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

Andrew Rossi

CODY — Chloe ODonnell, 7, almost had no one to celebrate her birthday with her when 15 invitees to her party canceled. 

With one message, Cody rallied last weekend to ensure the little girl and her family knew the community has their backs.

After all the invited guests canceled, Chloe’s mother Melanie turned to Facebook to see if anyone would be willing to swing by and celebrate with them. 

 150 people reached out within 15 minutes.

“We just wanted her to feel like she had a group of people there to have fun with her,” Melanie told Cowboy State Daily. “It blew me away that so many people just showed up or wished her a happy birthday. They made Chloe feel so loved.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"None Of 15 Invitees Came"}]

 birthday party in Cody’s Mentock Park. Around 15 people, mostly new friends in the neighborhood, had been invited.

When Sunday turned into the hottest day of the summer, with temperatures in Cody over 100 degrees, the party was relocated to Millstone Pizza Company & Brewery.

That’s when the cancellations started coming in. Everything from heat-related concerns to, in one case, a death in the family.

“When the last kid finally said that they weren't coming, we had already set up at Millstone,” Melanie said. “Our decorations were out, I’d bought this big cake, and we were all sitting in the downstairs arcade center by ourselves.”

Melanie and her four kids are new to Cody, having moved there in January. They’re still trying to establish themselves in their new home, but that’s especially difficult for Chloe.

“She has some developmental struggles and doesn’t make friends easily,” Melanie said. “She hasn’t made a lot of friends yet, and I so badly wanted her to have a great day.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"They Came Bearing Gifts"}]

Desperate to give her daughter a happy birthday, Chloe turned to Cody Area Classifieds on Facebook. She asked if anyone with young kids wanted to come hang out in Millstone with Chloe and her siblings.

Within 15 minutes, multiple families RSVPed that they were on their way. And they came prepared.

“They arrived with gifts for her,” Melanie said. “People offered to drop off gifts for her, which I told them wasn’t necessary. It was really heart-warming.”

Melanie said responders expressed their desire to attend or send a gift so Chloe wouldn’t feel alone.

“A man from Red Lodge, Montana, messaged me and said, ‘I obviously cannot come down, but I have grandkids,’ and that really touched me,” she said.

The man sent Melanie $25 via Venmo so she could get Chloe a birthday gift.

However, one of the most touching displays of kindness came from a child who arrived for the party, Melanie said. He came with a gift that came from the heart.

“One little boy actually shopped in his room for something she might like and put it in a gift bag for her,” Melanie said. “He gave one of his own items to her. It was very sweet.”

The birthday party turned into a networking event. Many new bonds were forged, and phone numbers exchanged.

Meanwhile, dozens of people sent messages wishing Chloe the best on her birthday.

In a moment of desperation, Melanie found an overwhelming wave of friendship for Chloe and her entire family in Cody.

“The people who showed up were complete strangers, but they all acted as if they had always known each other,” she said. “The children were so sweet and well behaved. Chloe had an amazing time.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Old And New Roots"}]

Melanie said the last three years have been “so rough” for Chloe and her three siblings. In that time, Melanie got divorced, remarried, then lost her mother and both grandmothers.

Melanie’s new husband, “my high school sweetheart,” had been working in Cody for over a decade. The whole 

 family has been there for less than a year, but it already feels like a loving home.

“I’ve learned this town shows up for people,” she said. “We came from a larger city, and this is the kind of thing that would never have happened there.”

What Melanie didn’t realize until recently is that she wasn’t establishing new roots in Cody. She was rediscovering old ones.

“My grandfather told me that our family lived in Cody at one point,” she said. “My great-grandmother actually lived here in the early 1900s and moved back to the East Coast in the 1920s. I didn’t know about that connection until my second or third visit.”

In that sense, the birthday party was like a family reunion. More than anything, Melanie’s happy she got to give Chloe a memorable birthday and better bonds in her new home.

“She started making friends really fast,” she said. “It was a beautiful moment of a small town supporting each other. They are amazing, and we love this town.”

Chloe O Donnell IMG 8932 7 18 26

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

<title>Hooray! Cody Residents Rally When No One Shows Up For 7-Year-Old's Birthday Party | Cowboy State Daily</title>

When no one showed up for a Cody girl's 7th birthday party, her mom went to Facebook to see if anyone would swing by. That's when the town of Cody rallied. More than 150 people stopped by the local pizza place to wish Chloe O'Donnell a happy birthday.

Hooray! Cody Residents Rally When No One Shows Up For 7-Year-Old's Birthday Party

Heinz mark

Mark Heinz

Outdoors

Wildlife

The number of grizzlies needed to consider the species “recovered” in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem seemingly remains an open question.

