Wyoming
Bear Rescue Gives Wyoming Bruins ‘A Second Chance At Freedom’
When Wyoming Game and Fish Department wardens found a motherless, starving female black bear cub cowering under porches in the small community of Kelly, Wyoming, last month, they knew exactly who to call.
It wasn’t long before a transport team from Idaho Black Bear Rehab (IBBR) was on the way to move the cub to its facility in Garden City, Idaho.
Now, the cub — named Alice by her rescuers — is doing fine and is on track to be returned to the wilds of Wyoming this coming summer.
Alice is just one of numerous black bear cubs from Wyoming and the surrounding region that IBBR has taken in since it was founded in 1989. The center’s stated goal is to keep bears just long enough for them to get big and healthy enough to strike out on their own, and then return them to the wild.
“In the 14-plus years I’ve been here we have had one bear go to a zoo. I don’t think there were any others. That would be a bear name Whiskey who resides at the Houston Zoo under the name Claud,” Amy Kidwell, who runs IBBR, told Cowboy State Daily.
A Job She Didn’t Expect
IBBR was founded by wildlife rehabilitator Sally Maughan, who named the first bear cub she took in Ruggles.
Kidwell knew of the center, but had no inclination of ever working there. But she has always had a soft spot for animals, so when she found out that IBBR needed food for the bears, she was more than happy to donate what she could.
IBBR runs exclusively on donations, Kidwell said.
“I worked at a little country market when I learned about IBBR and I had been bringing food to the bear rehab center every Sunday for a year,” Kidwell said. “And when the store where I worked closed, I told Sally I would still donate food, but it wouldn’t be every Sunday anymore.
“At this point, I still hadn’t met Sally, only spoke with her on the phone. She mentioned that I should apply for a job with her. I couldn’t believe that was an option.”
The job interview went better than expected.
“The first time I met Sally in person was my interview with her,” Kidwell said. “We talked for three hours straight. At one point, she said she was looking for someone stupid enough to take over the rehab one day, and I told her I was pretty dumb. We both got a good laugh out of it. I was hired, and a friendship was born.”
She and her daughter Emma, who was 6 at the time, moved into a small onsite house. Kidwell was gradually given more responsibility dealing with the bears until she was able to run the facility. She continued to learn all she could from Maughan until Maughan’s death in 2021.
53 Bears In One Year
IBBR sits on about 2.25 acres, and the main bear enclosure is about 5,000 square feet. There are smaller enclosures for bears that need to be isolated until they get used to their surroundings.
It’s usually a busy place. The bears almost always come to IBBR via Game and Fish and its sister agencies in surrounding states.
Because of space limitations and to keep from getting overwhelmed, Kidwell likes to limit it to about 15 bears at a time. They’re usually orphaned cubs, although the center has taken in a few 2-year-olds, as well as a mother and cub, Shadow and Kapiolani.
The average stay is just a few months, and Kidwell likes to keep her direct contact with the bears minimal, since the goal is to make them wild again. She has a local veterinarian on call in case any of the bears are sick or hurt.
The bears are usually released back into the wild in early summer so that they have the entire warm season to get back into the swing of things.
“We have done some fall releases as well,” Kidwell said.
She recalls that 2004 was a particularly exhausting year. The center rescued 40 cubs that year, with a peak number of 23 at the facility all at once. The main enclosure didn’t have roof on it, so the winter was especially miserable.
“In 2007, 53 bears arrived, including yearlings and two bears that were 2 years old. The addition of our new solid roof made managing that number of bears much easier,” Kidwell said.
Smart And Fast
Kidwell said she’s developed a tremendous respect for black bears.
One thing that might surprise folks about them is “how fast they do everything,” she said. “They grow, move and think faster than you can imagine.”
And no two bears are alike.
“Each bear is completely different from the others,” Kidwell said. “Just like with people, they have personalities and quirks. When we have a lot of bears on site, especially if they are all the same color, I need to consider their personality to tell them apart.”
Along with members of her transport team, Kidwell has noticed that black bears are keen problem-solvers and they communicate well with each other.
“They also communicate in ways that are so familiar to us,” she said. “I’ve seen them throw an arm in front of another bear, much like a parent puts their arm in front of their kid when they suddenly brake while driving, to stop them from doing something or going a certain direction.”
Learning With Momma And Cub
The bears also communicate with humans when necessary, Kidwell said. She recalled an interesting episode with mother-and-cub Shadow and Kapiolani.
Each bear has a “line” that they don’t want humans to cross, “and hers was a little farther out that most because she had a cub,” Kidwell said.
