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New West Analysis
What’s Behind Judge Molloy’s Questioning of ‘Experimental’ Status for Wolves?
Late last month, U.S. District Court Judge Donald Molloy asked attorneys for wildlife management agencies and environmental groups to answer this question: Can the Northern Rockies wolf population still be considered an “experimental” population, or has there been enough cross-breeding with Canadian wolves to declare there’s no danger of genetic isolation or inbreeding?
The answer may be critically important, because the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho in the mid-90s was predicated on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service calling those wolves an “experimental, non-essential species.”
This designation not only allowed wolves to be reintroduced to the tri-state region of Wyoming, Idaho and Montana, it also gave the FWS the flexibility to essentially consider the wolves a large-scale experiment in reintroduction. Without that designation as experimental, the wolves would have fallen under the full protection of the Endangered Species Act and could not be so readily killed when they got into conflicts with livestock. (Great Lakes wolves are not experimental and do occasionally attack and kill livestock, which does prompt control measures.)
[more]WyoFile Feature
A Gem at the Foot of the Bighorn Mountains
It was 1866 when Samuel W. Hyatt moved to a scattered settlement at the confluence of Paint Rock Creek and Medicine Lodge Creek. But what he and other early settlers of what is now Hyattville didn’t know was that people had been living in that same area for the last 10,000 years.
For the ranchers and others who now make Hyattville home, it’s easy to see why.
Tucked away amid the red, rolling foothills of the Bighorn Mountains in north central Wyoming, Hyattville is only six miles from Medicine Lodge Archaeological Site, home to numerous petroglyphs and pictograms.
Over the years, Hyattville has had a doctor, newspaper, hotel, mercantile and grocery stores — even an opera house — that served a thriving ranching economy. Today, there’s a post office and two cafés, each with a bar. Groceries or gas are 17 miles or more away, in Basin, Worland and Ten Sleep.
[more]New West Feature
Yellowstone Bison Vs. Bear Photos Go Viral
It’s possible you’ve already seen these semi-famous images of a grizzly bear chasing a burned bison down a Yellowstone highway. Someone sent them to your inbox or posted them on Facebook. Possibly, you saw them on the local news or while trolling any number of regional, national or international websites.
They’re everywhere now, which is all pretty astonishing to Alex Wypyszinski, the amateur photographer who captured this hunt last May, while driving between Madison Junction and Old Faithful.
“I recently Googled myself and found my photos at sites in Poland, Albania and Portugal,” he said. If you Google “bison AND grizzly AND Wypyszinki,” you’ve got about 10,800 ways to check them out.
[more]New West Feature
Snowmobiling in Yellowstone: Past and Present
Yellowstone National Park is no longer the lightning rod it once was regarding whether snowmobiles should be allowed. But the tug of war that tightened when a decision announced in the waning days of the Clinton administration was then immediately reversed by the incoming Bush administration is still at play.
In marked contrast to the big headlines and charged rhetoric of the past, however, Yellowstone’s gateway communities and businesses have changed their winter business models to match the shifting profile of the average winter visitor.
While some businesses look wistfully back on the days when thousands of snowmobiles could be buzzing around Yellowstone on peak days, others are flourishing by chasing an evolving market – away from snowmobiles and toward snowcoaches, cross-country skiers and visitors much more focused on learning about Yellowstone, rather than riding through it on nimble two-stroke snowmobiles.
“In a nutshell, this is as different as day and night,” said John Sacklin, Yellowstone’s chief planner.
[more]New West Analysis
Wyoming Elections Looking Red, But More Nuanced Than You Might Think
First, let’s look at the Congressional race pitting first-term Republican Rep. Cynthia Lummis against Democratic newcomer David Wendt.
Although Democratic challenger Gary Trauner came within a thousand votes of unseating Republican Rep. Barbara Cubin in 2006, Trauner was not able to run a similarly close race against Lummis in 2008 for one simple reason: Lummis is not Cubin.
Cubin had eked out the narrowest of her wins in 2004, even losing three counties. And in the runup to 2006, a certain degree of Bush/Cheney fatigue was setting in in the Cowboy State – even more so for the absentee Cubin who, when she did bother to show up in Congress, garnered negative press with non-PC statements. Trauner took advantage of all that with an aggressive, door-to-door statewide campaign and almost beat Cubin.
