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Daily Darwin: Thursday, August 3, 2023

Always a good idea to jump off your roof....

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Daily Darwin: Wednesday, August 2, 2023

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Daily Darwin: Tuesday, August 1, 2023

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Daily Darwin: Monday, July 31, 2023

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Daily Darwin: Sunday, July 30, 2023

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Daily Darwin: Saturday, July 29, 2023

Don't worry, I installed the swing myself. It will hold you...

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Daily Darwin: Friday, July 28, 2023

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Daily Darwin: Thursday, July 27, 2023

Parking brake? I don't need a parking brake...

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Daily Darwin: Wednesday, July 26, 2023

The only sensible thing to do during a rain delay...

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Daily Darwin: Tuesday, July 25, 2023

Attention International Darwin Award Selection Committee: We have a winner!

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Daily Darwin: Monday, July 24, 2023

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Daily Darwin: Sunday, July 23, 2023

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

Renée Jean

Energy

Green

CHEYENNE — Protests and rallies are something f

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"In fact, Thursday marked a first for him."}]

Stephens, whose family has what he describes as a “modest” cow-calf operation south of Glenrock that’s been there since 1910, said he’s spent most of his life avoiding microphones and politics. 

But as wind projects have encircled his part of the county, he felt he could no longer afford not to get involved.

“We’ve got surrounded by wind farms,” he told a crowd gathered Thursday at the Wyoming Capitol in Cheyenne to call for more study of a wind wall that’s sprung up across a 200-mile swath of southeast Wyoming. 

“If you look at Converse County right now, between the farms that are there and the ones that are proposed, it’s 200,000 acres,” he said. "That’s a lot. And then this 

 showed up. Half of it’s going to be on state land. That was enough for me.”

When he started talking to neighbors, Stephens learned how widespread wind farms had become. That made him feel uneasy. 

So, he decided to come and be part of what was his first-ever rally, even though it meant his family’s ranch would be short-handed that day. 

“I have talked to ranchers all around,” he said. “I’ve talked to 68 ranchers, and there’s 50-some against it, three who won’t say, and six who are for it,” he said. “And this is the ranchers all the way around me. And they don’t have to save the ranch. They’ll go to work and do whatever they need to do to make it.”

At a State Board of Land Commissioners meeting in Douglas that Stephens helped arrange, he saw 200-some people in the crowd, with another 100 or so on Zoom, all against more wind in Wyoming. 

More Than 3,500 Signatures On Petition So Far

For the rally on Thursday, Stephens brought his daughter-in-law Kelsey and two grandchildren, Emory and Acelynn, to Cheyenne. 

“My husband and I built our home with our own two hands alongside family and friends,” Kelsey told the crowd. “We chose this place intentionally for the land, the view, and the life it allows us to live. 

"Picture a summer evening on our front porch — crickets and frogs singing, the smell of freshly cut hay in the air, and the red hills glowing as the sun sets. That’s a view that will take your breath away.”

And it’s exactly where a new wind farm plans to locate.

A petition the family has helped circulate has so far gathered 1,778 signatures from Converse County residents alone, Emory told the crowd, with another 500 from Douglas and another 1,241 coming from Glenrock and nearby areas. That’s more than 3,500 signatures so far.

About 98% of those are from Wyoming residents, Emory added. 

“Based on the most recent available data, Converse County generates approximately 43% of Wyoming wind power and electricity, but only receives 12% of the wind generation tax revenue,” she said. “That’s a small fraction of the benefits compared to what it produces for many residents.”

For her, the point of the rally in Cheyenne was all about making sure Wyoming people, including ranchers, have a say in the decisions that are affecting them.

On a map taped to her kitchen table, Cheyenne Realtor and Dereemer Ranch family member Wendy Volk has plotted an informal picture of what Wyoming’s wind tower surge looks like on the land. 

She started the map a little more than a year ago after receiving a letter notifying her that one or more neighbors planned to rezone their land from agricultural to industrial. The map she received with the notice was all but incomprehensible.

There was a dot for Cheyenne in the right-hand corner of the page and another dot in the lefthand corner for Laramie. Chugwater floated near the top of the page.

“Smack dab in the middle of that was this postage-size stamp, depicting this project,” she said. “And I’m a real estate agent, but I couldn’t make heads or tail of that map.”

