Editor’s note: This story has been updated with more information about the law enforcement response and the area where the shooting took place.

Yellowstone National Park rangers shot and killed a person early Thursday morning during an exchange of gunfire that also left a ranger injured, the park announced.

The law enforcement ranger was in stable condition and receiving medical care at a nearby regional hospital late Thursday morning. The park’s announcement did not disclose the nature of the ranger’s injuries.

There was no active threat to the public at the time of the park’s announcement.

The park described a “significant law enforcement incident” that occurred at Canyon Village in central Yellowstone overnight Wednesday and into Thursday morning. Rangers responded to the area after learning that a person with a gun was making threats, the park said.

When rangers contacted the person, whom Yellowstone did not identify, they and the individual exchanged gunfire. The park announcement did not state how many rangers were involved in the shooting.

Firearms are permitted in the national park, but prohibited in certain facilities including visitor centers and government offices. Firing a gun is also prohibited.

Calls to park officials weren’t immediately returned around noon Thursday.

The area around the Canyon Lodge complex remained closed Thursday while authorities investigated the shooting. The FBI is leading the investigation with help from National Park Service special agents.

In an email, an FBI spokeswoman for the agency’s Denver field office said the bureau could not comment beyond what was included in the park’s announcement.

Images from the scene

A retired National Park Service ranger who runs a Facebook page focused on agency news posted photographs of law enforcement officers said to be at the site of the deadly shooting in Yellowstone on Thursday morning.

Retired ranger Greg Jackson posted photographs he said showed armed law officers entering the Bison employee dorm building at the Canyon complex.

Jackson, who left the agency in about 2012, said he received the photographs from the father of a concessionaire’s employee. Jackson did not name the employee or her father.

But he said the female photographer “was a fellow concession employee and had an interaction with the suspect,” who was a male.

“Multiple sources have told me that he was an employee of the park concession,” Jackson wrote on the NPS Ranger News Facebook page. “This squares with the incident photos that show a concession employee housing area.”

WyoFile has been unable to confirm whether the deceased worked for a park concessionaire at Canyon Village. Neither the park service nor Xanterra, which operates the Canyon Lodge and Cabins, returned messages seeking comment mid-afternoon Thursday.

Jackson retired from 23 years with the park service after serving as deputy chief of law enforcement, security and emergency services in Washington, D.C. He said he first received information regarding the shooting from Yellowstone employees who relayed a message sent from Park Superintendent Cam Sholly to them.

Although the incident happened in Yellowstone on the Fourth of July — on a holiday in the world’s most famous pleasuring ground — law enforcement was equipped to deal with the threat, Jackson said.

“They’re trained federal law enforcement officers,” he said. “You can see by photos they’re well equipped for an armed response. They’re quite well trained for things like this.”

Popular part of the park

Canyon Village is perched on the edge of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, one of the park’s premier attractions that features Artist Point and a view of the 308-foot high Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River.

There are more than 500 rooms at Canyon Lodge and Cabins, which is situated near the canyon, according to the park’s website.

In addition to the Canyon Lodge and Cabins, the developed complex includes a campground with more than 270 sites.
The shooting occurred at the start of the July 4 holiday weekend during what is typically the park’s busiest month for visitation.

The post Yellowstone National Park shooting leaves one dead, ranger injured appeared first on WyoFile .

When Gov. Mark Gordon let legislation prohibiting transgender girls from competing in middle and high school girls’ sports become Wyoming law without his signature in March 2023, both opponents and supporters of the ban expected to go to court. 

Wyoming Equality, the state’s largest LGBTQ+ advocacy group, said it was in talks with local and national partners in preparation for litigation, according to the Casper Star-Tribune. 

The legislation itself incorprated a court-challenge contingency plan. 

In the event the ban was suspended or struck down altogether, a five-member school activity commission would be responsible for determining the eligibility of transgender students on a case-by-case basis. 

But one year since the ban’s enactment it has yet to have its day in court. 

“The part that we always knew was hard — and hard on multiple levels — was asking a child to undergo this harrowing process,” Sara Burlingame, executive director of Wyoming Equality, told WyoFile. “[Going to court is] not easy. That’s a heavy lift,” 

Four transgender students were competing in Wyoming’s school athletics when the Legislature passed the ban, according to the governor’s office. For various reasons, none were in a position to pursue litigation, Burlingame said. 

“They’re just like anybody else. They want to run track or downhill ski. They don’t want to be pariahs,” Burlingame said. “They don’t want to fight for every inch just for the opportunity to play.” 

Meanwhile, the legislation’s main sponsor Sen. Wendy Schuler (R-Evanston) is glad there has yet to be litigation, “at least within our state,” pointing to the Biden administration’s new Title IX regulations. 

In May, Wyoming was among several states to sue the federal government over the new regulations prohibiting the exclusion of transgender students from educational programs, such as sports, on account of their gender. The new regulations have been blocked by a federal court in several states

Details

Burlingame said her organization was always confident that if the ban went into effect the law would ultimately be on their side in a court challenge.

“If you’ve looked at the recent rulings in Tennessee and elsewhere, that’s right. Like the law says, ‘you can’t actively discriminate against some folks,’” Burlingame said. Finding a plaintiff, she added, was the challenge. 

Out of the four families dealing with the ban, one stepped forward last year with an interest in litigation. But that fell through after their child decided to stop participating in sports, Burlingame said.

Not wanting to speak too much on behalf of the student and their family, Burlingame said the sports ban was at least part of that decision.

The fact that the ban applies to so few students shows the Legislature’s priorities are out of whack, Burlingame said, since it “decided targeting these four kiddos instead of balancing the budget or investing in our roads and bridges was the way to whip up a frenzy.”

Schuler said she believes the governor’s estimate of four students was low. 

“I think it’s at least twice that from what I had heard from various people around the state,” Schuler said. 

But either way, she stands by the ban. 

“I know the numbers aren’t great, but to me it doesn’t matter if it’s one or if it’s ten,” Schuler said. “If one biological girl is left behind because a trans athlete takes her spot it’s just wrong. It’s not fair.”

