It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming for Wednesday, September 2nd. I’m Mac Watson.
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Nearly a year after the proposal was rejected, the scaled-down Laramie Range Wind Project was approved Tuesday after a contentious two-day hearing. Cowboy State Daily’s Kate Meadows reports that up to 139 wind turbines would be placed on more than 41,000 acres about 20 miles north of Cheyenne.
“In a unanimous decision, the Wyoming Industrial Siting Council voted to approve a permit request for the Laramie Range Wind Project. This is a huge project; that if it moves forward, it would be twice the size of Cheyenne. Cheyenne area rancher and realtor Wendy Volk has been a staunch opponent of this project from the beginning. She has been an advocate against what she calls the Wyoming wind wall, where if you look at wind projects cumulatively, how they connect or how they're connected to each other. She says, if we're not careful, we're going to have a wall of wind across the whole southeastern corner of the state.”
The project was scaled down, initially starting out at about 53,000 acres, which would have been about three times the size of Cheyenne. After a lot of public pushback and a ‘no’ vote from Laramie County Commissioners last year, the developers offered to shrink it both in terms of acreage and in terms of number of wind turbines.
Read the full story HERE.
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A judge declined Monday to drop charges against transgender activist Rihanna Kelver, after Kelver claimed self-defense for pointing a pistol at a man last September. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports the judge ruled that Kelver wasn't “in danger of imminent death or serious bodily injury.”
“Rihanna Kelver had tried to get two felony counts dropped on self-defense claims here last week in court, and the judge said that she would take it under advisement. Judge Westby came out on Monday and said, "Look, Rihanna Kelver was not the initial aggressor. Evidence suggests Kelver was afraid in the moment, but this didn't rise to the level of allegedly pulling a handgun on someone, so the judge decided to keep the case alive. Sometimes the lawyers will negotiate a plea deal, and sometimes they'll gear up for trial, and that depends entirely on the case, the defendant, the counsel, that kind of thing.”
Kelver is arguably Wyoming’s most outspoken transgender activist, and protested a new Wyoming ban on transgender use of public bathrooms last summer by using the women's bathroom at the state Capitol.
Read the full story HERE.
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A 21-year-old Connecticut hiker was found dead near Montana’s highest peak ending a three-day search that drew rescue crews, aircraft and military resources from Wyoming and Montana. Cowboy State Daily’s Kolby Fedore reports that the man's family says he died “doing what he loved, in a place he loved.”
“According to Montana's Park County Sheriff's Department, Jackson Slimac apparently fell while trying to climb one of the highest peaks, Granite Peak in Montana. He was reported overdue at 7:40 p.m. last Monday when Stillwater County Dispatch got the call. Search crews found Slimak late Thursday morning. This search included seven different agencies, including the U.S. Air Force and the Montana Army National Guard.”
Jackson Gregory Slimak apparently fell in the rugged terrain surrounding Montana’s highest peak, the Park County, Montana, Sheriff’s Office reported. Searchers located him at about 11:45 a.m. Thursday. Authorities found no evidence of suspicious activity and described his death as accidental.
Read the full story HERE.
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Crook County rancher Sen. Ogden Driskill is unhappy about President Trump's meeting with a Brazilian meatpacking billionaire a day before he announced 300,000 tons of beef imports. Cowboy State Daily’s Kate Meadows reports that the state senator says it is costing Wyoming producers millions.
“The state senator from Devil's Tower doesn't like the fact that President Trump met with a Brazilian billionaire who also owns a large stake of JBS, which is the nation's largest meat packer. What Driscoll doesn't appreciate is that Trump took advice from this billionaire to pause tariffs on imported beef for 90 days. What that does is it softens the beef market in the U.S. but it also lessens the motivation for cattle ranchers across the nation to build up their herds, which is exactly what cattle ranchers say needs to happen. And if you ask Driscoll, there's no better state than Wyoming to talk to a cattle rancher.”
Driskill's reaction comes a day after Wyoming cattle rancher Tyler Lindholm told Cowboy State Daily the president and his advisors don’t understand the U.S. cattle market.
Read the full story HERE.
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I’ll have more news from Cowboy State Daily right after this.
Cowboy State Daily News continues now….
