Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 30
At its peak, the mighty Elk Fire made a furious wind-driven, overnight run. Sheridan and Johnson County firefighters had never seen anything like it before on their home turf. Neither had their parents or grandparents. Between 1:30 and 5 a.m. on Oct. 4, the blaze consumed more of the Bighorns' rugged east slope than any previously documented fire had burned that forest in total. "In a matter of three hours it ran 25,000 acres," Bighorn National Forest Supervisor Andrew Johnson said weeks later....
The man who struck and killed Grizzly 399 while commuting home from Jackson on Tuesday night was driving at around the speed limit of 55 mph, law enforcement officials said Thursday. Those details about the Snake River Canyon accident that pulled at heartstrings around Wyoming and the world come from a crash investigation relayed by Lincoln County Sheriff's Patrol Lt. John Stetzenbach. "Looking at the crash itself, the size of the bear and the damage that was done to the vehicle, [the...
Rod and gun club got federal permits to eliminate 30 of the giant trout-eating birds, but daily efforts to kill them have struck a nerve with many residents. 9-MILE LAKE-Initially, Jay Benson was OK with the idea of taking out some white pelicans to protect the Alco Rod and Gun Club's pricy stock of put-and-take trout. Often during the summer, he said, a few dozen of the hefty native piscivorous birds rafted out on the club's exclusive 9-Mile Lake outside of Laramie to take advantage of the...
A federal judge has upheld the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's plans for managing black-footed ferrets in Wyoming, the state where the once-presumed-extinct species was rediscovered some four decades ago. The dispute over how the federal government managed the endangered weasel-like animal traces back nearly a decade to when federal wildlife managers officially designated the Wyoming population as "nonessential, experimental." That classification allows for more regulatory flexibility than...
WHITE MOUNTAIN-"That's a lot of horses," lamented Cheyenne resident Robyn Smith from a high-desert ridgeline. It wasn't her first exasperated exclamation. "Argh, oh crap," was her immediate reaction to learning a federal judge had given the Bureau of Land Management the OK to proceed with plans to fully remove two wild horse herds from the landscape in southwest Wyoming. A retired architect donning a "Return to Freedom" ball cap that featured a bucking mustang, Smith proudly described herself...
WASHINGTON, D.C.-Flanked by three fellow activists, Kristin Combs was tired, hungry and catching up on messages after hours of trying to convince congressional staffers that legislation was needed following the most infamous animal welfare case in recent Wyoming history. The all-women activist crew, who traveled from around the country, had met with the offices of several congressional Endangered Species Act Caucus members: U.S. Reps. Debbie Dingell (D-Michigan), Don Beyer (D-Virginia), Raúl...
WIND RIVER VALLEY-Biologists Tucker Russell and Rene Schell stopped in their tracks. Spooked out of a daybed, a mule deer doe sprung to her feet. She bounded up a gentle, grassy slope amid badlands-like rock formations overlooking the Wind River, then froze, staring right back. But Russell, with the University of Wyoming, and Schell, with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, had eyes on something else. A still-spotted fawn. Within moments, the youngster abandoned its hiding spot, bolting for mo...
Within hours of the sighting on Wednesday, Frank van Manen caught word that there was a grizzly sow with five cubs in tow spotted in Yellowstone National Park. Five cubs following mom is so unlikely that van Manen, who leads the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team, pondered an explanation. Maybe, he said, there was an adoption event: Sometimes two female siblings produce cubs in the same year, and one ends up with the other's youngsters. "We've seen that before, with adoptions taking place," van...
A gas exploration company with Florida ties is pursuing plans to pull groundwater out of existing coalbed methane wells in southern Wyoming, then pipe it into the lower reaches of the water-stressed Colorado River Basin. The project was formally initiated in December, when the State Engineer’s Office received 21 groundwater test well applications from Mark Dolar of Dolar Energy, LLC. The test wells are all located on Bureau of Land Management property south of Rawlins in the Atlantic Rim gas field. Two test well applications have since been r...
It’s been nearly five years since the U.S. Supreme Court issued a landmark decision recognizing tribes’ treaty-based hunting rights, and two months since a lower federal court issued an order related to tribal elk hunting in the Bighorns. Still, many of the fundamental legal and policy questions about where, when and if certain Native Americans are bound by state hunting regulations remain far from resolution. Meanwhile, the landscape of case law in which observers expected the lingering leg...
For the first time in its history, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department has a formal plan in place for managing the state's 21 winter elk feedgrounds. The 96-page document allows for changes to feedgrounds that could avert the worst consequences of an ugly disease that's ramping up - a sickness that scientists expect will devastate Northwest Wyoming's six fed elk herds in the long term if feeding continues. Notably, the plan does not compel reform or call for closing feedgrounds, but it does...
Newly published research exposes the role gas drilling infrastructure played in shrinking habitat for northeast Wyoming's dwindling sage grouse population - and it also provides a blueprint to help the imperiled species continue to exist on industrialized landscapes. In the Powder River Basin, a coalbed methane industry boom around the turn of the century brought with it some 30,000 wells, thousands of miles of roads, power lines and pipelines, along with scores of wastewater ponds resulting...
Fresh grizzly bear bloodlines are expected to arrive in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem this summer, adding genetic diversity to a population of animals that's been isolated for a century. The infusion of genetics will come from the North Continental Divide Ecosystem, and it will roll down the highway in the form of a slumbering grizzly or two. Why truck in grizzly bears to a population last estimated at nearly 1,000 animals? Montana and Wyoming - which have hashed out an agreement - are...
