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Gas prices edge slightly higher in Wyoming in the past week CHEYENNE (WNE) — Average gasoline prices in Wyoming have risen 0.9 cents per gallon in the last week, averaging $3.29 per gallon Monday, according to GasBuddy.com’s survey of 494 stations in Wyoming. Prices in Wyoming are 4.1 cents per gallon lower than a month ago, and stand 62.6 cents per gallon lower than a year ago. According to GasBuddy price reports, the lowest price in the state Sunday was $2.79, while the highest was $4.29, a difference of $1.50 per gallon. The national ave...
One moose and more than 50 cattle have died of anthrax in the past month in south-central Wyoming, officials confirmed Wednesday. Anthrax occurs naturally in soil but has not been documented in Wyoming in livestock since the 1970s and in wildlife since 1956. No humans have been infected, according to the Wyoming Department of Health. Wildlife and veterinary health officials ask that anyone in Carbon County who encounters a dead animal such as elk, moose, deer, antelope or cattle with no obvious...
BUFFALO — The number of mental-health related calls and the severity of the calls that come into Johnson County's dispatch center have increased over the past few years, but mental health services haven't increased to match, Johnson County Sheriff Rod Odenbach said. Unmet mental health needs can sometimes lead to law enforcement involvement when they reach a crisis point. Once law enforcement is involved, Odenbach said, those agencies sometimes don't have enough resources to provide the services people may need. Allen Thompson, executive d...
SHERIDAN — When Antony Fink took a job as Sheridan High School's machining teacher this summer, he was pleasantly surprised to learn he could live in district-owned rentals while his family transitioned from Powell. “It has made things a lot easier, as it would have been very difficult for my family to (move with me),” Fink said. Fink currently lives in one of Sheridan County School District #2's renovated units on the old Normative Services, Inc., property. Although the district-provided housing was not a deciding factor when it came to his m...
CHEYENNE — State lawmakers discussed the possibility of adding doula services through Medicaid and ideas proposed by the governor’s task force as ways to address maternity health care deserts in Wyoming on the first day of their two-day meeting in Cheyenne. Members of the Legislature’s Joint Labor, Health and Social Services Committee spent Thursday afternoon continuing their discussion on maternity health care deserts, which is listed as the committee’s No. 1 topic for the interim. It was noted in the committee’s last meeting that this topi...
GREYBULL — A single parent of one preschooler and one school-aged child in Big Horn County must earn more than $60,000 annually to cover basic necessities and meet the monthly cost of living, according to a report released last month by the Wyoming Women’s Foundation. The Wyoming Self-Sufficiency report, a 114-page document compiled by researchers to assess economic security and how to best achieve prosperity, highlights the financial difficulties facing the average Wyoming family. The report examines the minimum income required to rea...
POWELL — As news of translocations of two grizzly bears broke, few realized the amount of hard work — on the phone, on paper and in the wilderness — it takes to make such a feat happen. It is touted as a step to increase genetic diversity in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem’s population of its most charismatic creature. But if you think all they had to do was load a couple bears in a truck and drive six to eight hours to release them in and near Yellowstone National Park, you’d be wrong. Th...
CHEYENNE — It’s been 15 years since the Wyoming Legislature last revised its funding formula for school maintenance and repairs, and one state official said an adjustment is long overdue. But after a primary election set the stage for the Wyoming Freedom Caucus, a far-right group of hardline Republicans, to take control of the lower chamber in November, at least one lawmaker questions how well a bill that appropriates $43 million in major maintenance funds will do in the next legislative session. The Legislature’s Select Committee on Schoo...
CASPER — Less than 25% of eighth graders are proficient in civics, and PBS is trying to combat that. In partnership with GBH, which is the primary PBS station out of Boston, PBS LearningMedia has put together a collection of civics resources, lesson plans and activities for primary and secondary education teachers. “The new collection will draw on media to engage students, spark their interest in civics, and promote the active learning of skills by connecting the basic principles from the nation’s founding documents to issues they care about...
SHERIDAN — For many Wyomingites, buying a home is one of the biggest decisions of their lives, but the real estate world can be one with a steep learning curve. A first-time homeowner may wonder the difference between a real estate agent and a Realtor, or the difference between a buyer's agent and a seller's agent. Another may wonder what guarantee they have that a listing will accurately reflect the home they visit. And although rare, cases like the Gillette Realtor accused of forging s...
By Mike Koshmrl, Katie Klingsporn and Dustin Bleizeffer, WyoFile.com A year after a conservation-heavy draft management plan for 3.6 million acres of public land in southwest Wyoming ignited intense opposition, the Bureau of Land Management has issued a finalized plan seeking more of a balance between landscape protection and development. The final environmental impact statement outlining BLM’s proposed Resource Management Plan for the Rock Springs Field Office was released Thursday. The plan b...
CASPER — An up-and-coming renewable energy venture on Tuesday filed an application for the construction of a large-scale solar generation and storage project that could add an additional 500 megawatts to the state’s energy portfolio. The Dutchman Renewable Power Project would see the construction of utility-scale photovoltaic solar panels, battery banks, a new substation and three miles of overhead transmission lines to bring its electric generation near Glenrock to the wider Wyoming grid. The application comes at a gangbusters moment for sol...