However, grizzly advocate Pete Bengeyfield, who has been watching and photographing the bears for decades, said even he has to admit there are probably enough of them to consider the species “recovered,” even if he still opposes having the bears delisted from Endangered Species Act protection and hunted.

There are an estimated 1,000 or so grizzlies in the Greater Yellowstone region of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho. And roughly the same number of grizzlies in Montana’s Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem.

The Wyoming Game and Fish Department and elected officials in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho think that’s plenty of grizzlies, perhaps even too many.

Gov. Mark Gordon and Wyoming’s congressional delegation praised the Department of the Interior’s announcement this week of a proposal to hand 

The proposal must go through a public comment period before it’s finalized — and wouldn’t amount to a full delisting of grizzlies.

Game and Fish still wouldn’t be allowed to open a Wyoming grizzly hunting season, which top department brass has said they intend to do if and when full delisting happens.

Wyoming Republican U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman indicated that she will continue to push to have grizzlies delisted through legislation.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Numbers Tell The Story"}]

Bengeyfield lives in Dillon, Montana, as a U.S. Forest Service hydrologist. He moved to southwest Montana in 1984 and started photographing grizzlies.

At the time, “there were maybe 200 bears” in the Yellowstone ecosystem, he said.

He retired from the Forest Service about 15 years ago, which gave him more time to dedicate to following and photographing grizzlies, and he's become an outspoken advocate for the bears.

Grizzly watching and photography was a completely different game in the mid-1980s, Bengeyfield said.

Then, he had to search far and wide to find bears.

“When I started, there were no bears in the Tetons at all. Well, maybe up in the mountains, but you didn’t see them down around Jackson at all,” he told Cowboy State Daily.

Now bears are plentiful, he said. They’re increasingly showing up in places where they were seldom, if ever, seen before, Bengeyfield said.

That includes, for example, the Gravelly Range mountains in southwest Montana, he said, adding that there’s no denying the size of the population.

“The numbers, I think, tell the story. If there really are 1,000 bears in the Yellowstone ecosystem now, I think that’s plenty to say they’re recovered,” he said. “I think bear advocates, and I consider myself to be one, are going to have a hard time justifying that we have ‘non-recovered’ numbers.

It’s also been widely argued that habitat connectivity between the Yellowstone and Northern Continental Divide bear populations matters just as much, if not more, than the sheer number of bears.

“I think the arguments about connectivity to the Glacier (National Park) population and all of that, they’re real arguments,

 Bengeyfield said. "I’m not disputing that at all.” 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Can The States Be Trusted?"}]

After posting his thoughts on social media, Bengeyfield said he’s received numerous comments.

One person suggested that grizzlies be allowed to repopulate their entire historical range, he said. That would include most of the Great Plains and nearly as far south as the U.S.-Mexico border.

As appealing as that might sound, it’s “silly” in light of how much has changed since grizzlies roamed their entire range, he said.

Bengeyfield said he feels stuck on the horns of a dilemma in terms of what might be the next best step for grizzlies.

Regarding the Department of the Interior’s move to hand grizzly management over to the states, he said he’s not exactly enthusiastic about it.

“I think when you deal with the states, especially in Montana, the local view of the grizzlies — and not the view of the majority of the people, but of the people in power — is that they don’t want grizzlies at all,

More bears on the landscape, along with more people than he’s ever seen before, has increased the risk of human-bear conflicts, Bengeyfield said.

In that sense, he said that “the recovery effort has almost been too successful. They’ve recovered so many bears, and there are so many more people, the bear-people interactions are just going to increase."

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Numbers Are Not Enough"}]

Former Wyoming Game and Fish director and current U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Brian Nesvik has stated that the number of grizzlies indicates full recovery.

His successor at Game and Fish, Director Angi Bruce, has openly argued the same.

Delisting supporters point out that 500 grizzlies was the original target number for the Yellowstone Ecosystem, and that

Grizzly conservationist Louisa Willcox told Cowboy State Daily that she thinks the “500” number is tied to a 1993 grizzly recovery plan that was flawed to begin with.

Also, population estimates alone can’t be the only measure of whether the species is recovered in the Lower 48, she added.

“The numbers have to be tied to habitat,” she said.

That means not only habitat in its current state, but how it might look in the future.

For instance, grizzlies are now dependent upon berries and cutworm moths for peak summer foods, and those are at high altitudes, Willcox said.

But scientific models indicate those food sources might start to run out, she said.

“What happens when the moths run out?” she said.

That could very well mean bears moving to lower altitudes during the summer. And more people are at lower altitudes, meaning more chances for human-bear conflicts, Willcox said.