For Schuler, the legislation was also personal. A longtime athlete and coach, the lawmaker was a junior playing basketball at the University of Wyoming when Title IX was first enacted. Practically overnight, Schuler said, everything changed for the better. 

“I used to tell my high school athletes all the time, you don’t know how lucky you are that you just get to walk in here and you get the same opportunities as the guys in every way shape or form,” Schuler said. “Because there were a lot of folks back in the day that had to fight for those opportunities.” 

As for feedback, Schuler said she’s not heard any negative comments from her constituents. 

“I’ve had a lot of people just come up and thank me and just say, ‘That’s great that we got that done,” Schuler said. 

Otherwise, the ban hasn’t caused much of a stir with the Wyoming High School Sports Activities Association during its first year. 

“Since we have followed our state statute, we have not received any feedback from our schools, positive or negative,” Trevor Wilson, commissioner of the association, told WyoFile in a statement.

The post Wyoming’s transgender athlete ban goes unchallenged in court appeared first on WyoFile .

TETON PASS—Highway construction workers Tuesday were paving a detour around a missing section of Highway 22 in hopes the temporary fix will open the vital inter-state link to commuters Friday.

The road is expected to open to all traffic, including semi-trucks weighing up to 60,000 lbs., but will be signed with a 20 mph speed limit through the detour.

“It’ll be a slow-down point,” said Keith Fulton, assistant chief engineer for the Wyoming Department of Transportation who described the detour at the construction site. “A little bit of slow-down is better than a big detour.”

A landslide undermined the route over 8,431-foot high Teton Pass the night of June 7, befuddling thousands of Jackson Hole workers who live in nearby Victor, Idaho, where housing is more affordable. For two and a half weeks, they have had to make an 86-mile commute around the Snake River Range and through the town of Alpine instead of their usual 24-mile trip over the pass.

“We have the utmost confidence in this detour.”

WYDOT geologist James Dahill

The change amounts to about four or five hours of driving a day, commuters say, an unsustainable burden on top of a normal eight-hour workday.

That’s going to end, “hopefully by the end of the week,” said Darin Westby, WYDOT director. He made his comments on the edge of freshly laid asphalt as it was being steamrolled amid the industrial cacophony of road construction machinery.

Concrete barriers will line both edges of the detour, which shortcuts the inside of the now-gone original sweeping curve. The new section has an 11.5% grade, steeper than the old road’s 10%.

“We have the utmost confidence in this detour,” said James Dahill, chief engineering geologist with the transportation department.

The Big Refill

It was “a perfect storm” that led to the failure, Dahill said. Rain fell on snow this spring as the temperature suddenly jumped 25 degrees resulting in unusual runoff.

All that water helped undermine “The Big Fill” portion of the highway that was built up five decades ago to span a significant swale in the route’s alignment. The Big Fill, however, was constructed atop “a little pocket of clay” Dahill said.

A saturated embankment and saturated soils contributed to the failure, Dahill said. “It was wet,” he said of the failure point.

Engineer Fulton said clay layers are “usually the slippery spot.” But he didn’t find fault with the original construction, completed more than 50 years ago.

“It gets used a lot,” Fulton said of the highway. “We keep up on maintenance.”

Landslide dangers are part of the nature of the mountain-pass highway beast, Fulton said.

Wyoming will likely qualify for federal funding for 90% of the expected $30 million cost of a permanent reconstruction, officials said. Plans are to rebuild the road in its original location, albeit with lighter embankment material.

The Big Fill, “that was heavy embankment material,” geologist Dahill said.

Although design and engineering is incomplete, the reconstruction will resolve the clay issue one way or another, he said, possibly with steel shafts or some other ground-penetrating columns. Drill holes have revealed no water problems at this point, he said, and underground sensors will reveal both gradual ground motion and any water flow.

Crews, including from emergency contractor Evans Construction, worked 24/7 for weeks, “through Father’s Day and everything else,” said Bob Hammond, WYDOT’s resident engineer in Jackson. “We wanted to get this done in two weeks; it’s taken three.”

Although the road will be signed with a 20 mph limit, savvy commuters who aren’t in heavy traffic will likely be able to negotiate the detour a little faster, Hammond said.

Director Westby said he hopes the permanent replacement will be completed “before the real big winter sets in.” He touted cooperation across agencies, states, counties and municipalities and the capabilities of his department, too.

“We have the biggest engineering firm in the State of Wyoming,” he said.

The post Teton Pass reopening planned Friday with ‘slow down point’ following highway collapse appeared first on WyoFile .

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management sidestepped the National Environmental Policy Act in issuing its new “conservation rule,” a “sea change” in federal land management that threatens wildlife, landscape health and economies reliant on some 245 million acres of BLM-managed lands across the nation, a lawsuit filed this week by Wyoming and Utah alleges.

The two western states, which, combined, are home to more than 41 million BLM acres, filed the 34-page lawsuit Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Utah. They’re asking the court to vacate the Conservation and Landscape Health rule, which was finalized in April.

“Ever since this abomination of a rule raised its ugly head, demonstrating the Biden administration’s disregard for the law, I have fought it tooth and nail,” Gov. Mark Gordon said in a prepared statement Wednesday. “This legal challenge ensures that this administration is called out for sidestepping the bedrock federal statutes which guide public land management by attempting to eliminate multiple use through a corrupted definition of conservation, and for doing so with impunity.”

The complaint is the latest in Gordon’s mounting legal battles against the Biden administration over land use and climate policies. The administration has issued a suite of new policy measures in recent months that violate Wyoming’s primacy over wildlife management and many state-led programs to implement federal environmental rules covering things like emissions from coal, oil and natural gas, according to the governor. Gordon has said the administration appears intent on destroying the state’s fossil fuel industries while ignoring his own initiative to “decarbonize” those industries as a means to address climate change.

Freedom Caucus members in the Wyoming Legislature, however, have alleged a “lethargic” response from Gordon regarding recent federal rules.  

