Hot Springs County residents watched the Red Canyon Fire explode in August. Driven by extreme weather conditions, the lightning-sparked blaze burned nearly 195 square miles of grassland, sagebrush steppe and pinyon-juniper habitat in the Bighorn Range foothills, and it happened quickly — most of the burn area was charred in a span of four days.
Dread in Hot Springs County communities like Thermopolis and Kirby wasn’t confined to the immediate effects, like lost fencelines and incinerated forage for livestock and wildlife. The inferno burned over landscapes that are plagued by a cheatgrass infestation. There are credible worries that, without costly chemical intervention in the near future, the fire scar could convert to an unproductive monoculture of invasive grasses.
“We’re going to really depend on [state] funding to treat this, because our district doesn’t have a budget to do any of it,” Hot Springs County Weed and Pest District Supervisor Heather Love told WyoFile.
Love’s district submitted a $9 million grant request to fight back, money that would enable restoration spraying on roughly 140,000 acres of private, state land and adjoining federal land near Red Canyon Fire.
That funding is currently being deliberated by Wyoming lawmakers. Prospects are looking good for $9 million to pay for the direct response to the fire. But there are dimmer odds that there will be much money available for treating cheatgrass in other reaches of Hot Springs County.
It’s not for lack of need. Hot Springs County weed and pest professionals have identified 340,000 acres in their district’s eastern reaches, where the cheatgrass invasion is becoming untenable.
“That much of our county could use spray,” Love said. “Actually, our entire county could be sprayed.”
Many other reaches of Wyoming share Hot Springs County’s plight. Cheatgrass is slowly taking over, and hard-fought dollars available through the Wyoming Wildlife and Natural Resource Trust and other state and federal sources aren’t enough to arrest its spread. It’s a grave problem for native wildlife like mule deer, for livestock producers and for the broader environment: Cheatgrass has been called the “most existential, sweeping threat” to western ecosystems.
Wyoming lawmakers are still in the process of deciding how much to spend on addressing cheatgrass and other invasive annual grasses in the 2027-28 state budget. Going into the Legislature’s session, Gov. Mark Gordon proposed dedicating $11 million: a funding request that traces back to the 2024 budget session. Those dollars were positioned to come through in 2025, but then were “stranded” and never allocated after the Wyoming Senate decided to go without a supplemental budget.
“That put us a year behind,” Wyoming Wildlife and Natural Resource Trust Executive Director Bob Budd told WyoFile.
Additionally, Gordon proposed another $29.4 million in funds dedicated to wildfire restoration projects. The bulk of that money typically goes toward spraying cheatgrass, Japanese brome and other invasive grasses.
Those sums were trimmed down by $13 million in the budget bill that state senators and representatives began working with two weeks ago. Alongside high-profile cuts proposed by Wyoming Freedom Caucus-aligned lawmakers in January was a $10 million trim to the fire restoration funds and a $3 million reduction in the broader cheatgrass spraying pot. The budget session now underway is the first since the group of hard-line Republicans secured a majority of the seats on the powerful Joint Appropriations Committee.
Through two weeks of the legislative session, the Freedom Caucus-controlled House of Representatives has resolutely stood behind cuts to spending on Wyoming’s cheatgrass fight. During Tuesday’s marathon budget debate that stretched until 1:30 a.m., Casper Republican Rep. Elissa Campbell brought two amendments that sought to restore the $13 million in funds.
“These invasive annual grasses, the threat cannot be overstated to our ranches and our heritage lands,” Campbell said on the House floor.
A handful of other representatives argued in favor of the additional investment.
Rep. Lloyd Larsen, a Lander Republican, pointed out how the funds would quickly go toward on-the-ground work, and that the state spending is often leveraged with 3-1 and 4-1 matches from other funders.
Buffalo Republican Rep. Marilyn Connolly vowed support because a breakthrough herbicide, Rejuvra, is so pricey — it costs about $1,150 a gallon, she said.
“This is a really emergent situation,” Connolly said. “Those grasses cut down on your productivity of your ag land, your grazing, it hurts the wildlife.”
Proponents of spending less on treating Wyoming cheatgrass mostly kept quiet, with only Gillette Republican Rep. Abby Angelos speaking up.
“On and against,” Angelos said Tuesday in response to Campbell’s first amendment. “We’re going to keep it at the $8 million.”
Both of Cambell’s amendments failed 28-34, with House members who typically vote with the Freedom Caucus voting against adding the $13 million. The same two amendments were filed for the House’s third reading of the budget on Friday. Neither passed the House.
State senators, meanwhile, replenished both cheatgrass-related pots to Gordon’s desired spending levels. The $13 million was restored on the first day of the upper chamber’s budget negotiations as part of Devils Tower Republican Sen. Ogden Driskill’s overarching budget amendment, which passed 20-11.
Negotiations between the House and Senate will likely determine what Wyoming weed and pest districts ultimately have available to fight the cheatgrass invasion the next couple years.
“Maybe in conference committee, we can scrape out a little bit more,” said Wyoming Wildlife Federation staffer Jess Johnson, who’s been lobbying for the funding.
It’s in Wyoming’s long-term best interest to tackle the issue now, she said.
“The need for work on cheatgrass far exceeds the funding available right now,” Johnson said. “Cheatgrass, we can all agree, is a huge problem. Big dollars are needed.”
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