It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming for Monday, September 7th. Happy Labor Day! I’m Mac Watson.
This newscast is brought to you by Google. This Wednesday, September 9th, Google invites you to a free community meeting at 5pm at the Metropolitan Downtown in Cheyenne. Come learn more about Project Tembo, ask questions, and meet your Wyoming Google team.
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A West Point professor who claims he was stifled, then had his contract canceled for teaching humans are a major cause of climate change, is suing new University of Wyoming president Shane Reeves. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports Dr. Adam Kalkstein is also suing a former dean of the school and other officials.
“Professor Kalkstein’s a climatology professor, who is saying that teaching that humans are a major cause of global warming, climate change, is foundational to the education that that wing of education. And his lawsuit claims that the Trump administration basically said stop teaching this, and then West Point, which is under the Trump administration said stop teaching this, and he complied, but voiced his concerns, saying that made him feel like a fraud. And then they decided not to renew his contract, and so the lawsuit alleges violations of free speech and suppression of academic freedom against top West Point officials, including Brigadier General Shane Reeves, who in July moved on to become president of University of Wyoming.”
Kalkstein is a tenured professor who has taught climate science at the school for more than 17 years, says his complaint, filed by his attorney, Michael Sussman.
Read the full story HERE.
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Wyoming hunters are buzzing over photos and videos of a monster mule deer buck, thought to be near Bondurant with an estimated 300-inch rack. Outdoors Reporters Mark Heinz reports that outdoorsmen are saying it could shatter the record for Wyoming’s biggest buck.
“I talked to a couple, you know, pretty prominent hunters here in Wyoming, and they said, ‘Yeah, that deer apparently that deer really does exist. It's somewhere northwest Wyoming.’ Past that, they don't seem to know a whole lot about it or how it might have gotten that huge. I've heard some rumors that maybe an archery hunter got it. We'll see if that turns out to be true. This would, by a long ways, break the record for the biggest buck ever in Wyoming. The biggest buck ever in Wyoming is like, in terms of the inches the cumulative inches of the antlers, is like 15 inches smaller.”
Outdoorsman Rowdy Anderson of Riverton tells Cowboy State Daily that he and other local hunters have been seeing more bucks and better bucks this year, but nothing that would come close to the rumored Bondurant monster.
Read the full story HERE.
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Laramie-based Weitzel’s Wings didn't defend their unprecedented four straight national Buffalo Wing Fest titles last weekend in New York. Cowboy State Daily’s Anna-Louise Jackson reports Double Dub’s has won 16 awards during its six-year run at the festival, but this year, they decided not to compete.
“The Double Dubs guys decided to sit it out this year. Last year, they won the fourth straight Fam Favorite award, which was the first time in festival history anyone had done that. So even last year, they were talking about taking this year off. They were at the festival just in a very different capacity this year, and they kind of decided to sit it out, see kind of how the landscape evolves in terms of competition, and come back at some point to defend their title again.”
This year’s fan favorite winner — Just Winging It, from Iceland. Weitzel and his crew have formed a friendship with them over the years, after helping them with their festival debut a few years ago.
Read the full story HERE.
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Sometime in the past year, an American flag vanished at the site of the 1955 United Air Lines crash that killed 66 people on Medicine Bow Peak. Cowboy State Daily’s Dale Killingbeck reports that a hiker from Kansas noticed and plans to replace it when she comes back next year if nobody beats her to it.
“Lisa Stonehouse feels it's important to have a flag there because they're patriotic. Her husband had a career in the military, and so she said that she just thinks that having a flag at that memorial site-it's an ad hoc memorial site-but having that flag there would be important for just remembering the souls that were lost. She's planning on bringing back a flag, and if one's not already planted there, she plans to put one there.”
Last summer, Lisa West Stonehouse and her husband, Kevin, were hiking to one of several plane crash sites that can be found in Wyoming. The Kansas couple now travel full-time and returned to Wyoming this summer to escape the humidity of the Midwest.
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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Torrington's Beverly Dale receives $994 a month, has no permanent home, and little more than a car to her name. But Cowboy State Daily’s Kolby Fedore reports that despite numerous obstacles, she’s trying to build a business to help veterans, caregivers, and survivors find the support she says was missing from her own life.
“Even though Beverly Dale was not in the military, she married a combat veteran who struggled with PTSD, and as they work to navigate the different resources available in Wyoming, she talks about it being a never-ending scavenger hunt. So out of that was born the idea for the Invisible Infantry, which is her plan to help streamline the process for people that are looking for some of these resources to help their loved ones and themselves as they go through this.”
The 51-year-old Dale founded The Invisible Infantry L3C, a Wyoming low-profit limited liability company focused on combat veterans and the spouses and caregivers living alongside war-related trauma and domestic violence.
Read the full story HERE.
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A Lander woman grows about 800 pounds of heirloom garlic a season in the Wind River Range, including a 400-year-old variety. Cowboy State Daily’s Jackie Dorothy reports that their similarity is they're all hardneck — garlic that prefers cold weather and high altitude — but can range widely in taste and heat.
“Melissa Hemken's garlic adventures actually came about because she has a hatchery; she hatches 1000 chicks every spring. So while everyone else is planting tomatoes and peas in the traditional garden, she's wrangling chicks. And by the time her chicks are old enough to have a garden, well, it's time to harvest garlic because the garlic season is when you harvest in July and you plant in October, which is perfect for her hatchery. She has expanded to 800 pounds every year now, and has five different heirloom varieties, ranging from very mild to very hot, she has one that's so spicy and hot that she has to cure it for at least three weeks before you can even bite into it.”
The oldest variety of garlic at Hemken’s Melissahof Farm is the 400-year-old Chamisal Wild. This heritage garlic was found growing wild on the banks of Chamisal Creek in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of New Mexico and had been there for centuries.
Read the full story HERE.
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A Wyoming woman who resurrected Greybull’s K-Bar Motel has a new challenge — renovating the worst "unlivable" homes she can find. Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports Amanda McGrew says, “I don’t know if this makes me completely insane, but it’s definitely the most fun.”
“She told me that when she was a kid, her favorite thing to do was find old things and upcycle them, and basically drove her dad crazy because she took over his garage with all these little upcycled furniture projects. So I think you know it was just kind of something she always enjoyed doing. What she started doing was rehabilitating, kind of restoring the worst homes that she could find. I saw her ad. she told everyone on Facebook, ‘Hey guys, I'm looking for a home to buy. It needs to be the worst possible shape. The worse, the better.’”
For McGrew, a former Los Angeles school teacher, now lives in Shell, and is on house rehab No. 3 since taking on the K-Bar. It’s part of a new mission in Wyoming — to find and fix the absolute worst homes.
Read the full story HERE.
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In a new study released Friday, scientists say DNA extracted from the bones of a prehistoric "American cheetah" found in Wyoming's Natural Trap Cave could help save struggling lion and tiger populations. Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi reports one biologist says they were “shocked.”
“For the first time ever, nuclear DNA has been collected from the bones of the American cheetah-like cat, and those bones are the inner ear bone, one of the smallest bones of the body. What's interesting about this study is how it has a direct parallel from prehistoric times to modern times. In modern times, conservation organizations are worried about the African cheetah because they have a very small population size. Now, this new research from American cheetah-like cats that lived 20,000 years ago in northwest Wyoming, from fossils at Natural Trap Cave, reveal that they've always had a small population size.”
The new study was published in the scientific journal Current Biology on Friday.
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.