Gordon has scheduled a town hall event from 1-3 p.m. Tuesday in Gillette to highlight his administration’s response to the barrage of new federal policies, which include the Environmental Protection Agency’s coal pollution rules, the BLM’s sage grouse management amendments, its “methane rule” and a proposal to end federal coal leasing in the Powder River Basin.

Conservation rule

The BLM unveiled its proposed conservation rule last year, citing the need to adapt federal land management strategies in recognition of mounting pressures from climate change, such as intense drought, wildfires and invasive plant species.

The rule “promotes conservation and defines that term to include both protection and restoration activities,” according to the BLM. The rule also “clarifies that conservation is a use on par with other uses of the public lands” under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act.

“It seems that Utah and Wyoming are employing all these strategies to try to drag all of us down into the legal weeds to distract everyone from the larger picture, which is that the public wants to see more balanced management of these resources and values.”

Rachael Hamby, Center for Western Priorities

Conservation groups, including the Lander-based Wyoming Outdoor Council, have hailed the conservation rule as a victory for landscape health that also supports rural economies by ensuring healthy wildlife habitats and outdoor recreation.

The rule, “does not prevent oil and gas drilling, mining, or grazing on public lands,” the council states on its website. “But it does enshrine protection and restoration as necessary components of responsible management. In doing so, our wildlife habitat, areas of cultural importance, water quality, and landscape intactness all stand to benefit.”

In a webinar hosted by the council last year, the group’s Wildlife Program Manager Meghan Riley said the BLM’s conservation rule is a much-needed correction to what has been an over-emphasis on industrial development.

​​”Some of these money-generating uses have gotten a little bit more attention in management decisions, and some of these conservation values may have fallen by the wayside,” Riley said. “So the intent of this rule that’s been put forward is to put conservation on equal footing with some of these other uses on BLM lands and bring better balance to management decisions.”

U.S. Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyoming), ranking member of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, introduced a bill last year to block the rule. Nine senators, including U.S. Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyoming) joined as sponsors. The bill has not advanced.

Barrasso also said he would use the Congressional Review Act to block the rule. But that hasn’t happened. 

“It seems that Utah and Wyoming are employing all these strategies to try to drag all of us down into the legal weeds to distract everyone from the larger picture, which is that the public wants to see more balanced management of these resources and values,” Center for Western Priorities Policy Director Rachael Hamby told WyoFile on Wednesday.

Hamby pointed to a Center for Western Priorities analysis of public comments submitted to the BLM regarding the rule. The group found that 92% of the comments were either in support of the rule as proposed or in favor of making it stronger in terms of conservation.

“So in terms of American taxpayers, whose lands these belong to, are in overwhelming support for this rule,” Hamby said.

“The BLM is supposed to have been managing for multiple uses this entire time,” she continued. “What we have seen is that the extractive industry has been getting priority a lot of the time, and they have gotten used to that. So now we see this rule that says, ‘We’re gonna get back to a true multiple use management framework,’ and now they’re going to be one of many uses that are on equal footing in terms of how the BLM manages its public lands.”

The post Wyoming and Utah sue feds to halt controversial ‘conservation rule’ appeared first on WyoFile .

Wyoming will see more contested statehouse races this primary election than the last, but the number of Democratic legislative candidates who are participating has hit a 26-year low, an analysis of election data by WyoFile shows. 

Sixteen Democrats will run for the Legislature this year, according to the 2024 primary election candidate roster. That’s less than half of the 26-year average, and far below the high point of the last decade, when 62 Democrats ran in 2016. 

Meanwhile, the number of Republican candidates running for the statehouse has steadily climbed since 1998. 

Sen. Chris Rothfuss (D-Laramie), the Legislature’s longest-serving Democrat, said a lot has changed since he was first elected in 2011. 

“The current political climate is such that it’s unwelcoming to engage in politics,” Rothfuss told WyoFile. “You have an awful lot of hatred and vitriol, more so than the past, and the campaigns are mean and destructive instead of constructive oftentimes.”

The rising cost of running for office in Wyoming is likely another culprit. 

Jen Solis, a political newcomer running for Cheyenne’s House District 41 as a Democrat, said she sees the low number of candidates as a natural extension of “Democrats being told over and over and over again that ‘You don’t belong here.’”

“I think we’re seeing folks saying, ‘What’s the point of giving up my summer to do all this for nothing?’ And I personally don’t think it’s for nothing. I think people deserve a choice,” Solis said. 

The number of candidates running this year mirrors a decline in the party’s statehouse representation, which took a hit in both the 2020 and 2022 elections, dwindling to Democratic representation at the statehouse to seven lawmakers from two counties. 

Wyoming Democratic Party Chair Joe Barbuto said he’s hoping the party can move past several events in recent years that “made it more difficult in Wyoming to be a Democrat,” including the pandemic and the U.S. House race between Liz Cheney and Harriet Hageman. 

“We had a lot of people think that switching over to vote in the Republican primaries would be a productive tactic. And it really wasn’t. I mean, we can look at the outcome,” Barbuto said. “So that’s something that we have to rebuild from.” 

That tactic, which did not help Cheney save her seat, also put the Democrats at risk of losing their major party status. 

Neither of the Senate’s two Democrats are up for reelection — Rothfuss and Sen. Mike Gierau (D-Jackson). Otherwise, the House’s five Democrats will all seek reelection, three of whom will face Republican challengers.

The 11 remaining Democratic candidates are either political newcomers or former lawmakers. 

Details

While this year is a certain kind of a low point, the high point wasn’t that long ago. In 2016, 62 Democrats ran for the Wyoming Legislature. 

“It was spectacular,” Rothfuss said. It wasn’t a coincidence either. 

“That was a deliberate effort by Aimee Van Cleave, who was the executive director of the Wyoming Democratic Party at the time,” Rothfuss said. She tried to get a candidate to run “for every single seat and she came pretty close.”