“We understood each other once I learned that, and she didn’t mind me much at all after the day I also yelled at her cub. She didn’t want her curious babe out of the den when I was in there and she would even lay on top of him to keep him in,” Kidwell said.
“He would scream and wiggle out from under her, and she would yell at him when he got too close to me – which was not really close at all,” she added. “One day he got away from her, so I yelled at him and motioned toward his mom and he ran back in with her. I felt she had a whole new appreciation for me that day. I’d almost swear she laughed.”
Not Stopping Anytime Soon
Running IBBR is an around-the-clock challenge, but Kidwell said she relishes it and plans to be there for Game and Fish and other agencies that need help with bear rescues for a long time to come.
“It was pure dumb luck that I ended up here. I have always loved animals, but I never dreamed I would end up working with bears,” she said. “When I feel like I’ve had enough and I just want to walk away, which is never caused by the bears themselves, I still can’t imagine closing up shop and ever having to say ‘no’ to a bear in need.”
“No matter the sad stories, the occasional difficulty in fighting to get a bear here, the paperwork, or keeping up with social media — once that bear arrives, absolutely everything is worth providing the temporary safety and comfort to these bears — and giving them their second chance at freedom in the wild is the most satisfying feeling I could ever have,” Kidwell added.

Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
Wyoming
Casper veteran David Giralt joins race for Wyoming U.S. House seat
Wyoming
Rivalries and Playoff Positioning Highlight Week 11 Wyoming Girls Basketball Slate
It’s Week 11 in the 2026 Wyoming prep girls’ basketball season. That means it’s the end of the regular season. 3A and 4A schools have their final game or games to determine seeding before the regional tournament, or if a team is locked into a position, one last chance to fine-tune before the postseason. Games are spread across four days.
WYOPREPS WEEK 11 GIRLS BASKETBALL SCHEDULE 2026
Every game on the slate is a conference matchup. Several rivalry contests are part of this week’s schedule, such as East against Central, Cody at Powell, Lyman hosting Mountain View, and Rock Springs at Green River, just to name a few. Here is the Week 11 schedule of varsity games WyoPreps has. All schedules are subject to change. If you see a game missing, please email david@wyopreps.com.
CLASS 4A
Final Score: Laramie 68 Cheyenne South 27 (conference game)
CLASS 3A
Final Score: Lyman 40 Mountain View 26 (conference game)
CLASS 4A
Final Score: Evanston 41 Riverton 39 (conference game)
Final Score: Natrona County 42 Kelly Walsh 38 (conference game) – Peach Basket Classic
Final Score: #4 Thunder Basin 64 Campbell County 32 (conference game)
CLASS 3A
Final Score: #1 Cody 77 Worland 33 (conference game) – 5 different Fillies with a 3, and Hays led the way with 34 points.
Final Score: #2 Lander 49 Lyman 34 (conference game)
Final Score: #4 Wheatland 51 Douglas 40 (conference game)
Final Score: #5 Powell 48 Lovell 42 (conference game)
Final Score: Burns 56 Torrington 43 (conference game)
Final Score: Glenrock 78 Newcastle 30 (conference game)
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WyoPreps Girls Basketball Week 1 Scores 2025-26
CLASS 4A
Rock Springs at #2 Green River, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
#4 Thunder Basin at #5 Sheridan, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
#1 Cheyenne East at #3 Cheyenne Central, 6 p.m. (conference game)
Jackson at Star Valley, 6 p.m. (conference game)
CLASS 3A
#3 Pinedale at Mountain View, 4 p.m. (conference game)
#1 Cody at #5 Powell, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
Buffalo at Glenrock, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
CLASS 3A
Newcastle at Buffalo, 12:30 p.m. (conference game)
Glenrock at Rawlins, 3 p.m. (conference game)
Torrington at #4 Wheatland, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
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4A Boys State Swim Meet for 2026 in Cheyenne
Gallery Credit: David Settle, WyoPreps.com
Wyoming
Political storm in Wyoming as far-right activist caught handing checks to lawmakers
Controversy has engulfed Wyoming’s state legislature after a conservative activist was photographed handing checks to Republican lawmakers on the state house floor, in an incident that has highlighted intra-conservative divisions and the role of money in the Cowboy state’s politics.
The political storm started on 9 February, when Karlee Provenza, a Democratic lawmaker, took a photo showing Rebecca Bextel, a conservative activist and committeewoman for the Teton county Republican party, handing a check to Darin McCann, a Republican representative, on the legislative floor. Marlene Brady, another Republican representative, stands in the photo’s background, a similar piece of paper pinched between her fingers.
“You have a person from the richest county in the country coming down to Cheyenne to hand out checks on the house floor,” Provenza said. “I have never seen something so egregious.”