A different page offered an enlargement of the postage stamp, a 56,000-acre tract dotted with 189 wind turbines, crisscrossed with access roads and transmission lines, as well as symbols for substations. 

But it was still impossible to tell where her family’s property was in relation to all of that.

She reached out to the company for a better map, and that wasn’t as straightforward as she had expected.

“I kept being very tenacious, asking questions, and then the gentleman said I have to go through legal,” she said. “He eventually sent me a better map, which he thought didn’t show that we were even touching.”

With the improved map, though, Volk finally verified that the project was about 1,000 feet off of her property line, as well as some of her neighbors. That’s when she started looking for a bigger picture. 

She hadn’t set out to become an expert on Wyoming’s industrial siting laws or federal permits. She just wanted to see a master map of all the projects to understand their overall footprint on the land. 

She’d noticed, now that her own property was directly affected, that there were an awful lot of wind projects popping up all over the place. She figured someone, somewhere would already have created such a map at the state level.

Nope. And further, there had been no state-level look at the cumulative effects of all these many wind projects.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"So she decided to make her own."}]

“I started putting pink sticky notes on a Wyoming map anytime someone mentioned a wind or solar project,” she said. “All of a sudden, the sticky notes were like connecting dots. And that’s when I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, this is an entire wall of wind projects that will stretch easily from Casper to Cheyenne and from Cheyenne to Rawlins. It’s just going to fill in and create a triangle.'”

It will be a massive “wind wall” that industrializes well over 200 miles of southeastern Wyoming rangeland and migration corridors, she said.

In Volk’s mind, the problem with that isn’t just any one wind farm in particular. It’s that no one at the state level is looking at the whole picture. 

Across southeast Wyoming, ranchers like Volk and her family rarely show up at hearings in their own communities, much less drive hours to Cheyenne to attend Industrial Siting Council meetings or stand on the Capitol steps for something like a rally.

Making time to be in Cheyenne means leaving their families shorthanded for tasks involving animals and fields. 

But Thursday, Stephens and Volk were there with other ranching families to help make a statement about what they feel is unprecedented and unconstrained growth of wind towers in Wyoming.

“These are not protest kind of people,” fourth-generation Wyomingite and Albany County Conservancy founder Anne Brande told Cowboy State Daily. “But they are calling me from Niobrara County, from Chugwater, from Wheatland, from Casper, from Goshen. 

"People are just tired of these (wind turbines) in these rural communities. They want to have a state conversation about it.”

Brande’s group isn’t asking to stop every wind turbine, but they want tougher siting scrutiny, as well as a cumulative impact review that looks at how so many wind turbines showing up all at once will affect wildlife, migration corridors, viewsheds, agricultural land, and rural communities across Wyoming. 

Wind turbines have already killed a number of golden eagles, Brande said. 

“We’ve been trying to place a golden eagle nest cam,” she said. “We think that’d be a fun project, but we’re having a hard time locating a viable nest, a viable golden eagle nest, and that’s a very different narrative than what we had even two, three years ago.”

Federal policy analyst David Wojick has spent the past two years digging into what wind development is doing to golden eagles across the American West.

He says the Eagle Protection Act is misnamed and is actually a license to kill a certain number of golden eagles every time a project gets a permit. That’s because each permit allows a certain amount of eagle “take” or deaths.

“There’s supposedly a program whereby every eagle that’s killed by a wind turbine, 1.2 golden eagles are saved from electrocution, because the wind people pay to have power poles somewhere in the country fixed,” he said. “As far as I’m concerned, that’s all false, by the way. And that’s the thing that I’m the most focused on.”

Wojick has been involved in broad environmental impact assessments of offshore wind in Wales for the last six or so years, and said that’s what he believes Wyoming needs to do about its wind wall.

“We’ve got this huge number of projects, some of which are built, some of which are under construction, and a whole bunch of which have been applied for in various processes,” he said. “And they’re being treated individually. The cumulative effect is obvious, and could be devastating.”

Wojick sees an “ecological death trap” phenomenon with such a widespread swath of land being taken up by wind towers. 

“Somebody’s got to be looking at that,” he said. “The feds should be looking at it. I don’t know if there’s some provision in Wyoming wildlife law for this, but if there isn’t, then the governor should just like convene a task force or committee to look at this.”