Thanks to Van Cleave’s candidate recruitment efforts, Wyoming had one of the highest ratios of contested races in the country that year, according to the Jackson Hole News & Guide.

Ten Democrats were elected to the statehouse that year, but Rothfuss said the intention for some candidates wasn’t simply to try to win races.

Lots of Democrats ran to give voters choices and “to make sure that Democratic values were heard, and priorities were communicated,” Rothfuss said. 

That’s a much harder sell in today’s hostile political climate, he said.

“When you have a circumstance where there’s this much hostility in politics, it’s a pretty hard sell, to get someone to go into an election, where there’s a very, very high likelihood that they’re going to lose that election, just to communicate values,” Rothfuss said. 

Barbuto said while he would have liked for there to be more Democrats running for the Legislature, he’s “thrilled with the Democrats who are running for office at every level of government.”

“There’s some exceptional people with a variety of backgrounds that bring a lot of needed voices and experiences,” he said. 

While there’s no denying that running for office in Wyoming as a Democrat is a lot less appealing than it used to be, Barbuto said, he remains optimistic. 

“There’s really an incredible amount of work, mostly at that county level, going into building this party for the future,” he said. “When you look at our infrastructure, our party, the passion of our volunteers and dedication that we have to this work, despite all those odds, and what we’re up against, it’s pretty inspiring, actually.”

That was on full display earlier this month when Democrats gathered in Casper for their state convention. The party settled its platform and resolutions, and elected its delegation to represent the state at August’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago, but chose to schedule one of its bigger agenda items for a special convention early next year.  

“We’re gonna do a complete rewrite of our state party bylaws,” Barbuto said. Between now and December, a committee will meet to develop a draft that will be more reflective of the party’s embrace of technology, activist grassroots, and more progressive views on gender identity.

More to come?

In the meantime, Barbuto said he’s not ruling out the possibility that more Democrats make it onto the ballot for the general election thanks to the state’s provisions on write-in candidates. 

If a write-in candidate receives at least 25 votes in the primary election, state statute allows them to appear on the ballot in November. 

Such was the case with Jen Solis in 2022 with House District 41, which encompasses a section of north-central Cheyenne. 

“There was going to be an uncontested race on my ballot, and I don’t like that,” Solis said. “I never like going to vote and seeing there’s only one name there.”

On impulse, Solis said, she decided she’d run as a write-in and ended up with the requisite 25 votes. That gave her less than three months to campaign for the general election where she faced Rep. Bill Henderson (R-Cheyenne). 

Solis ultimately lost, but not by much — 221 votes. 

“I think what that campaign showed was that people do want choice, and I think that’s important across the state,” Solis said. “It’s something that we’re getting away from.”

Depending on who wins the Republican nomination in House District 41, Solis will face Henderson again, or Gary Brown for the first time.  

Solis said her 2022 campaign was a “super positive experience,” but said she’s also prepared to face whatever ugliness she encounters on the campaign trail. 

“We’ve let this sort of story take over, this narrative of, ‘We are the most conservative state.’ And sure, yeah, we are. But that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been Democratic leadership that shaped our way of life,” Solis said, pointing to Wyoming’s former Democratic congressmen, governors and lawmakers. 

“And we’re losing [sight of] that if we only let the debate be between the ultra-far right and the moderate right,” Solis said. “There has to be a conversation that includes all Wyomingites.”

The primary election is Aug. 20. Early voting for most residents starts July 23. 

Tennessee Watson contributed to this reporting.

The post A record-low number of Democrats will run for Wyoming’s Legislature this year appeared first on WyoFile .

Teton County leaders declared Monday that Jackson Hole and Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks are open and accessible to visitors despite the destruction of a key regional highway.

A landslide Friday night severed the mountain-pass artery between Jackson Hole and Victor, Idaho, a vital commuter and commerce route that is one of five paved roads into the valley. As news of the landslide hit the nationwide press, worried prospective tourists peppered hospitality hosts, asking whether they could still come and reach the region’s recreational attractions.

“Jackson Hole is open,” Teton County Commission Chairman Luther Propst said during a hastily prepared briefing from a group of 10 emergency managers Monday morning. He led a discussion that included calls for aid to commuting workers across a spectrum of needs from housing to transportation, child care, carpooling and more.

Gov. Mark Gordon declared an emergency Saturday, enabling the state to seek Federal Highway Administration funds to repair the highway. The destruction of a segment of the road “endangers the health, safety, economy, and resources of residents of Wyoming” the declaration reads.

“The impact is a lot more on our community.”

Jackson Hole Chamber of Commerce President Rick Howe

A detour around the destroyed section of highway could be fixed in “weeks, not months,” Darin Westby, director of the Wyoming Department of Transportation, told the Teton County Board of County Commissioners over a broadcast link. That will be well into the region’s busy summer tourism season, which has already begun.

Fearful that news of the landslide would crimp the local and state economy, tourism officials and others urged a unified message saying the parks and valley are open and accessible.

Visitors from California, New York and Texas with vacation reservations have asked “will things still be accessible?” said Rick Howe, president and CEO of the Jackson Hole Chamber of Commerce.

Other than the one route, the message to visitors is “we are not closed,” Howe told the county board. Considering that there are four other highways into the valley, visitors have options to get to Jackson Hole, he said, to enjoy the Snake River along with Grand Teton and Yellowstone parks.

“The impact is a lot more on our community,” Howe told the board.

Temporary housing

Loss of the highway means commuters from the Idaho side of the Teton Range, where housing is cheaper than Jackson Hole, will have to drive an extra 62 miles. That adds 1 hour and 6 minutes to what is usually a 24-mile and 32-minute drive. Congestion will increase that time as thousands of commuters re-route their daily travel through Swan Valley, Alpine and the Snake River Canyon.

Fully 20% of the workers at St. John’s Health are affected commuters, hospital spokesperson Karen Connelly told commissioners Monday, and 115 of those “need to be on-site.” Many work 12-hour shifts and have pets, children and homes to worry about.

Adding what could be up to four hours of commuting time to such shifts creates obvious burdens, she said.

