it. When they put her in the post guard house she was very drunk and near naked. Her name was Calamity Jane.”

Steve Utter, another Hickok friend, said he knew her and would take care of her. The officer gave Calamity Jane Army-issue underwear and, between the six men, they outfitted her with a buckskin shirt and pants and a broadbrimmed hat. 

“When she got cleaned up and sober she looked quite attractive,” White Eye said.

White Eye also said, “Calamity Jane had a wonderful command of profanity, that is she could cuss to beat the band. She was also a good shot with a rifle and six-shooter and could skin mules for further order. I believe it was the first time that Wild Bill had met her and he surely did not have any use for her. She looked to be about 25 years of age [she was 20] and was as tough as they came. She laid up with Steve Utter and ate her meals with us during the trip.”

Hickok had recently married circus owner Agnes Lake, and from his correspondence to her he was in love with his wife. 

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