“There’s no magic number” of grizzlies that would mark full recovery, she said.

Instead, as she sees it, there needs to be a complete revision of the 1993 grizzly recovery plan. And all interested parties should be involved, she said.

And FWS should lead that effort, Willcox said.

But as she sees it, at least so far, the agency hasn’t shown a willingness to do that.

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<title>Even If Grizzlies Have ‘Recovered,’ Advocates Still Don’t Want The Bears Delisted | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Grizzly advocate Pete Bengeyfield, who has been watching and photographing the bears for decades, said even he has to admit there are probably enough of them to consider the species “recovered." However, he still opposes having the bears delisted.

Even If Grizzlies Have ‘Recovered,’ Advocates Still Don’t Want The Bears Delisted

 in the Bridge Bay Campground in Yellowstone National Park, several people rushed and yelled at the angry animal to prevent it from attacking the 65-year-old grandpa again.

Their efforts were successful, sending the bison running. As far as the world could see, that was the end of the incident.

Joshua Lewis of Colorado Springs encountered the belligerent bull bison at the same campground moments after it tossed McDaniel and ran off. He said that the incident was “only the beginning of the bison’s rage.”

“I noticed how fast everybody jumped on and started retelling the story and what happened afterward, but there was a lot more that happened after the fact,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “Nobody’s aware of what happened after Round One.”

On the evening of July 10, Lewis was camping in spot E-243 on the E-Loop at Bridge Bay Campground. He was there with his cousin and her son from Switzerland.

 coming from the D-Loop, he assumed it was “a bunch of guys getting or about to get drunk.”

“We heard the yelling and thought it was drunks having a brawl,” he said. “No one yelled ‘bison’ that we heard, just adults yelling ‘Hey, hey, hey,’ and ‘Stop.’ Not even a scream of terror.”

What Lewis was actually hearing was photographer Mike MacLeod and others charging and yelling at the bull bison that had just tossed Mike’s grandfather Carl into the air.

 to prevent it from harming the older man any further.

They successfully chased the bison off. It ran from the D-Loop to the E-Loop — and it wasn’t any less agitated, Lewis said.

Lewis was walking to the bathroom when he heard his cousin scream. Two men at the E-244 campsite were shouting, “Look out!”

“That’s the total time and distance before the problem descended into our loop,” Lewis said. “I turned expecting something to have gone wrong with the fire, but saw the men, my cousin, and her 12-year-old son all scattering.”

The bison was running head-on at first, so Lewis didn’t immediately register what was happening. When the bison turned, revealing its massive profile, he recognized the severity of the situation.

“It had come through the amphitheater area and a small meadow next to (our campsite) and was apparently already in full charge,” he said. "The men at 244 happened to be sitting at their fire, facing south, and saw it coming. 

"My cousin heard the noise and turned at the same time the men started yelling when they saw it bearing down on the camp.”

Nobody was too close to the bison. It had closed the distance and was still amped up.

Lewis knew that everyone in the vicinity was making stressful split-second decisions when the bison suddenly charged into their area. From what he observed, the bison appeared to be assessing the situation and choosing a target.

“The suddenness of the attack really threw everybody off their game,” he said. “In the snap of a finger, the bison had already blasted into the camp and was trying to figure out which way it was going to go and who was going to hit first.”

Lewis had to be very intentional with his heat-of-the-moment actions. He wasn’t as agile as he would’ve liked.

“I almost lost my leg last year because of a massive infection and a surgically related complication in my knee,” he said. “I was using a walker until January and only quit using a cane in March.”

Since he couldn’t run to save anybody, he figured the best thing he could do was save his cousin’s son.

“He was able to run through the trees east around Site 244 to the bathroom,” he said. “I shoved him into the women’s room and slammed the door shut.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The 'Minute To Live' Look"}]

Lewis said the bison had already seemed targeted and was pursuing the 12-year-old. The two men at Site 244 distracted it long enough for him to reach the bathroom.

Meanwhile, Lewis’s cousin was running around the campsite trying to keep parked vehicles and trees between her and the bison.

“I was able to get her attention and guide her towards me,” he said. “The guys at the campsite next to us kind of directed traffic and created chaos for the bison.”

Suddenly, his cousin tripped and fell, and Lewis knew he couldn’t get to her.

“My knee would not allow me to get away,” he said. “If I had gotten to her, I would have been a sitting duck and done nothing but slow it down, which probably would have gotten us both killed."

Since the bison was still focused on the boy who suddenly disappeared into the bathroom, it didn’t notice the tripped woman. It definitely noticed her when she got back up and started running, as it immediately turned to charge at her.