“These are long days for people,” she said. “There are needs.”

Additional response

Commissioners will meet Tuesday to take action on a host of recommendations made by emergency and community leaders, including reducing occupancy limits in some housing blocks, giving temporary occupancy permits to others, allowing RV and tent camping, waiving bus fees and other proposals.

“There’s a limit to how many people we’re allowed to put in our units,” said Mary Kate Buckley, president of Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. The ski-area company has constructed employee and workforce housing that’s regulated to some degree by development agreements with Teton County.

She asked for a temporary waiver of those occupancy limits and flexibility in other restrictions to accommodate commuters during the emergency. The resort also wants permission to house worker trailers, campers and tents at potential sites at a Teton Village parking lot and the Stilson transit hub a few miles south of the resort and village.

The Jackson Hole Community Foundation has reactivated its emergency fund that was last used during the COVID-19 emergency, said Laurie Andrews, president of the nonprofit hub. The foundation, best known for its annual Old Bill’s Fun Run for Charities that raises millions of dollars each fall for nonprofits, is setting up a network to pair unoccupied guest houses and vacant rooms with commuting workers, she said.

The town and county START public bus service has reworked its Idaho-Jackson schedule to accommodate the longer drive, director Bruce Abel told commissioners. Ridership on the first day of the new schedule was “somewhat disappointing,” he said, but that could change.

Congestion in the Snake River Canyon and Jackson during the emergency could extend the new, longer commute times, he said, because the highway network is “at capacity.”

The Federal Transit Administration, an arm of the U.S. Department of Transportation, reached out to START to offer aid, he said. START will carefully log expenses with the aim of securing reimbursements during the emergency, he said.

That reimbursement was “top of conversation” with the federal agency, Abel said. The federal outreach came as U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg expressed his agency’s support for Wyoming’s emergency repairs in a post on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter.

Rich Ochs, the county’s emergency management coordinator, outlined the difference between emergencies and disasters and told the board that the governor’s emergency declaration was the proper and sufficient reaction. Being a Wyoming highway, the incident is the state’s to manage, he said, and the appropriate venue for aid is through the Federal Highway Administration, another arm of the USDOT.

It’s not appropriate to pursue Federal Emergency Management Agency support, Ochs said. “We have one injury,” he said, a motorcycle rider who was unseated by a slump in the highway some time before it collapsed. “We have no deaths … no direct impact” to town and county finances.

While WYDOT works on a solution — a paved two-lane bypass to the missing highway segment that will require motorists to slow down from normal speeds — Ochs and his eclectic 10-person team of department heads and community organization leaders will continue their efforts.

While costs may accrue to state and federal coffers, “the impacts,” he said, “are our problem.”

The post ‘Jackson Hole is open’ to visitors as plan to address highway landslide takes shape, officials say appeared first on WyoFile .

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 legal questions to be resolved has quietly, but meaningfully, shifted: Wyoming has dropped the charges in the partially remanded Herrera v. Wyoming case, meaning the case is dead and its unresolved elements will remain that way. 

That has elevated the importance of a case that began when Thomas Ten Bear, a member of the Crow Tribe, was convicted of elk poaching in the Bighorns in 1989. Though completely separate from the more modern Herrera case, Ten Bear’s shares a number of key elements: both center around Crow Tribal members being prosecuted for killing elk in a national forest in Wyoming without a state-issued permit.

Years before the Supreme Court’s Herrera ruling, Ten Bear asked a federal court to throw out his nearly 35-year-old poaching conviction. In late March, with the new precedent in place, U.S. District of Wyoming Judge Alan Johnson issued a 27-page order partially granting Ten Bear and the Crow Tribe’s requests for relief. While doing so, he hewed closely to the specific case before him. 

The judge made a couple of “important” judgements that helped establish consensus around “key legal questions,” said Sen. Affie Ellis (R-Cheyenne), an attorney and member of the Navajo Nation who has followed the issue closely.

“Unequivocally, [the order] says that statehood admission does not abrogate treaty rights,” Ellis told WyoFile. “The case unequivocally says that just because you create a national forest, [it doesn’t mean] that those lands are occupied.” The Crow’s treaty grants hunting rights in perpetuity on “unoccupied” lands.

But other important questions about off-reservation hunting remain unresolved, she said. 

Creating a national forest doesn’t make it “occupied,” but there are ambiguities about when portions of a forest — or any land — can be considered occupied and off-limits to treaty-based tribal hunting. Separately, there are unanswered questions about “conservation necessity,” and when the state could regulate or even prevent tribal hunting outside of reservation boundaries.  

Johnson didn’t definitively answer those questions. Ellis didn’t think he would. 

“If he made a blanket statement of how [off-reservation hunting] should look, it would probably have been treated as … an opinion, but not binding precedent,” she said. “There are limits on what a court can do.”

The judge was ruling on a narrow case, stemming from Ten Bear’s elk poaching conviction 35 years ago. Ten Bear and the Crow Tribe sued Wyoming using a 1868 treaty right argument, but lost. Then decades passed before the Supreme Court ruled the opposite in the Herrera case.

Wyoming dropped charges against Clayvin Herrera last year after an unrelated conviction on felony child pornography charges promised a long prison sentence. That means lingering legal questions about “occupancy” and “conservation necessity” will no longer be resolved through that case, Ellis said. The nation’s highest court had sent back those questions for the Sheridan County Circuit Court to answer. But with the charges dropped, the case is dead.

The Crow Tribe, meanwhile, has sought relief from the Ten Bear judgements, known as Repsis after the game warden who brought the original charges. That request was bounced from the U.S. District Court of Wyoming to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals and back to the federal district court, where Johnson ruled while considering the new Herrera precedent in late March. 

Agreement needed

Cheyenne attorney David Willms believes that Wyoming and tribal residents with treaty hunting rights in state bounds still lack a clear blueprint for resolving off-reservation tribal hunting.