Wojick has seen studies showing the number of golden eagles killed by wind turbines has doubled in the Rocky Mountain West. 

He’s also heard ornithologist and bird biologist Bryan Bedrosian’s say that Wyoming’s golden eagle population has dropped by 30% over the last 20 years. Bedrosian is founder of Sporting Lead-Free, as well as conservation director at Teton Raptors Center.

“When you’ve got around 1,500 turbines at this point and with another 1,500 coming, I mean you could wipe (golden eagles) out, quite literally,” Wojick said. “You need to have a moratorium until somebody decides how many eagles you’re prepared to kill.”

What’s The Legacy For Future Generations?

For ranchers like Stephens and Volk, the wind wall isn’t theoretical. It’s either become the view from their front porches, or will be soon.

They’re not asking to turn back the clock on every wind turbine in the state. They just want a thoughtful look at the big picture, instead of a piecemeal approach.

“Governor Gordon’s recent executive order just yesterday regarding data center development recognizes many of these same concerns,” Volk said. “It acknowledges the importance of stewardship, water resources, wildlife, local communities and the entire region. 

"If Wyoming recognizes the need to evaluate cumulative impacts associated with large-scale data center development, then we should be willing to examine the cumulative impacts of industrial corridors forming across southeastern Wyoming.”

The rally, she added, is not about protesting energy development. 

“It’s about making sure Wyoming residents have a voice and the cumulative effects of these projects are honestly evaluated before our landscapes are permanently changed,” she said. “Today, I respectfully ask our city council members, our county commissioners, our state legislators, our state agencies, governing boards to consider the bigger picture, because southeastern Wyoming is not an empty space on a map. 

"It is ranch land, it is wildlife habitat, it is open space, and it is our heritage.”

Wyoming has a responsibility, she added. to be good stewards of that land, and to consider carefully the legacy that will be left to future generations, a legacy she’s sketched out in pink sticky notes that paint what she feels will be a disquieting story.

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

<title>Wyoming Ranchers Rally Against 'Wind Wall' Of Turbines Across The State | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Wyoming ranchers rallied at the state Capitol on Thursday demanding action against what they call a “wind wall” of turbines across the state. “We’ve got surrounded by wind farms,” said one rancher about wind power and its impact on Wyoming’s rural future.

Wyoming Ranchers Rally Against 'Wind Wall' Of Turbines Across The State

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

Andrew Rossi

Wyoming Life

Around Wyoming

Another aurora is heading for the skies over Wyoming, and it might be the last good 

natural light show for Cowboy State residents

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) has issued 

Three coronal mass ejections (CMEs) surged out of the sun on Tuesday and are anticipated to reach Earth’s atmosphere sometime Thursday.

“The current forecast calls for combined CME arrival around mid-afternoon (Thursday), with up to G3 levels possible afterward,” according to the SWPC. “CME passage would likely continue into the evening and possibly overnight hours of (Friday).”

Wyoming aurora enthusiasts are already anticipating a good show, and they’ll be making the most of it. 

[{"type":"text","text":"There might not be another one this good for another 10 years or more."}]

“I wasn't expecting any more activity after last spring's activity,” said Jan Curtis, a retired meteorologist and former Wyoming state climatologist. “We're definitely at the edge of the envelope for seeing these big displays during this solar cycle.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Cannibalistic Event"}]

The intensity of CMEs ranges from G1 to G5. The incoming CME is now a G3, but the SWPC believes it could be G4 by the time it reaches Earth.

Curtis said the intensity of this CME is “a cannibal-type event.” The three CMEs ejected from the sun are intensifying each other as they hurtle through space.

“When one CME catches up to another, it intensifies it,” he said. “It adds a force multiplier to the intensity of the initial eruption.”

That said, there’s no way of knowing how intense the subsequent aurora will be until it gets here. Curtis said there’s “a 50/50 chance” that there will be a super-strong aurora visible in Wyoming, even though it’s almost guaranteed that the CMEs will reach Earth.

“When Earth’s atmosphere is positively charged, they repel other positively charged particles, like a magnet,” he said. “The last time this happened, we were expecting a pretty good display, but the magnetic declination was in the wrong direction.”

