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Laramie - How much are big game animals worth to Wyoming? A judge recently ordered a hunter to pay $6000 restitution for killing a bull elk and leaving it to waste.
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The Wyoming Game and Fish Department offers $5000 for information leading to the arrest of persons poaching moose or elk.
A Wyoming game warden, describing an incident last fall |
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An open letter
Dear "X" and Governor Dave Freudenthal,
I'm writing to the next director of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department and to the Wyoming governor, on a matter of some urgency. |
You're running out of time to phase out and shut down the 22 elk feedgrounds in western Wyoming. |
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Lander - Ask people why they like living in Wyoming and they may mention the distance between
neighbors or the nearness of a trout stream. "Reading" is not likely the first thing out of their mouths. |
But in fact Wyoming should be to reading what the cliffs at Wild Iris are to climbing – inviting, challenging,
un-crowded, with few of the modern distractions that ruin concentration. | |
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Colton H. Bryant, 25-year-old married father of two young children, died Feb. 14, 2006 from head injuries suffered
in a fall from an oil rig south of Boulder, Wy. State investigators said the accident could have been prevented with a
simple handrail. The Wyoming Dept. of Employment Workers’ Safety Division fined the rig operator, Patterson-UTI Energy,
the world’s second biggest drilling company, $7,031 for safety violations.
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Bryant’s preventable death working for a company that the same year netted $673-million in profit was documented in
Montana journalist Ray Ring's award-winning article, Disposable
Workers of the Oil and Gas Fields" in the April 2, 2007, edition of the regional bi-weekly High Country News. Now, acclaimed African-Wyomingite
author Alexandra Fuller (see interview)
has written a moving account of Colton Bryant's life and tragic death amid the frenzied, dangerous drilling spree in southwest Wyoming. Here,
with special permission of the author and her publisher, Penguin Press, are the first two chapters of "The Legend of Colton H. Bryant: The
Story of a Wyoming Boy," and an excerpt from later in the book when young Colton decides to follow his father into work in the oil fields ... |
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The Wyoming-GE Talks on $100 Million Coal Project.
Attorney General Bruce A. Salzburg leads the team representing Wyoming in critical negotiations with General Electric Co. over the proposed $100-million joint venture,
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Cheyenne - When I came to Wyoming last spring after working elections in the American South for ten years, it didn’t take me long to realize I was in a much different place.
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On my first day in the state, I was shown around the state capitol in Cheyenne by state Rep. Lori Millin. We first went to Gov. | | MORE... | | |
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Before Gov. Dave Freudenthal’s April 11-20 state business trip to China, his staff announced that travel expenses would be paid for by the United States-Asia Foundation, "a non-partisan, non-profit organization that works to foster relationships between the United States and Asia."
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What the governor says he | | MORE... | | |
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Casper - Presidential candidate Barack Obama was challenged last month to explain his tolerance of the polarizing racial rhetoric in his Chicago church. He did more than that - rather than merely rejecting Reverend Jeremiah Wright and changing the subject, he invited Americans to go deeper, exploring together our ethnic/cultural differences and commonalities. And he acknowledged our constitutional Xeno’s paradox: we must strive for a "more perfect union" knowing perfection is beyond any nation's reach.
Is this a conversation that engages Wyoming? Sitting around a table recently with a group of people from all corners of the state, an acquaintance from Worland pointed out that | | MORE... | | |
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CHEYENNE - Halfway through his second term as governor of Wyoming, some people are asking Dave Freudenthal to run for a third time.
In fact, according to the state Democratic Party chairman, “He is being asked to run for all sorts of things.” |
That would include the three federal offices that become available this year, and the governor’s seat in 2010. | | MORE... | | |
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SHERIDAN - When it comes to laying down a carbon footprint, Wyoming is the nation’s Big Foot.
A carbon footprint measures human activities in terms of the amount of greenhouse gases produced, primarily CO2. By this yardstick, Wyoming ranks as worst in the nation - on a per capita basis.