“My read between the lines is the judge is saying, ‘The state and the tribes need to get together and work this thing out,’” said Willms, a former policy advisor for Gov. Matt Mead and an adjunct law teacher at the University of Wyoming. 

In his ruling, Johnson wrote that the two parties should “endeavor to strike a balance between treaty-based … rights and state sovereignty over natural resources.” 

The Supreme Court’s Herrera v. Wyoming ruling, he wrote, suggests that the two are “necessarily compatible.”

In the five years since Herrera, there has been one big effort to make off-reservation hunting compatible in the state of Wyoming.

During the Wyoming Legislature’s 2023 general session, lawmakers were advancing a tribal agreement bill that Wyoming Game and Fish Department Director Brian Nesvik described as his “biggest legislative lift” of the year. In essence, the legislation would have granted Gov. Mark Gordon the authority to negotiate state-tribal pacts for off-reservation hunting and angling seasons that went outside of Game and Fish Department regulations.

The Eastern Shoshone Tribe initiated the effort in 2022 and was initially on board. But then southeast Idaho’s Shoshone-Bannock — other tribes with treaty hunting rights in Wyoming — protested, arguing that they were cut out of the process and that the bill was too prescriptive, violating their sovereignty. Eventually the bill lost all tribal support. The legislation died, but not before “poisoning the well,” as one state senator put it at the time. 

Since then, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department has taken the position that tribal members can be cited for off-reservation hunting and angling that violates state seasons and regulations. 

“On the ground, it’s still not legal for tribal members [without standard permits] to hunt off-reservation in Wyoming on unoccupied lands,” Nesvik told members of the Legislature’s Joint Appropriations Committee in January. “That’s the way we’re treating it. We do know that the Supreme Court made some decisions that we need to deal with.” 

Nesvik cited the “gray area” left by the Supreme Court: “We believe that ‘conservation necessity’ exists, and until there’s tribal regulation that’s agreed upon with the state, those tribal rights can’t be executed,” he said.

The Billings Gazette reported this winter that Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks responded to the Supreme Court’s decision very differently, instructing its wardens not to cite Crow Tribe members who violate state hunting laws in the Custer Gallatin National Forest east of the Yellowstone River. The state and tribe are discussing additional off-reservation hunting grounds in Montana, but have not asserted their treaty rights in Wyoming, Crow Tribal Fish and Game Director Ryan Fitzpatrick told the newspaper. 

“We didn’t want to get into an argument or court case,” he told the Gazette. “They said they want time to identify unoccupied lands. We didn’t want to go out there and say we have a treaty.”

Continued impasse

Meantime, there are few signs of progress toward resolving off-reservation hunting in Wyoming. 

Wyoming Game and Fish officials declined an interview for this story, deferring to Gov. Mark Gordon’s office, which released a statement. 

“To date, neither tribe has indicated a desire to continue the discussion on off-reservation hunting with the state,” the governor’s statement said. 

WyoFile was unsuccessful in its attempts to interview Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribal leaders. The two tribes occupy the Wind River Indian Reservation in central Wyoming. Efforts to reach the Crow Tribe in Montana and Shoshone-Bannock tribes in Idaho were also unsuccessful.

Gordon desires “government-to-government negotiations” with the tribes to mutually agree on off-reservation hunting. That approach is more “positive and productive” than “unpredictable, expensive and contentious” litigation, he said in the statement.

“It is not, and has never been, the governor’s intention to unilaterally regulate tribal hunting on or off of the reservation,” the statement said. “Instead, the governor’s intention is to find common ground on shared values of wildlife conservation and responsible hunting.”

Ellis, the attorney and state senator, also believes that the best way to move forward is outside of the courtroom. Having a tribal member violate Wyoming hunting laws as a test case would subject that person to prosecution and “doesn’t seem appropriate,” she said. 

There are “important lessons” to be learned from Wyoming and the Eastern Shoshone Tribe’s failed 2023 effort to reach agreement, Ellis said. 

“The unfortunate thing is how that bill was drafted and the way it was negotiated,” she said. “We came to see that the Shoshone-Bannock tribes had concerns about the bill, as it was drafted, and not being included in the drafting of the bill.” 

Going forward, Ellis said, it’s important to have an agreement that includes both of the Shoshone tribes that signed onto the 1868 Treaty of Fort Bridger. Article 4 of the treaty states: “… they shall have the right to hunt on the unoccupied lands of the United States so long as game may be found thereon, and so long as peace subsists among the whites and Indians on the borders of the hunting districts.” 

Toward a resolution

It also makes sense for Wyoming to strike an agreement with the Crow Tribe, which has similar treaty language, over hunting in the Bighorn National Forest, Ellis maintains. 

Rep. Lloyd Larsen (R-Lander), who was the primary sponsor of the 2023 tribal agreement bill, told WyoFile that Johnson’s order “adds clarity” and will help the tribes and state understand what the courts will expect. At the same time, he said, it left a “lot of flexibility.”

Importantly, Johnson’s order did not end the Repsis case, Ellis said. Effectively, she said, that case has supplanted Herrera as the case where the particulars of “occupied land” and “conservation necessity” could be determined legally. 

There is a lot of legal precedent that will guide the resolution to those questions.

On the issue of occupancy, other courts have ruled that the presence of cattle, fences, cultivated fields and buildings can be a determinant, Ellis said. 

“If an area is open and available to hunting, it’s probably considered unoccupied,” she said. “But how do you parse that out when there might be signs [stating] that those lands have been leased? That’s a little unresolved.”

Resolving “conservation necessity” will be even more difficult in court, Ellis said. The status of a species or big game herd often changes one year to the next, whether from persistent winters that collapse pronghorn herds or drought-driven diseases that devastate deer herds.

“A court can only look at a snapshot in time with one case or controversy,” Ellis said. “To me the better solution would be a negotiated agreement.” 

The state senator reiterated her hope that Wyoming and the tribes can find common ground. 

“It’s important to let the dust settle and let the parties reevaluate where they are,” Ellis said. “I don’t think it’s necessarily going to be within the next year or two that people are ready to re-engage, but at some point in the future, hopefully all the parties will be willing to have these discussions again.”