Even the SWPC acknowledges there is “a rather complex series of events and circumstances” that will impact the intensity of 

If the CMEs are even more Earth-directed than they already seem to be, they will continue to intensify each other before combining with each other in Earth’s atmosphere.

“The forecasts of aurora are always questionable,” Curtis said. “The SWPC gives you the best estimate they can, but if there are multiple solar wind bursts coming through, that’s usually a good indicator that we will get to see something.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"All-Nighter"}]

Aurora enthusiast and photographer Laura Redmond is already anticipating an “all-nighter” based on the developing forecast.

“They're comparing this storm possibly to the one in May 2024, and that was a very good one,” she said.

The May 2024 auroras were considered some of the best in living memory in Wyoming. They started with 

 between May 10 and 12 of that year, followed by 

Redmond isn’t getting her hopes too high, but said the current outlook is “pretty promising.”

“When a CME hits the Earth, it takes several hours for it to push this far south,” she said. “I'm hoping that it'll hit between noon and 3 p.m., because then it should be down by dark down here in Wyoming. From the numbers yesterday, it looks pretty promising.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Mooning Us"}]

When it comes to CMEs, timing can be tricky. There’s no definite time someone can expect to step outside and see the aurora at its peak.

Redmond had a few suggestions based on her personal experience that have proven results.

“For the people in Wyoming, you just need to be away from city lights,” she said. “You don't have to drive out that far, and you probably will be able to see them with your naked eye.”

Redmond said people need to look for a “white, wispy, moving cloud” between the constellations Ursa Major, the Big Dipper, and Cassiopeia. That’ll be in the northeastern sky.

“The May 2024 was an all-nighter on the first night, and it lasted about an hour and a half after dark the next night,” she said. “We got two nights out of that one, so it’s possible we could get two nights out of this one, too.”

As for timing, Curtis has a good suggestion of when to step out and look up.

“They're most active around midnight, plus or minus an hour,” he said. “It will probably start off very faint, then burst into a lot of activity. But once it gets dark, certainly start looking.”

There will be a potential problem to contend with. The moon is scheduled to rise around 11 p.m., and it’s an 84% illuminated waning gibbous.

“It’s still a pretty big moon, but if the aurora’s bright enough, there should be no problems seeing it,” Curtis said. “Also, the moon’s going over the southern horizon, and we’ll be looking north, so it won’t interfere as much as it could.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Last Hurrah"}]

The sun reached the climax of its solar maximum in October 2024. It’s the point of the 11-year solar cycle when there are more sunspots on the surface of the sun, which means there’s a higher probability of CMEs being generated.

At this point, the sun has nearly cycled out of its solar maximum. It won’t reach its next maximum for another decade, and possibly longer.

As its sunspots decrease, the likelihood of any CME, let alone three colliding CMEs, decreases “exponentially,” according to Curtis.

He added that summer “is not really notorious” for auroras, specifically the northern lights that will potentially reach Wyoming over the next two days. For Wyomingites, this is a “make the most of it” moment for anyone who wants to see an aurora in all its (potential) splendor.

“If we see anything in the next day or so, we should count ourselves lucky,” he said. “We are coming at the end of the two-year buffer after solar maximum, and the frequency of aurora storms diminishes pretty fast at this point. 

"This will probably be the last aurora of this particular solar cycle that we’ll see in Wyoming.”

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<title>Powerful Geomagnetic Storm Could Bring Aurora Shows To Wyoming Thursday And Friday | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Scientists are excited about the possibility of colorful aurora shows on Thursday and Friday nights and Wyoming is in the target zone. Conditions for this event are being compared to May, 2024, which provided some of the most colorful shows in decades.

Powerful Geomagnetic Storm Could Bring Aurora Shows To Wyoming Thursday And Friday

Heinz mark

Mark Heinz

Outdoors

Public Lands

President Donald Trump’s decision to lift restrictions on motorized use of federal lands dating back to the 1970s has some Wyoming motorsports enthusiasts saying the move prioritizes much-deserved public access.

Others worry that it will cause a wildlands disaster, subjecting wildlife and non-motorized users to noise and destruction of habitat.

The Trump administration on Friday rescinded Executive Order (EO) 11644, issued in 1972 by President Richard Nixon, along with President Jimmy Carter’s 1977 EO 11989, which amended and strengthened Nixon’s order.