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Our geography and geology conspire to give us a bad rap. It’s a | | MORE... | | |
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Laramie - Signs of growth in Wyoming are inescapable: traffic congestion, inflated land prices, and new houses sprouting like toadstools on rural lands. |
Many blame laws that exempt “ranchettes” (parcels larger than 35 or 40 acres) from subdivision rules. Figures on the total land in Wyoming caught up in these large-tract developments are not available, but according to Albany | | MORE... | | |
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CHEYENNE - Large stands of dead and dying lodge pole pine can instill a certain amount of dread in observers. In the midst of an enduring drought, all that dead, dying and dry wood conjures up visions of catastrophic wildfires racing through the national forests of Wyoming and the West. |
Vast stands of mountain pine beetle-killed forests make people, including me, | | MORE... | | |
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SHERIDAN - On Thursday, March 13, Sheridan College held its 12th annual Thickman Ethics lecture. The college chose as its speaker not usual philosophers or academics, but a Tibetian monk of some renown, Khen Rinpoche Lobzang Tsetan, head Abbot of the Tashi Lhunpo Monastery in southern India. |
To a standing-room only crowd, the Rinpoche gave Sheridan a crash course in Buddhism. He spoke in | | MORE... | | |
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CHEYENNE - After watching a certain amount of legislative action on the large-acre subdivision reform bill, one stops counting all the ironies. But a few of the richer ones still linger a week after the 59th Legislature sent the final draft to the governor. |
Such as, it took a debate over cutting up land into ranchettes and hobby farms to bring land stewardship interests together.
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CHEYENNE - We in Wyoming congratulate ourselves for having a “citizen Legislature,” entitling us to claim moral and practical superiority over nearly year-round sessions in other states. Our term suggests a legislative body that draws its members from regular folks who remember the regular folks who elect them for these short, manageable sessions of the Wyoming Legislature.
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(Correction: The initial release of this column contained an error - that 18,000 people had died in the gas incident in Africa. The actual number was closer to 1,800.)
LARAMIE - Twenty years ago a huge explosion of gas from Lake Nyos in the central Africa Republic of Cameroon killed nearly 1,800 people and untold livestock up to 15 miles away. The naturally occurring gas was carbon dioxide (CO2). A year later, the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce decided that, “since CO2 is deadly, CO2 pipelines should have appropriate federal safety | | MORE... | | |
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SHERIDAN - I am a recycling fool, but recently I've been pondering the petro-wisdom of schlepping a
flattened tuna fish can from Sheridan to Portland. Recycling has always been a problem in the land of long haulage.
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It takes a lot of diesel to haul paper, cardboard, cans, and glass from Wyoming to various paper or steel mills or scrap exporters
on the west coast. If you’re not careful, you'll burn as much |
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After years of construction inactivity and several false starts, some wags in Wyoming’s coal rich Powder
River Basin began to refer to the proposed billion dollar Two Elk power plant project 40 miles so | |
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|  | Brodie Farquhar
has been covering the West for over 30 years, working in Colorado, Arizona, Kansas,
Washington, South Dakota and now Wyoming since 2000. He was a member of the first
Scripps Fellowship for Environmental Journalism class at the University of Michigan,
where he earned a master's degree in natural resource policy. He's also worked stints
in public relations for the Colorado School of Mines, The Nature Conservancy, Crested
Butte Mountain Resort and most briefly for Wyoming Democratic candidate Gary Trauner.
Brodie lives in Casper with wife Sharon, daughters Katie and Sarah, while son Eric
is stationed in Kabul, Afghanistan as a captain in the U.S. Air Force.
| | | Close Elk Feedgrounds Before It's Too Late | | The Pine Beetle And Forest Fires | |
|  | Marguerite Herman, 57, moved to Wyoming 28 years ago as the first ever person to transfer to
the Cheyenne office of The Associated Press. (You were supposed to train here and move away.)
She grew up in an Air Force family, moving every year, and is still a little surprised to find
herself so stationary. She has a BA from (The) Colorado College, MAT from University of
Chicago and MA in journalism from the University of South Carolina.