JACKSON — Local elections aren’t just about deciding who sits on the Town Council or heads to Cheyenne to write laws in the Wyoming Legislature. Voters decide on the makeup of their county political parties. Precinct committee people are selected every two years to make up the county central committee, according to Wyoming law, for the Democratic and Republican parties. One precinct committeeman and committee woman is elected for every 250 votes or major fraction cast for the party candidate’s representative in Congress in the last gener...
CASPER — Weighing less than 1 pound, with short ears, little legs and an endearingly “scampering gait,” the pygmy rabbit is the smallest rabbit species in America. Worryingly, though, its population is also small — and getting smaller — and is now in desperate need of protection, according to a chorus of conservation scientists. In the hope of protecting the species, a contingent of conservation groups issued a notice to sue the United States Fish and Wildlife Service for failure to respond t...
POWELL — After migrating to the North Fork of the Shoshone River and more than a dozen major tributaries to spawn in the spring and early-summer months, many of the highly migratory rainbow and Yellowstone cutthroat trout return to Buffalo Bill Reservoir. This wild population of trout, which have survived without stocking efforts from Wyoming Game and Fish Department fisheries biologists, is the pride of the Cody Region. But while the population isn’t being supplemented, it is getting help. Reg...
A Campbell County single parent with one preschooler and one school-age child needs to earn more than $60,000 annually to cover basic monthly costs living in Wyoming, according to a new report on affordability in the state. At the minimum wage standard of $7.25 per hour, he or she would have to work a superhuman 159 hours a week to make that happen. “But there are only 168 hours in a full week,” said Micah Richardson, associate policy director of Wyoming Women’s Foundation. The found...
GREYBULL - Amid red flag warnings, dry weather and record high temperatures, Wyoming has found itself blanketed in smoke from both local and regional wildfires raging across the western United States and Canada. Since mid-July, Wyomingites have woken to blood red suns and hazy conditions. Two of the four major fires in Montana were brought under control last week, offering a brief reprieve and some blue skies, but the smoke has since returned, carried on eastern winds out of Oregon and California, and southern currents from Alberta, Canada....
Federal wildlife managers won’t make any jurisdictional decisions about Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem grizzly bears until early 2025 — two full years after the agency was supposed to proceed with or deny Wyoming’s petition to cease Endangered Species Act protections for the region’s grizzlies. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Regional Director Matt Hogan announced the delay in a legal filing last week, citing a mess of lawsuits and grizzly-related decisions that “directly impact one another.” “To ensure consistency between these decisions, th...
CHEYENNE — Was U.S. Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., justified in chasing down former U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle at the Republican National Convention, days after former President Donald Trump was nearly assassinated? Was Wyoming Congresswoman Harriet Hageman’s description of Vice President Kamala Harris as a “DEI hire” a full-blown racist comment? Nearly a dozen Wyoming Republican and Democratic political candidates and party leaders weighed in on the recent actions and comments by two of the Cowboy State’s three federal l...
JACKSON — A single mother with two children has to make $45 an hour to be “self-sufficient” in Teton County. The Wyoming Women’s Foundation’s 2024 Self Sufficiency Report reveals such a wage will cover a family’s basic expenses — transportation, groceries, health care, child care, taxes and housing (assuming rent is only $1,700 a month) — without room for most extraneous purchases. When the foundation last released its report, in 2020, a three-person family in Teton County had to make $39 an hour. In 2005, it was $18 an hour. “Yes, we all kn...
POWELL — As the State of Wyoming moves forward with plans to build a world-class shooting facility, a panel is recommending that the complex be built in Cody. Following months of proposals, pitches and site visits, a task force voted 8-4 to favor a chunk of state land south of Cody over a competing spot near the Campbell County Cam-plex in Gillette. Campbell County put together an appealing proposal that included millions of dollars of funding and property that’s easily accessible and all but shovel ready. In contrast, Cody’s remote site impre...
CHEYENNE — Defendants in the public records lawsuit led by former lawyers George Powers of Cheyenne and Rodger McDaniel of Laramie have been found to have “knowingly or intentionally” violated the Wyoming Public Records Act. The lawsuit, filed against the Wyoming Department of Education, Communications Director Linda Finnerty and former State Superintendent of Public Instruction Brian Schroeder, was related to records detailing the origin of funds for a press conference titled “Stop the Sexualization of Our Children.” The event, organized...
Wyoming’s top elected officials denounced political violence and offered their prayers following an assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday. “President Trump, his family and the families of the victims of today’s shooting are in our prayers,” Gov. Mark Gordon said in a statement. Trump’s campaign said the presumptive GOP nominee was doing “fine” after the shooting, according to the Associated Press, after a bullet pierced the u...
CODY — The Biden administration has recently proposed a new Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) rule aimed at protecting workers from extreme heat exposure. This regulation, while potentially life-saving, could impose significant costs on employers. The proposed rule, announced on July 2, 2024, requires employers to develop comprehensive heat illness prevention plans. These plans would include measures such as providing water, mandatory rest breaks, and monitoring for heat-related symptoms when temperatures reach certain t...
CASPER—Walking into the Natrona County Townsend Justice Center is a bit daunting. You’re met with security, asked to part with electronic devices and then shepherded through a metal detector. Take a quick right, then left, and just past the elevator you arrive at the Natrona County Court Navigator Pilot Project, which has a name possibly larger than the closet-like space from which it operates. While sparse and windowless, the room and its volunteers represent an effort from the state’s judiciar...