The post Wyoming, tribal impasse over hunting rights persists despite judicial order appeared first on WyoFile .

Thousands of Wyoming residents could be surprised on Election Day when they show up to cast a ballot only to discover they’re no longer registered to vote. 

There are currently about 83,500 fewer registered voters in the state than at the end of 2022, a roughly 28% drop, according to data released Wednesday by the Wyoming Secretary of State’s Office.

The sizable dip follows a mandatory voter purge that was likely magnified by a major shift in voter turnout between the 2020 and 2022 elections.

Wyoming law has long required county clerks to purge voter rolls each February, a process that involves removing voters who did not cast a ballot in the most recent election. So it’s not unusual for voter rolls to fluctuate. And, of course, some of that purge inevitably includes voters who have died or moved away. 

Still, local election officials and nonprofit organizations are hoping to inform voters ahead of time to avoid frustration or having to turn them away at the polls. 

“Our concern is simply people not realizing that they’re no longer registered and not bringing with them the appropriate materials to get re-registered, because you can register at the polls,” Tom Lacock with AARP told WyoFile. 

While a Wyoming driver’s license or ID card, a United States passport, a tribal ID card, a U.S. military card and some student IDs would be sufficient identification to register and to vote, other forms of identification would not. 

A Medicare or Medicaid insurance card, or a Wyoming concealed firearm permit, for example, would not allow someone to register to vote, but are acceptable IDs for already registered voters to cast a ballot. 

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Chuck Gray said the provision requiring the purge has been in state law for more than 50 years. 

“Voter roll hygiene and voter registry maintenance is extremely important to maintaining integrity and confidence in our electoral process,” he wrote in a statement to WyoFile. 

Details

All 23 of Wyoming’s counties have experienced a decrease in registered voters since December 2022, according to the data. 

Campbell County saw the biggest drop, losing 34% of its voter registrations, while the smallest decrease was recorded in Hot Springs County at 17%. 

Laramie County Clerk Debra Lee pointed to a very high turnout in 2020 as one cause for the decline.  

“And so our voter rolls were large. And then in 2022, we had record low turnout [in the general election],” Lee told WyoFile, which fits the convention that presidential elections draw more voters than the midterms.

“That’s why we ended up with so many people who were purged,” Lee said. 

As is routine, Wyoming’s county clerks mailed notifications to the last known addresses of those who were set to be dropped from the voter rolls in 2023. This gave voters the opportunity to notify the clerk if they wanted to remain registered. 

Thousands ended up purged anyway. 

That included many who voted in 2022’s primary election, but not the general — which squares with another typical voting trend. The majority of races in Wyoming are effectively decided in August due to the state’s Republican supermajority.

Lacock said AARP is encouraging voters to contact their local county clerks to verify that they’re still registered, or ask any questions related to other changes to this year’s election. 

The window for absentee voting — also known as early voting — is shorter than before for most voters, and there’s a new limit on when voters can affiliate with a political party. 

The primary election is Aug. 20. Voter registration is now open. The last day registered voters can change their party affiliation is May 15. Unregistered voters, like those recently purged, can choose their party affiliation while registering, even if doing so after May 15, including at the polls on election day.

The candidate filing period runs May 16-31.

The post Wyoming voids 28% of its voter registrations in mandatory purge appeared first on WyoFile .

Federal environmental officials have rejected a request by Aethon Energy to pump Moneta Divide oilfield wastewater into the Madison aquifer, saying the deep reservoir could be used for drinking water, especially by tribal nations on the Wind River Indian Reservation.

The Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission in November 2020 approved wastewater disposal into the 15,000-foot deep well, but the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said last week the state’s decision did not align with federal rules.

Aethon’s plan does not support a finding “that the aquifer cannot now and will not in the future serve as a source of drinking water,” the EPA wrote in a 20-page record of decision. Aethon argued, and the Wyoming commission agreed 4-1, that the underground Madison formation was too deep and remote to be used for drinking water.

The EPA relied on the Safe Drinking Water Act as the authority under which to protect the aquifer. It also cited climate, environmental justice and tribal interests in its decision, pointing to the nearby Wind River Indian Reservation as a community that could use the water.

“We have to make sure our future generations have a reliable source of clean water.”

Wes Martel

“The significance of that is the EPA finally didn’t wimp out on us,” said Wes Martel, a member of the Wind River Water Resources Control Board. “We’re just glad they now have some people in place following up on their Indian policy.”

The Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Tribes “foresee increased reliance on groundwater for drinking water purposes and anticipate needing to access deeper aquifers, such as the Madison aquifer, as the climate changes and water resources grow scarcer,” the EPA wrote in a 94-page analysis of tribal interests. The agency cited historic cultural and spiritual ties to the land and water and tribes’ status as sovereign nations in its decision.

“We have to make sure our future generations have a reliable source of clean water,” Martel said. “Our reservation, this is all we have left. We’ve got to do our best to protect it.”

The Powder River Basin Resource Council, along with the Wyoming Outdoor Council and others, has spent years monitoring discharge reports and industry permits and was vital in challenging pollution threats, Martel said.

The EPA understood that science, and the law did not support Aethon’s request, said Shannon Anderson, organizing director and staff attorney with the resource council. “They recognized the value of our groundwater resources and the need to protect those into the future,” she said, hailing the decision.

Vast quantities of water

Aethon must find a way to dispose of produced water — a brine pumped from energy wells to release gas and oil — as it expands the Moneta Divide field by 4,500 wells. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management authorized that expansion in 2020, leaving the question of water disposal to Wyoming, which has authority over surface and underground water quality under overarching federal standards.

Aethon must find a way to dispose of the equivalent of 120 Olympic-sized swimming pools full of produced water a day to expand the field. Aethon and Burlington Resources, a co-producer at Moneta, could generate $182 million a year in federal royalties, $87.5 million a year in Wyoming severance taxes and $106 million annually in County Ad Valorem taxes from the expansion.