Lewis, who served in the military, said he saw a chilling look in his cousin’s eyes in that moment.

“I've had experiences in my life, like failed parachutes during a parachute military freefall exercise, where it's like, ‘I got one minute, and I'm done,’” he said. “I saw that look in her face, like she knew that was the end of the line.”

Fortunately, Lewis’s cousin managed to run to the bathroom before the bison reached her. Once she was inside and Lewis slammed the door shut, the bison was less than 20 feet away and rapidly closing the distance.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Horror Movie Moment"}]

With three people secure in “the woefully inadequate bunker with no secondary exits,” Lewis said he was “trying to calculate a bunch of problems and solutions all at once.”

“I didn't know if it could knock down a concrete wall, because if it could get into the bathroom, somebody was going to die,” he said.

After a few minutes of uncertainty, Lewis decided he needed to know what was happening outside. It felt like a horror movie moment.

“There was nothing but dead silence until I opened the door, and it squeaked really loud,” he said. “I didn't get hit and knocked on my butt, so I pushed it open a little more with a good, loud squeak.”

That’s when the two men from Site 244 called out to Lewis, telling him that the bison was gone. After everyone was safe inside the bathroom, it had run eastward and out of the camp.

[{"type":"text","text":"The next thing Lewis heard was sirens rushing toward them. "}]

It was Yellowstone EMS, “coming to check on the carnage” at the D-Loop and to treat McDaniel’s critical injuries.

The whole incident lasted a few minutes that felt like an eternity, Lewis said, adding that nobody in their part of the campground was hurt.

“I think the only reason there was not another strike and injury is that four people in motion, especially the men yelling at 244, made it hard for the bison to select a target,” he said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Going And Gone"}]

As everyone’s adrenaline started to come down, they were trying to process what had just happened.

Lewis spoke to the two men who successfully distracted the bison, and they were going over every detail in exasperation. They seemed to be experienced backcountry hikers, which added to their dismay in the moment.

“I could tell both of them were doing an after-action review,” he said. “One of them told me he always has bear spray on his hip, but he didn't know if he should have pulled it out or just run. His brain definitely locked up in the moment.”

According to Lewis, they were asking the same question as MacLeod and McDaniel in the aftermath of their encounters with the bison: “Did I do the right thing?”

Lewis’s cousin immediately started taking down their tent. They left the park and spent the night in Cody. It was another familiar, haunting look Lewis knew.

“She was clearly showing some signs of PTSD from the encounter,” he said. “She’s the primary caregiver for her son, and I think, as a mom, she definitely was in more of an emotional state realizing how close she was to losing everything.”

As for her son, he quickly recovered and didn’t seem to be overly affected by what happened.

“He’s a typical kid, (so he was) watching some World Cup recaps and his video games before they went back to Switzerland,” Lewis said.

Lewis’s cousin eventually asked to see MacLeod’s video of the bison tossing McDaniel.

“She got really quiet,” Lewis said. “I think she realized how much worse things were. It brought it into another level of perspective.”

She got another reminder of what happened at the Pikes Peak or Bust Rodeo when they returned to Colorado Springs. Lewis had already bought tickets for her and her son, and the last event of the night is always bull riding.

“The second bull out of the shoot was brown with black hair,” he said. “It almost looked like a tiny buffalo. The next rider got bucked and landed like a frog, and the bull’s front feet hit that guy square in the butt. 

"She got choked up on that and said, ‘What would have happened to me if that bison had gotten hold of me?’”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Could Have Been Worse"}]

Lewis’s account of what happened at the E-Loop of the Bridge Bay Campground was extremely detailed. That’s because he works as a private investigator and “writing reports and covering details” comes with the job.

What struck Lewis wasn’t only how terrifying and traumatizing that moment was, but how much worse it could have been.

“There were several things that could have been worse,” he said. “The family that had the campsite next to the bathroom, with several small children, was away at the time. Those young guys managed to yell and make the right noise at the right time, which gave my cousin and her son time to get to relative safety.”

He also noted that while the bison was extremely aggressive, it wasn’t destructive. There was little to no evidence of what happened at the campground in the aftermath.  

“Between the tents, fire pits, and vehicles, the bison didn’t touch a thing or do any property damage,” he said. “It’s a testament to the deadly agility.”

Lewis was glad to hear that McDaniel was recovering from the bison toss. His femur was broken in four places, requiring surgery, but he’s expected to make a full recovery.

The bison, meanwhile, remains and will remain at large. Yellowstone officials confirmed that they 

don’t intend to take any management action 

“The bison will not be euthanized,” Yellowstone spokeswoman Linda Veress told Cowboy State Daily. “While serious injuries are uncommon and fatalities are extremely rare, encounters with bison can result in severe consequences.”