Questions around the checks were soon swirling, and answers weren’t forthcoming. When asked what Bextel gave to her, Brady told a reporter for local outlet WyoFile: “I can’t remember.”
Then Bextel herself addressed the incident. “I raised $400,000 in the last election cycle for conservative candidates, and I will be doubling that amount this year,” Bextel wrote on Facebook on 11 February. “There’s nothing wrong with delivering lawful campaign checks from Teton county donors when I am in Cheyenne.”
Since then, it has emerged that the checks came from Don Grasso, a wealthy Teton county donor, who told the Jackson Hole News and Guide that he wrote the checks for Bextel to deliver to 10 Freedom caucus-aligned politicians. Grasso said the checks were intended as campaign contributions, and were not tied to specific legislation. It is unclear how many checks were ultimately delivered, but two of four confirmed recipients include the speaker of the house, Chip Neiman, and John Bear, the former head of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus.
The Wyoming house has formed a legislative investigative committee, and the Laramie county sheriff’s office said they’d open a criminal investigation.
Bextel declined to answer questions from the Guardian. Brady, McCann and Bear did not respond to requests for comment.
Neiman said he considered the criticism a “wraparound smear campaign”. He said: “It never once crossed my mind that this was bribery.
“These legislators, myself included, are now guilty until we can prove that we’re innocent. How is that right in this country? Isn’t that a little bit backwards?”
The scandal has highlighted long-standing divisions in Wyoming’s Republican party, which in recent years has seen a growing divide between old school, more moderate conservatives and a harder-right Freedom Caucus.
Several former Republican lawmakers forcefully condemned their colleagues for accepting the checks, and a local Republican party branch called for the lawmakers’ resignations.
Ogden Driskill, a Wyoming Republican senator, told the Guardian he does not consider Bextel’s actions to be illegal, but that “just because you can do it doesn’t mean you should”.
Bextel has spent years pushing against housing mitigation fees in Wyoming, and Driskill noted that she distributed the house floor checks just days before a bill she had publicly supported was set to be heard. Bextel was registered as a member of the press, not as a lobbyist when she delivered the checks.
“Ethically and morally, it’s bankrupt to a massive degree,” Driskill said.
Neiman said that he and other legislators who received checks have supported similar bills in the past: “Bribery is paying somebody to do something they would not otherwise do.”
Nationally, the 2024 election cycle saw record-spending from the mega-wealthy, as well as dark money groups. Wyoming followed the trend, in a tense red-on-red primary season.
For those gearing up to campaign this year, Teton county, the richest in the US, and Bextel’s picturesque home turf, is an essential stop. Its extreme wealth gives it a foothold on the national level as well. Palantir chief executive Alex Karp and Donald Trump attended an annual Republican leadership fundraiser at Jackson Hole in 2024, and JD Vance attended the same one in 2025.
Bextel pulls dollars from Teton county into the Freedom Caucus side of Wyoming’s conservative split. She hosted no-press-allowed meet and greets earlier this year benefitting leading candidates for Wyoming’s governor and open US House seat.
In an interview with the Open Range Record, a media network she co-founded, Bextel said controversy around the checks was solely because she was making “even playing field” in Wyoming against the state’s more moderate Republicans, who she calls “George Soros” candidates. She said that she will be sure to keep raising money – just away from the legislative floor.
“I guess I’m gonna ask all the gentlemen and gentleladies to step outside the Capitol while I hand them a check,” Bextel said. “Let me be clear: I’m doubling down.”
But it’s not just wealthy local donors putting their weight behind the factions. Last election cycle, out of state groups spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on anonymous and often inaccurate mailers.
“These actors, especially from the far right, they like to push the bounds of the norms,” said Rosa Reyna Pugh, an organizing and advocacy consultant at Western States Center, an Oregon-based non-profit focused on democracy in the western United States. “They like to see what policies they can kind of push, and see where they can play a piece,” Reyna Pugh said.
While Neiman and Driskill fight politically, they do agree on one thing: summer will bring an expensive and brutal campaign season.
“You’re going to see more dark money than you’ve ever seen. We’ve done absolutely nothing to enforce it. Our secretary of state has not even made a slight attempt to deal with it,” Driskill said. “You’re going to see lots and lots of outside money and I think you’re seeing it on both sides.”
As national questions swirl around pay-to-play politics and profiteering in the Trump administration, Provenza wants better for the Cowboy State.
“We should not be aligning ourselves with how the federal government is conducting itself or how federal elections conduct themselves,” Provenza said. “We owe something far better and more honest to the people of Wyoming than that.”
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