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After a 3-foot bull snake slithered into the frame of a Riverton woman's car at the bank drive-through Monday, she was tempted to just set her car on fire. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that Stephanie Watson admitted, “Anything that slithers and doesn’t have legs is the devil, in my book.”
“Watson, who is deathly afraid of snakes, hops out, grabs her Chihuahua. Like I don't want it to eat my dog. And then the bank manager Betsy offers to grab the snake, but what they end up doing is calling animal control. Animal control officer and the police chief borrowed a car jack from a dealership next door because this is a low-sitting SUV, and they try to get this snake out that way. Snake isn't having it, so someone pulls it to the dealership into the car bay for a higher lift. At that point, the chief of police, frustrated with trying to grab the slippery thing with the pincers, just grabs it with his hands.”
When Watson recounted the story to her daughters later, they were fascinated. So were her friends, who messaged her until her phone died.
Read the full story HERE.
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Maria Vargas was exhausted and crying as she dismantled her hair salon stations in downtown Jackson on Monday. Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports that Vargas was among a handful of remaining business owners who had a deadline to move out for an incoming 309,000 square-foot hotel project.
“Her deadline to be out was yesterday. She's been trying to find a new space, but Jackson is really short on small commercial retail spaces, especially spaces that are affordable, she has looked. They're all you know double, triple, quadruple what she was paying, and to her, she doesn't want to charge more than $65 for a haircut. She's taking classes to see if she can, you know, maybe start a new career. She's also thinking about leaving and going somewhere that's a little bit cheaper. Retail space is very short, and so that prompted the mayor to tell Brad Wagstaff, the founder of Mogul Capital, you know, I want to see more. He called it activation on the ground floor. He wants to see some retail spaces on that city block to help mitigate the loss of small commercial retail spaces.”
The new landlord, Mogul Capital, is making way for a proposed hotel complex at the town’s north entrance that will include residences and other amenities such as a restaurant and bar.
Read the full story HERE.
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After years of hauling cattle and beef to Utah, a Uinta County ranch family decided to take matters into their own hands and build a USDA-inspected meat processing facility on their ranch. Cowboy State Daily’s Kate Meadows reports the plant will have its final USDA inspection on Friday.
“The owners of the Beck Ranch in rural Lone Tree, Wyoming, decided to take matters into their own hands. The meat processing plant will have its final certification from the USDA on Friday, assuming that that goes through without any hiccups. The Beck Ranch will now be able to have cattle from birth all the way through processing and selling the beef, and they can do it all on their property. This new processing plant will also be open to neighboring ranches to people in western Wyoming, eastern Utah who are looking for more efficient ways to process their own beef and be able to sell. In Wyoming's case, to be able to sell their beef across state lines.”
Jim Magagna, executive vice president of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, tells Cowboy State Daily the problem isn’t necessarily that Wyoming has no processing facilities, it’s that those facilities don’t have enough capacity to meet the needs of all the ranchers who want to use them.
Read the full story HERE.
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With two weeks to go before the wolf hunting season begins near Yellowstone, a Big Piney hunter is vowing to shoot 12-year-old Wolf 1090F from the famed Mollie's Wolf Pack if he sees her. Outdoors Reporter Mark Heinz reports that in the meantime, wolf activists are trying their best to stop the hunt.
“There's just really a groundswell of opposition to allowing that pack to be hunted. This guy's just saying, ‘Hey, I'm going up there. I'm hunting wolves. Yeah, sure. If I see that wolf, I'll shoot it.’ And I asked that hunter. I said, ‘if you, how would you know that the wolf you were seeing was 1090F?’ And he said, ‘You know, other than photos I've seen of her that have been published because she is a popular wolf, she has been photographed a lot.’ He says, ‘Other than photos, probably you know, because she doesn't like she doesn't have like a black ear or something that's really or distinctive limp, or something that's going to go. That's the wolf.’”
Wyoming Game and Fish Commissioner Carlisle "Fonzy" Haskell tells Cowboy State Daily that he’s received messages from New Zealand, Australia, and “from all over the U.S.” to shut down the season in wolf hunt areas 1 and 2. Haskell added he has no plans to reverse his vote on the 2026 wolf hunting season, which the Commission approved in July.
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.
