It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming for Friday, April 24th. I’m Mac Watson.
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The Wyoming State GOP convention started its convention on Thursday in Douglas with preliminary meetings vetting the numerous bylaw changes. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that many county party leaders are urging the party to throw off state laws and assert its autonomy.
“The state party chair Brian Miller, opened the day with a big speech about how it is time for the party to assert its autonomy, its association of rights, and essentially throw off the state laws that govern it and restrict it. Scott Clem from Campbell County, kept saying, ‘What are we doing? Are we trying to go to a caucus instead of a state run primary election? Are we prepared to pay for it if we're going to a caucus? What's the master plan here?’ And Brian Miller came back up to the mic and said, ‘Yeah, the master plan is to assert autonomy, and we are going to be filing a lawsuit to promote our rights in this vein.’”
The full convention will have the chance to vote on the proposed changes Saturday.
Read the full story HERE.
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Wyoming state Rep. Karlee Provenza and a Montana legislator posted video of themselves corner-crossing at the Carbon County spot that started a yearslong legal war. Cowboy State Daily’s Mark Heinz reports that the lawmaker says she took the video to demonstrate the legality of corner-crossing in Wyoming.
“This is a place where the four out of state hunters crossed in 2021 and they were first charged with criminal trespass, found not guilty of that. Then the landowners filed a civil suit against them, which went all the way to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, was ruled in the hunter's favor, and then they tried to kick it up to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court decided not to hear it, and so a lot of people took that to mean, okay, it's just de facto. It is legal to corner cross in Wyoming. So Provenza and this representative from Montana, went there earlier, I think about a week ago, and they crossed the corner, and they took video of it, and said, you know that we are demonstrating that it's legal to cross corners. This is your public land.”
A federal court’s decision ruled corner crossing technically legal in Wyoming last year, although the Legislature this year stopped short of codifying it into Wyoming statute.
Read the full story HERE.
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Working as a first responder in the nation’s richest county illustrates a complex problem: How does a sheriff's deputy who earns a starting salary of $70,000 live in a town where the median home price is $3 million? Cowboy State Daily’s Kate Meadows reports that they don't. Only 2 of 30 live there.
“That's really the problem that Sheriff Matt Carr brought up with the Teton county commissioners earlier this month. Sheriff Carr said that he's particularly concerned about this coming season, the wildfire season, this summer, and if there is, you know, an incident, or some sort of, you know, major danger, and they need more deputies to respond than what then who was on staff, How are they going to be able to do that when these deputies are commuting from so far away?”
Sheriff’s deputies are now allowed to take their vehicles home, even if they live in neighboring counties, so that if the need arises for them to respond to an emergency during otherwise off-duty time, they can respond directly.
Read the full story HERE.
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When a young student from a rural Nepali village with no running water finally found his way to America and Central Wyoming College in Riverton 30 years ago, it was a leap of faith. Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports that Mohan Dangi was back Thursday to explore partnerships between Wyoming and Nepal.
“So 30 years later, he's a very successful, world renowned expert in solid waste management, particularly for low income villages like the one he came from. Now, he wants to give back to Wyoming, this school that you know came and got it when he was lost and stranded and gave him a start in life. student exchanges, teacher exchanges for culture, but also long term kind of blending or strengthening each other's entrepreneurial ecosystem to kind of help their students. Who knew that the world comes to Riverton?”
Dangi tells Cowboy State Daily he sees his effort to help start this partnership as giving back to a program that once gave him so much, when he was a young, 20-year-old seeing the world outside of Nepal for the very first time.
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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Grizzly 610, one of Grand Teton National Park's most famous bears, has yet to emerge this year. Cowboy State Daily’s Mark Heinz reports that her fans say that probably means she has new cubs of the year.
“The big male Grizzlies might start coming out in February, and then they just kind of start filtering out. And the last ones to show are the mamas with brand new cubs, and they don't come out until May. And it's not just Grizzly 610. The overarching story here is we could be seeing a lot of new cubs in Grand Teton this spring.”
Wyoming’s grizzlies, along with black bears, usually start emerging from hibernation in late February or early March.
Read the full story HERE.
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High winds helped fan a fire that burned a Lander wood shop to the ground on Wednesday, also threatening nearby homes. Cowboy State Daily’s Dale Killingbeck reports that for rural fire departments, responding when people you know are devastated makes firefighters take the job "very personally."
“In Lander, this is their third structure that's burned down in the last month. And so I talked to them about what does it mean when you go to a scene and you probably know the people, or they're your neighbors. And they told me that, ‘Yeah, we take this very personally.’ Quote, personally is what the lander volunteer fire department chief told me, and the chief in Fremont told me that when they go there, his firefighters are not doing it for the money, because they're all volunteers. They're doing it because they want to help their neighbors and they want to keep their community safe.”
This is the sixth fire in the central Wyoming city so far this year, double what firefighters typically respond to in an entire year.
Read the full story HERE.
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A commercial truck driver was in court Thursday, charged with felony theft for allegedly taking a truck and trailer from his former employer. Cowboy State Daily’s Greg Johnson reports that Amninder Singh admitted to Wyoming troopers that he took the rig without permission, but said he was helping out a buddy.
“He said he was trying to help out a friend by taking a load to Chicago. However, he was driving west on I 80, the exact opposite of going to Chicago. He stuck to this story that was he needed to print something out. And because the Flying J in Cheyenne didn't have a printer, he was driving all the way to Laramie to use the printer at the maverick station there. I called the Flying J, and the trucker is right. The Flying J does not have a printer that you can print out of. However, right across the road from the Flying J is the Loves truck stop. I called Loves, and they do have a printer the truckers can use. The guy took off with a truck and a trailer and didn't realize that the owner of the truck, a trucking company in California, they have GPS trackers on these things. The owner looked and knew exactly where he was. He called troopers and said, ‘Hey, here he is. He's on I-80 going toward Laramie,’ and that's exactly where they found him.”
Singh, born in 2002, faces a charge of felony theft for allegedly stealing the truck and trailer, together valued at about $80,000, from his former employer, a transport company in the Fresno, California, area,
Read the full story HERE.
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An early morning fireball ripped across the sky over southwest Wyoming Thursday. Cowboy State Daily’s Kolby Fedore reports that the burning object briefly turned night into daylight and left residents scrambling to figure out what they saw.
“Early Thursday morning, several residents in southwest Wyoming and northeast Utah claimed that they saw a fireball light up the sky for about three seconds, and about 30 seconds later, they heard a boom. Meteorologist Jan Curtis in Cheyenne said that sightings like these are not uncommon. They happen at least a dozen times a month in areas like Wyoming, although they have been happening more frequently than usual lately, in Wyoming and around the globe.”
Reports of a delayed boom are consistent with larger meteors entering the atmosphere at high speed, where the sound can take several seconds to reach the ground after the flash is seen.
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.