The pathway of a highly migratory western Wyoming pronghorn herd that's been known by researchers for a quarter-century is at "high risk" of being lost. That's according to a draft "threat evaluation" released Thursday by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department in conjunction with an announcement that the state agency will consider identifying or designating migration corridors used by the Sublette Pronghorn Herd. "In summary, the known current and potential threats pose a high risk to the...
ALPINE - Gary Fralick's calm demeanor shifted to a hustle for the hour that a steady stream of severed heads made its way through his check station on the last Saturday of deer hunting season. The Thayne-based Wyoming Game and Fish Department biologist and his colleague, Kelsie Hayes, checked one ungulate deadhead after another. The red-shirted duo was posted up where Greys River Road exits the Wyoming and Salt River mountain ranges. Fralick knows the spot well: This fall marked his 30th...
Art Lawson wanted to show actor Martin Sensmeier what the Wind River Indian Reservation was all about when he came through town this summer. So Lawson, the Shoshone and Arapahoe Fish and Game's director, took Sensmeier fishing in the backcountry. The actor - star of the upcoming film, "Wind River: The Next Chapter" - got a good glimpse of the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho's 2.2-million-acre reservation's wild landscape. "A bear just popped up right in front of camp," Lawson recalled of t...
WIND RIVER RANGE FOOTHILLS-Kristy Wardell dawned rain gear though the skies were clear. The lifelong rancher was dressed in protective garb to guard against manure and urine that 366 ewes and 442 lambs had discharged along the wheeled journey around the Winds. On her hands and knees, the 59-year-old crawled into the bowels of a big rig she'd driven to flush out the animals, which will summer on Jim Magagna's pasture land along the banks of Lander Creek. Not used to being trucked, the band "had a...
WYOMING RANGE-At nearly 14% body fat, mule deer F14 was plump in the rump, and expecting two fawns, going into this most recent winter. The 8-year-old doe's dual pregnancy was par for the course - F14 was prone to birthing twins. She was good at raising them, too. Four of her eight previous fawns had survived to independence. "F14 was a really good mom," University of Wyoming ecology PhD candidate Tayler Lasharr recalled. No track record of success could save F14 and her peers from the brutal...
She's 27 years old, reputed for being a stellar mother and knows her way around a crowd. If you live in Jackson Hole she might be your nosy neighbor. Regardless, her olfactory senses are terrific. Wyoming resident Grizzly 399 has lived a wild life that has garnered attention around the world. Like the best of us, she's endured trials and tribulations and heartbreak. And her extraordinary life has inspired untold fans near and far. Hordes of the grizzly's faithful fan club will surely be staked...
Bruce Moats has been accused of never having met a document that shouldn't be public or a meeting that shouldn't be open. "Largely I plead guilty to that, though not totally," the grayed, wiry 66-year-old Cheyenne attorney said. Moats' mindset and bias toward transparency was born partly from his upbringing, he said. Growing up in a massive family, with 10 kids, decision-making was a collective effort. Functioning as a family wouldn't have worked, he said, "unless all of us [knew] what's going...
Rep. John Winter (R-Thermopolis) rode horseback into the Red Desert to see some new country last year. An outfitter and rancher, Winter was accompanied by a rangeland specialist and members of the Rock Springs Grazing Association. During the outing he learned a good bit about a growing natural resource concern in that corner of the state: Wild horses. "I'll tell you, there are just too many horses," Winter said. "They're affecting sage grouse and other wildlife, and it's ruining the range." Newl...
CHEYENNE—An “unprecedented” shortage of Wyoming game wardens is adding to angst about a legislative proposal that would attract coyote hunters onto public land at night, adding to the thinned corps’ around-the-clock duties. “Our folks are feeling the pressure of their significant workload that is not shared by as many people as it should be right now,” Wyoming Game and Fish Department Chief Warden Rick King testified last week. “Our folks work really hard and they’ll do the best they can, but that’s really one of the things I worry about: The...
GRAND TETON NATIONAL PARK— It wasn’t AJ Duda’s first brush with angling for goldfish and other former aquarium dwellers within view of the Teton Range. The Pine Island, Florida teen, visiting Jackson Hole with family, had scouted this unlikely microfishing honey hole during a prior vacation. This time he came prepared. Armed with a spinning rod rig, line tipped with flies and small jigs, Duda worked the geothermally heated water coursing out of Kelly Warm Springs as it left the small pond....
Pointing to a three-year delay in implementing Wyoming’s big game migration protection policy, some members of the Wyoming Wildlife Taskforce encouraged wildlife managers to act during the group’s final meeting. “We’re missing opportunities,” Sen. Larry Hicks (R-Baggs) said at the Dec. 14 meeting in Cheyenne. “It frustrates me to no end to sit here and say, ‘Well, we have to have the best-available science.’ We can’t afford the best-available science for every single wildlife population [or] corridor in the state of Wyoming. If that becomes t...
Millions of visitors flock to Yellowstone National Park each summer to gawk at geysers, waterfalls and charismatic megafauna like elk. Bugling bulls and their harems of cows are a major part of the draw to the iconic western park that's been protected for the past 150 years. Down the Yellowstone plateau dozens of miles to the east, however, the landscape is privately owned, increasingly valuable and changing rapidly. And the same elk spend much of their lives there. "These herds are important...