At the very least, that close call was likely a factor in Cubin’s decision to not run for re-election in 2008.
[more]New West Feature
Greens, Oil & Gas Rep Agree: Wyoming’s Groundbreaking Fracking Rules Working Relatively Well
A month and a few days after Wyoming started requiring drillers to list the ingredients of hydraulic fracturing fluids with drill permit applications, the process is, for the most part, going smoothly.
That’s the consensus opinion of conservation groups, an industry representative and of Tom Doll, supervisor of the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.
“It is working pretty well,” said Doll. “Most operators were well-prepared to comply with the new regulations.”
One hiccup in the process occurred when major drilling service companies operating in Wyoming got briefly caught between the state and their own suppliers wanting to keep ingredients a proprietary secret, said Doll. Two of the biggest service companies are Halliburton and Schlumberger.
“We’ve been doing a bit of educating,” Doll said, noting that two companies that specialize in blending fracking fluids for specific requirements are now applying for trade secret status before the commission.
[more]WyoFile's Wyoming Series
Reborn Occidental Plays Hostess to the Beating Heart of Buffalo, Wyoming
The beating heart of Buffalo, Wyoming, and arguably of Johnson County, isn’t only found in a school, church, town hall, museum or courthouse.
You’ll also find it in an 1880-vintage hotel and 1908-era saloon, in downtown Buffalo.
Every Thursday night in the Occidental Hotel bar, musicians young and old, local and from far afield, jam together playing bluegrass, folk and country music.
“Most jams among musicians last a month or two, and then they fizzle,” said David Stewart, a professional songwriter and co-founder of the Bluegrass Jam, which celebrated its fourth anniversary on Oct. 15, 2010.
[more]Wyoming
Interviewing Gov. Dave
Wyoming Governor Dave Freudenthal is a challenging interview subject.
Don’t get me wrong – it is usually fun to talk to Gov. Dave because he enjoys give-and-take bantering with reporters. And reporters can always rely on him for great quotes – jokes and puns and pithy observations. But he doesn’t give away much, either.
He generally has a clear idea of what he wants to accomplish in an interview, and when he’s done, that’s pretty much it.
New West Feature
Coal Falls While Natural Gas Rises? Picture in Wyoming Is More Complicated.
Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal reported that power companies are switching from coal to natural gas, driven by lower natural gas prices and news of vast, new reservoirs. That simple picture gets a lot more complicated for the man who sits in the governor’s office in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
Gov. Dave Freudenthal doesn’t sound particularly worried about whether coal or natural gas is winning a larger slice of the market share. After all, Wyoming has an embarrassment of energy riches—coal, coal-bed methane, natural gas, oil, uranium and wind. However national energy policies and markets move in the future, Wyoming will benefit.
“I’ve seen these projections (cited by the Wall Street Journal),” said Freudenthal in an interview with New West, adding he’s not sure how solid they really are. “I’m a little softer on these projections.”
[more]Wildlife Management
Wolves in the Midwest vs. the West. What’s the Difference? Us.
Whenever federal wolf recovery coordinator Ed Bangs goes to a public meeting about wolves in the Northern Rockies, he can almost always count on the following encounter:
A grizzled rancher walks up, tilts back his battered Stetson, sticks out a callused, work-worn hand and says, “My granddad killed the last wolf in this county, back in …”
It has been less than 100 years since wolves were extirpated in the Northern Rockies and within one, two or three generations, said Bangs, extended-family memories are fresh and vivid.
“I had an 80-year-old gentleman come up and tell me that as a kid, he and his Dad hunted wolves along the East Front in Montana,” said Bangs. “Today’s wolves are using the same trails they did back then.”
Yet wolves in the western Great Lakes region of Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin were never fully exterminated and now number close to 4,000 – more than the 1,700 wolves that live in the Northern Rockies states of Montana, Wyoming and Idaho, with wolves showing up in Washington, Oregon and Utah.
As for the reintroduction of red wolves into North Carolina, it has been more than 200 years since they were all killed, said Bangs, and there is no cultural memory of them, and little to no hostility.
While the reintroduction of wolves in Yellowstone in 1995 stirred up a regional, political firestorm that is hottest in the Cowboy State of Wyoming, the gradual comeback of Midwestern wolves happened with much less political heat or controversy.
Why is that?
[more]
