Wyoming
Wyoming, Montana Done Waiting, Give Feds Deadline To Delist Grizzlies
Even while chastising federal government officials for delaying a decision on whether grizzlies should be delisted, Wyoming and Montana’s governors are hailing a relocation of bears as a sign that it’s time to delist.
Two grizzlies captured in a remote area of northwest Montana were released in Wyoming this week.
A subadult female grizzly was released Tuesday in the Blackrock drainage about 35 miles northwest of Dubois, according Wyoming and Montana wildlife managers. On Wednesday, Yellowstone National Park wildlife agents released a subadult male in a remote area south of Yellowstone Lake.
The relocations are part of cooperative program between Montana and Wyoming to boost genetic exchange between Montana’s Northern Continental Divide grizzlies and Wyoming’s Greater Yellowstone bears.
Genetic exchange between those populations is seen as a key component of full grizzly recovery in the Lower 48.
Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon and Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte said in a joint statement Friday that moving the bears is important step toward getting grizzlies delisted.
“This week’s effort assures genetic connection can be achieved through active management to address the court’s requirement where a healthy number of grizzlies and an ever-expanding range have not been sufficiently convincing to the 9th Circuit,” Gordon said in the statement.
Govs. To Feds: Stop Dragging Your Feet
Meanwhile, Wyoming and Montana blasted the U.S. Department of the Interior and Fish and Wildlife Service over what they claim are needless delays in the feds reaching issuing a decision whether to delist grizzlies in the Lower 48.
The FWS recently petitioned a federal court to push the decision back until Jan. 31, 2025.
Wyoming and Montana say that’s unacceptable.
Montana last month sent a notice of intent to sue to U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and FWS Director Martha Williams.
Montana claims to have been waiting since 2022 for an answer from the feds regarding whether grizzlies could be delisted, according to the letter.
If FWS doesn’t render a decision by Sept. 11, Montana will file a lawsuit to force it to do so, the letter states.
Gordon said in a statement that Wyoming is willing to wait until Oct. 31.
“We will not accept a six-month delay to Wyoming’s petition, and one that costs the state $2 million annually to manage a species we have no authority over,” Gordon said. “Wyoming will accept nothing less than the service to expeditiously complete the delisting decision for the GYE bear no later than Oct. 31, 2024.”
Politics At Play?
The FWS might be trying to delay its decision out of an abundance of caution, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of the Interior Rob Wallace told Cowboy State Daily.
“If I read between the lines, everybody is trying to make sure they when they act, it (grizzly delisting) doesn’t just go back into the courts again,” said Wallace, who oversaw the FWS in his former administrative role.
There could be politics at play as well, retired federal ecologist Chuck Neal of Cody told Cowboy State Daily.
If the decision is delayed until Jan. 31, 2025, “that would take it past the election season and put it before a new presidential administration,” he said.
Is It Time To Delist?
Grizzlies once occupied much of the Western United States, but by the 1970s, their population had dwindled away almost entirely. They were placed under federal protection in 1975 so that they could recover.
Wallace said that’s been accomplished.
“From a recovery standpoint, the bears have met the recovery threshold that was set,” he said.
The recovery goal was about 700 grizzlies in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. There’s thought to be well over 1,000 bears in the GYE and at least that many more in the Northern Continental Divide ecosystem.
Most FWS biologists, as well as those with the state wildlife agencies, think that there are more than enough bears for delisting, Wallace said.
“You really want the Endangered Species Act to be decided by the biologists and not the courts,” he said.
If grizzlies are delisted, Wyoming Game and Fish has plans in place to open a hunting season for them here.
However, others argue that numbers alone aren’t enough and that the bears need more territory and greater genetic exchange between populations.
Neal said he favors that stance.
While moving two bears from Montana to Wyoming helps, it really amounts no nothing more than an “open air zoo” approach to bear management, he said.