Lewis wanted to share his story because the encounter at Bridge Bay Campground didn’t end with the bison running off after tossing McDaniel. It’s a harrowing reminder of how dangerous Yellowstone’s wildlife can be.

“It was amazing how fast everything happened,” he said. “I’ve been in some hairy incidents, and I knew bison could run fast, but it astonished all of us. 

"If it had not been distracted by four people and had only one person on its mind, there would have been a different outcome.”

Angry bison 7 18 26

<title>After Flipping 65-Year-Old Man, Angry Bison Went After People In Next Campsite | Cowboy State Daily</title>

After an agitated bison flipped a 65-year-old man in Yellowstone last weekend, it charged after another group of campers. The first incident was “only the beginning of the bison’s rage," said a Colorado man who said the bison targeted a 12-year-old.

After Flipping 65-Year-Old Man, Angry Bison Went After People In Next Campsite

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's general assignment reporter, Clair McFarland.

Clair McFarland

Crime & Courts

Courts

The Wyoming Supreme Court has rejected all the appeal arguments that a former award-winning Casper foster dad made in an attempt to overturn his 128-to-178-year sentence for sexually abusing children.

Steven Marler, 51, was not deprived of a fair trial in April 2025, says a unanimous majority opinion by Wyoming Supreme Court Justice Robert Jarosh issued Friday.

Natrona County District Court Judge Kerri Johnson sentenced Marler last August, four months after an 11-day jury trial in which many of his foster and adopted children 

Testimony ranged from actual crime evidence, such as sexual penetration and touching of the female children in Marler’s care, to tangential evidence the judge allowed after a special analysis. 

That included claims that Marler required the girls to give him “daddy tax” reciprocal massages, that he showered with at least one of the girls, that he subjected the children to intense discipline, and that the children were often deprived of food.

The jury convicted him of sexually abusing two adopted daughters as well as physically abusing them and four other children in his care.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"At Trial"}]

At trial, a former foster daughter of Marler described how he sexually assaulted her in the family’s master bedroom, and one of his adopted sons described hearing “moaning” from the girls’ bedroom.

Along with the allegations of sexual abuse, the adopted son also told the jury about being kicked off a metal roof of the family’s Casper Mountain home by his father for “moving too slow” after clearing snow.

One foster daughter told Natrona County Assistant District Attorney Brandon Rosty that she was in the home with her older sisters between the spring of 2013 and 2014. She described the day when Marler brought her into his bedroom and placed her on the bed.

She testified that he asked her to take off her clothes, and she refused.

[{"type":"text","text":"“Once I would not, Steve removed my pants,” she said. "}]

Marler also removed her underclothes and then sexually assaulted her with his fingers before removing his own clothing and sexually assaulted her again, she said.

“I was laying on my back on the bed and he was standing up,” the girl said, adding that the incident left her in a lot of pain.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The ‘Other Acts’ Testimony"}]

In his appeal, Marler argued that Johnson abused her discretion by letting multiple witnesses testify to “other acts” — that is, evidence that doesn’t go directly to charged crimes. 

He also argued that Johnson abused her discretion by not letting his attorney question one of the daughters about a time she lied to a jail deputy, while also detailing abuse by Marler to an investigator.

Marler further argued that Johnson abused her discretion by not letting his attorney play a full interview between him and an investigator, of which the prosecutor had played a portion; that the prosecutor was wrong to question one of the victims about her father’s suicide; and that all these alleged errors combined deprived him of a fair trial.

[{"type":"text","text":"The high court agreed with none of that."}]

“Other acts” evidence can only enter a trial after a judge finds fair reasons for it, the high court noted.

One of the state’s witnesses described grooming as a “constellation of tactics that perpetrators will use to gradually, incrementally have sexual contact, sexual activity with a child,” and said grooming can also include efforts to compel silence.

Johnson chose to admit the grooming evidence after an analysis involving four factors. The factors are whether the evidence is being offered for a proper purpose, it’s relevant, its probative value outweighs its potential to prejudice the defendant, and the trial court must warn the jury about the evidence’s limited purpose upon request.

Johnson read the disclaimer about the evidence multiple times during trial, but not before every daughter’s and son’s testimony.

That didn’t amount to an abuse of discretion, the high court concluded. She had read it multiple times.

The Wyoming Supreme Court on Friday rejected all the appeals a former award-winning Casper foster dad made to overturn his 128-to-178-year sentence for sexually abusing children. Multiple former foster and adopted children testified against him at trial.

Steven Charles Lupien, 62