She is wife to attorney George Powers and mother to Rosemary, Charlotte and Tom. Her abiding interests include
breastfeeding, knitting, good government, education, maternal-child health, New Mexican
chili and politics - especially politics.
| | | Gov. Freudenthal To Seek 3rd Term? | | Wyoming's No-Frill Legislature: It's Cheap, But Is It A Good Thing? | |
|  | Jason Marsden has served as executive director of Wyoming
Conservation Voters and the WCV Education Fund since September 2001. He was born in a small
farming town in southern Minnesota but got to Sheridan in time to finish elementary school,
graduating from Sheridan High in 1990 and Harvard College, with a degree in English, in 1994.
He served as field director for the Wyoming Democratic Party Coordinated Campaign in 1994
before starting a seven-year career as a Casper Star-Tribune reporter, covering government,
the environment, the energy industry and the state's congressional delegation.
Jason won the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Region 8 Environmental Achievement Award
in 1998 for his coverage of the litigation and eventual cleanup of Casper's former Amoco
Refinery site, and has twice been honored by the Wyoming Wildlife Federation.
He serves on the boards of directors of the Equality State Policy Council, the Wyoming Chapter of the
Sierra Club and the Alliance for Historic Wyoming. In his remaining free time he studies
Dutch, spoils his two cats and pursues domestic tranquility with his partner of 10 years,
Guy Padgett, the two-term Casper city councilman and former mayor.
| | | Subdivided, we stand ... together | | Postbellum: Legislative War on the West Recedes | |
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WyoFile economics writer Samuel Western has spent 25 years
exploring the west. He's been a correspondent for the Economist of London since 1985, but his
stories have also appeared in the Wall Street Journal, LIFE, Sports Illustrated, E-Magazine,
and High Country News. He's a contributing author to two books, The Next West, and Wild and
Fair (due out in March 2008). He's the author of Pushed Off the Mountain, Sold Down the River:
Wyoming's Search for its Soul, and A Random Census of Souls (due out December 2008).
Western specializes in economic history, ethical issues, and examining the human aspect of
shifting demographics.
Western lives in Sheridan with his black lab, Finn. His two children, Sally and Cyrus, are
away at school. His interests include literature of the land (from Virgil to Houseman to Heaney),
history all sorts, music, and cooking. He is a licensed Wyoming hunting guide.
| | | Wyoming's Misleading "Footprint" | | Recycling in the land of long haulage | |
|  | Deb Donahue is a lawyer and a wildlife biologist. A member of the
University of Wyoming College of Law faculty since 1992, she teaches Environmental Law, Public
Lands, Indian Law, and Native American Natural Resources Law. She spent 2002 on sabbatical in
New Zealand, studying biodiversity conservation policy. Donahue served as executive director
of the Wyoming Outdoor Council in 1983-85. She has worked for federal land management agencies,
the mining industry, law firms, a federal judge, and conservation organizations, including the
National Wildlife Federation in Alaska.
She is author of The Western Range Revisited: Removing
Livestock from Public Lands to Conserve Native Biodiversity (1999). In 2000 she was honored
as the Wyoming Wildlife Federation's Natural Resources Conservationist of the Year. In 2000
she was honored as the Wyoming Wildlife Federation's Natural Resources Conservationist of the
Year.
| | | Do Elk Feedgrounds Violate Public Trust? | | Subdivision Law Changes Little Without Planning, 'Z' Word | | Some cautionary notes about CO2 sequestration | |
|  | Geoffrey O'Gara is an author and television producer based in
Wyoming. His books include A Long Road Home (Houghton-Mifflin), about his travels with the
1930s WPA guides; What You See in Clear Water (Knopf), about the battle between Indians and
whites over control of water in the West; and a number travel guides. He has written,
produced, and hosted programs for Wyoming Public Television since 1991. He has worked as
editor of High Country News, a bureau chief for the Casper Star-Tribune, and a freelance
writer for publications ranging from the New York Times to National Geographic Traveler.
Under pressure, O'Gara will confess that he is originally from California. He moved to Wyoming
in 1979 from Washington, D.C., and has lived in Lander since then. He has three semi-grown
children with his spouse, Berthenia Crocker.
| | | Closing the Book in Wyoming | | Race, Racism and Wyoming | |
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