Large-scale, natural genetic exchange needs to happen, he said.
He said he shares the sentiments of retired Missoula, Montana, biologist Chris Servheen that the states can’t be trusted to properly manage grizzlies.
Servheen was the FWS grizzly bear recovery coordinator for 35 years before retiring in 2016.
He previously told Cowboy State Daily that he initially favored delisting grizzlies, but then changed his mind when he saw how heavy-handed they’d been with wolves.
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
Carl McDaniel, 65, from Washington state suffered broken bones after he was charged by a 2,000lb (900kg) bull during a visit to Yellowstone with his grandson on Friday. The encounter was recorded by Mike MacLeod, a professional photographer, who said the animal was ‘agitated, pissed off and charging anything and everything’
Wyoming
Wyoming authorities call on Rocky Mountain Power to explain role in massive November power outage
by Dustin Bleizeffer, WyoFile
The massive, multiple-utility power outage last fall that left some 250,000 customers across parts of Wyoming, South Dakota and Montana without electricity was the result of miscommunication and inadequate procedures during planned maintenance that required de-energizing a power line in southcentral Wyoming, according to a report.
The Nov. 13 incident left thousands of homes and businesses without power for 9.5 hours — longer, in some cases — and knocked out a coal-powered generator outside Glenrock. The unit at the Dave Johnston Power Plant remains offline, leaving Rocky Mountain Power to backfill some 300 megawatts of electricity — enough to power about 225,000 homes.
Without expressly assigning blame to any one party, the report — conducted by the Western Electricity Coordinating Council and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation — indicates a series of communication breakdowns between PacifiCorp (parent company of Rocky Mountain Power), the Western Area Power Administration and, to some degree, electrical grid coordinating teams.
While it’s unclear whether authorities such as the North American Electric Reliability Corporation might pinpoint fault and assess penalties, the Wyoming Public Service Commission has called on Rocky Mountain Power to appear at a hearing scheduled for 2:30 p.m. Wednesday. The commission wants to hear from the utility about “the specifics and details of the event and report,” a public notice announced, and it “may consider and take any action that is in the public interest.”
The hearing at the Public Service Commission’s office located at 2515 Warren Avenue, Suite 300, in Cheyenne, will also be livestreamed at this link.
What happened
According to the 49-page report published in June, PacifiCorp and the Western Area Power Administration were coordinating maintenance on their respective systems that, together, required temporarily de-energizing PacifiCorp’s Aeolus–Clover 500 kilovolt line, which runs east-west and is anchored, in part, by a substation near Medicine Bow.
The effort also required curtailing some local wind energy from feeding the grid, according to the report. But on the day of the planned maintenance, Nov. 13, there was confusion about whether the Western Area Power Administration would scrap its work, so wind energy wasn’t curtailed as originally planned.
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Wind turbines near Cheyenne poke into a colorful sunrise in January 2025. (Tennessee Watson/WyoFile)
The report indicates that modeling tools might have failed to accurately measure local grid conditions, so when the power line was de-energized, “power flow rapidly redistributed throughout the northeast portion” of the local grid. “Within six seconds,” according to the report, “an electrical island formed and collapsed, causing widespread effects across that portion of the interconnection.
“The disturbance,” the report continues, “culminated in the loss of more than 4,800 [megawatts] of generation from coal, natural gas, photovoltaic and wind resources.”
The cascading power failure began at about 12:45 p.m. on a Thursday, dragging down portions of service territories operated by Rocky Mountain Power, Black Hills Energy, Montana-Dakota Utilities and some rural electric co-ops.
The report points to failures in communication, process deficiencies and inadequate modeling tools. Wind energy was not “identified as a contributing factor,” according to the report. It credits both battery storage and wind energy throughout the impacted area for supporting “a faster frequency recovery across the interconnection” and for providing “readily available capacity during system restoration.”
This article was originally published by WyoFile and is republished here with permission. WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.
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