But Aethon has violated state permits that allow it to pump some produced water into Alkali and Badwater creeks that flow into Boysen Reservoir, a drinking water source for the town of Thermopolis. Wyoming’s Department of Environmental Quality has notified the Dallas-based investment company of its infraction and has required Aethon to reduce the salinity of surface discharges this year.

The DEQ this year listed the two creeks as “impaired” and unable to sustain aquatic life. Underground injection of wastewater into the Madison was to be a new component of the disposal program.

The EPA cited climate change, drought, increasing temperatures and use of reservation surface water by others as some of the reasons to preserve the Madison aquifer.

“Removing the existing statutory and regulatory protections for a potential source of high-quality drinking water for the rural and overburdened communities in Fremont County and on the WRIR would further exacerbate existing inequities particularly with respect to historic and ongoing adverse and cumulative impacts to water resources and community health,” the EPA wrote.

“Thus, equity and environmental justice considerations, which include Tribal interest considerations, support maintaining the existing [Safe Drinking Water Act] protections that apply to the aquifers consistent with Congressional intent to protect both current and potential future sources of drinking water,” EPA documents state.

Neither Aethon nor a representative of the Oil and Gas Conservation Commission responded immediately to a request for comment Wednesday. But WyoFile received this response from Tom Kropatsch, oil and gas supervisor for the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, shortly after publication:

“We do not agree with EPA’s decision on this application. We are still reviewing their decision and the information utilized by EPA in support of their decision. Much of this information was not part of the original application or a part of the record. EPA did not follow the standard procedure of allowing the WOGCC and the applicant to review and respond to the additional information they had available prior to making their final decision. EPA evaluated data that differs in its geographic, geologic, engineering, and other technical information. EPA also inappropriately related the proposed injection location to other areas of the state. Since the data EPA reviewed does not accurately reflect the conditions at the location of the proposed disposal well it is not appropriate to rely on it for a decision on this application. The WOGCC is reviewing EPA’s decision and weighing its options for further action.”

The post Feds reject plan to pump Moneta oilfield waste into potential drinking water appeared first on WyoFile .

As people from Wyoming and beyond join in righteous indignation over an ugly incident in which a man tortured and killed an animal simply because it was a wolf, we would do well to examine the policy framework that set the stage for tragedy. As in all tragedies, the result is not just the downfall of the main character. The story has layers of irony — not situational irony, which would be a surprise, but tragic, dramatic irony with an air of inevitability, not fully recognized by the participants but strongly sensed by the audience.

One man has become the public face of Wyoming by torturing an animal — running down a wolf on a snowmobile, taping its mouth shut, dragging it to town broken yet alive, showing it off at the Green River Bar, and then finally killing it. In doing so, he confirmed stereotypes many Americans have about hunters, rural Americans and the Cowboy State. 

The irony isn’t just that an ethically challenged hunter undermined the social license of all hunters while bringing the treatment of wolves to national attention just as non-governmental organizations are suing, again, over the status of wolves in the Northern Rockies. It’s also that those who hate wolves regularly tout the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation, a set of principles that guides hunting policy based on the idea that wildlife is held in public trust, to be scientifically managed, and only killed for valid reasons. Yet, the treatment of animals legally classified as predatory is hardly consistent with the model.

I last stopped at the Green River Bar, the oldest building in Daniel, my kind of place — heretofore known for its slaw dawg — while paddling the Green River from its headwaters in the Wind River Range, across western Wyoming to Utah and Colorado. I was investigating possible corridors from the Northern to the Central and Southern Rockies, routes by which animals like wolves, wolverines or perhaps grizzlies might reoccupy habitats to the south. The conclusion was clear: Absent persecution by people, it could happen, but Wyoming’s policies are a thinly veiled attempt to restrict large carnivores to the mostly federal lands of Greater Yellowstone. In the Predatory Animal Management Area or “predator zone,” wolves can be shot on sight, year-round, for no reason.

The people I’ve worked with in Wyoming are almost all conservationists; many of them are also hunters and ranchers. Most of those folks don’t kill wolves except to reduce livestock conflicts, and most of them wouldn’t condone the events that culminated at the “GRB.” 

Nevertheless, a series of policies set the stage. Apparently, there is nothing illegal about running an animal down with a snowmobile, provided that animal is classified as a predator. That happens more than most of us would like to admit, and not just in Wyoming. But perhaps most of all, that stage is the predator zone — which has prevented nationwide recovery, and, ironically, federal delisting. 

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will finally develop a nationwide recovery plan for the gray wolf across its historic range, likely identifying suitable habitat throughout the Rockies. Had such a plan been in place a decade ago, it seems unlikely that Wyoming’s state plan would have been approved. Or perhaps wolves would have been delisted where they are abundant (Greater Yellowstone), but not where they remain rare (the predator zone). 

In any case, nothing was stopping Wyoming from setting policy in what is now the predator zone. A new federal listing may force the state to remove or redraw the predator zone.

I submit that an adequate regulatory mechanism would take a live-and-let-live approach, incentivize conflict reduction, and retain lethal control as a backstop to address repeated conflicts. The recent outrage suggests that many Americans would agree that such a policy is needed.

Gov. Mark Gordon, Game and Fish Director Brian Nesvik, Wyoming Speaker of the House Albert Sommers and Sublette County Sheriff K.C. Lehr have condemned the recent incident. I’d prefer that they had done so before the story went viral, but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt considering the legal state secrecy around wolf killings. Now, I’d like to see Sublette County’s lawmakers and candidates lead the state Legislature to revise animal cruelty laws to cover all wildlife. 

Wyoming, a state known for its live-and-let-live mentality, could at least pass laws to protect a wild animal’s right to die with dignity and not be run down by a snowmobile and suffer in a bar. And to the species that so reminds us of ourselves, on to which we project so much human meaning, the Equality State could extend the right not to be killed simply for being a wolf.

The post Wolf policy set the stage for tragedy of tortured animal and public outcry appeared first on WyoFile .