Throughout the ensuing decades, those orders shaped how federal land agencies managed the use of ATVs, dirt bikes, snowmobiles, and other motorsports vehicles.

The orders directed the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to designate where off-road vehicles could and could not be used.

The stated goals of the orders were to protect resources, mitigate user conflicts, and minimize environmental damage.

Trump’s move is good news for Sweetwater County Commissioner Taylor Jones.

An avid off-roader and snowmobiler, he’s been a vocal critic of the controversial BLM Rock Springs Resource Management Plan, which he argues is too restrictive for motorized use.

"Certainly, I’m thrilled,” Jones told Cowboy State Daily. “I've always been a strong proponent for public access to public lands.

“There are a lot of areas in the national forest and in the mountains that should be open for access,” added Jones, who sits on the Wyoming State Trails Advisory Council.

Jones said he understands the misgivings of hikers, birdwatchers and others who seek isolation and silence on public lands.

As he sees it, the current restrictions push off-roaders into certain areas. That increases friction between motorsports enthusiasts and other public lands users, Jones said.

Lifting restrictions could disperse motorized users across the landscape and ease tensions, Jones said, adding that it could make it easier to maintain a balance between those user groups.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"‘Terrible’ Idea"}]

Avid mountain biker, hiker and skier Amber Travsky of Laramie told Cowboy State Daily that lifting motorized restrictions is a “terrible” idea.

“There are roads and trails designated for ATVs, and I have no problem with that,” she said. “There is so much opportunity already for off-road vehicles, I don’t see why it needs to be everywhere."

Off-road vehicle use can have wide-reaching effects on other uses, Travsky said, because of noise and potential damage to the landscape, particularly fragile areas such as wetlands.

Travsky has long been an advocate for the non-motorized Medicine Bow Rail Trail in Albany County. She said she’s not sure how Trump’s rescinding of the previous executive orders will affect that trail.

However, there’s been “chronic” unauthorized motorized use of the rail trail for years, so she wonders if lifting restrictions will just make that worse.

She understands why motorized users are tempted to jump on the rail trail. A nearby route intended for motorized use is in horrible shape, she said.

“We’ve sat down with the off-road vehicle people and worked toward a solution,” she said, which could entail improving the ATV trail.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Low-Impact Dirt Bikes"}]

Jason Harris of Lyman has participated in long-distance dirt bike races and said he welcomes Trump’s decision.

“If it means that I can ride my dirt bikes in some new places, then I’m stumping for it,” he told Cowboy State Daily.

He’s also happy to see less federal control over public lands.

Harris said he’s seen vegetation “recover quickly” from dirt bike use because the motorcycles are lighter than other off-road vehicles, and cut only a single track.

As he sees it, more widespread use of dirt bikes and more freedom for riders won’t damage Wyoming’s prized landscapes.

“I’m an enthusiast for all motorsports, but my area of specialty is dirt bikes,” he said.

Relaxing motorized use restrictions could have unintended consequences for hunters, Sierra Club spokesman Nick Gevock of Butte, Montana, told Cowboy State Daily.  

“It’s going to dramatically push elk down onto private ranches where they cause fence and crop damage” while also reducing public hunting opportunities, said Gevock, the Sierra Club’s organizing strategist for Northern Rockies wildlands and wildlife.

“Large-scale use of ATVs on public lands” can also spread noxious weeds, push sediment into mountain springs and disturb delicate wildlife habitat, he said.

“This is indicative of the Trump administration’s attitude toward public lands,” Gevock said. “There was no reason to do this, other than to give a nod to the ATV crowd that we’re going to give you free rein over public lands.”

He also worries that it will lead to many more “user-created (motorized) trails” cropping up in isolated areas.

Public land should get the same level of respect that private land does, Gevock added.

“I’m a fair-chase elk hunter, and never once has a rancher who has granted access to public hunting said, ‘’Well you can go anywhere you want,’” he said.

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<title>ATV Riders Cheer Trump Opening Access To Federal Lands, Critics Expect Disaster | Cowboy State Daily</title>

President Trump’s lifting of restrictions on motorized use of federal lands dating back to the 1970s has some Wyoming motorsports enthusiasts cheering a move they say prioritizes public access. Others worry that it will cause a wildlands disaster.