Wyoming

Cowboy State Daily Video News: Wednesday, July 31, 2024

Published

1 year ago

July 31, 2024

It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming, for Wednesday, July 31. I’m Wendy Corr, bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily newsroom – Brought to you by Wyoming Senior Olympics! Don’t miss the action at this year’s summer games from today through August 4th in Cheyenne, Wyoming. For more info and a schedule of events, visit Wyoming Senior Olympics dot org.

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It’s wildfire season in the West, and while Wyoming tends to live in the smoke clouds of its Western neighbors, the Equality State itself is battling its own wildfires.

In northeast Wyoming, two fires have already caused damage to homes and buildings, and Cowboy State Daily’s Jake Nichols reports that the Shoshone National Forest is blazing between Cody and Yellowstone.

“Clearwater Fire started by lightning and made significant progress Monday due to high winds 40-50 mile an hour gusts. Pushed that thing right up the elk fork drainage directly at – if you’re familiar with the area – that cute little campground, Wapiti, right off the highway. And for firefighters, highway access is the main concern from Cody to the east entrance of Yellowstone – that’s highway 14-16-20. And if this fire does not jump that highway, I’d be surprised. It’s knocking on the door.”

In Campbell County, a handful of people were left without homes to return to after erratic winds shifted direction Saturday and thrust a grassfire onto Peaceful Valley Drive just west of Gillette. Dozens of pets, horses, goats, chickens and other animals were saved, but some dogs were reported killed.

Read the full story HERE.

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Homes under $1 million are practically nonexistent in the Jackson Hole real estate market, and the rare few that are available go fast.

That’s even as the latest Jackson Hole Real Estate report from the Viehman Group shows the $2 million to $3 million segment of the Jackson Hole market is the most stagnant right now. Business reporter Renee Jean reports that sales have dropped off 6% overall, even as overall inventory has risen 5%.

“There’s still pretty robust demand for those homes, if people just would let go of pandemic pricing and come down just a little bit… these are people who can afford to sit on the market for a while and see what it does. And so, you know, you could see some price drops in the Jackson market, but I don’t think anyone should expect that that’s going to last for very long.”

Right now, there are just 10 condos or townhomes under $1 million dollars, and only six single-family homes less than $2 million on the market.

Read the full story HERE.

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For the first time since their inception, the most significant moves toward tightening Wyoming’s relatively opaque and lenient limited liability corporation laws may be about to happen.

Cowboy State Daily’s Leo Wolfson reports that the Legislature has convened a Business Fraud Working Group that’s spent the summer meeting to gain a better understanding of the alleged fraud some people commit under Wyoming-registered businesses because of the state’s LLC laws.

“Wyoming’s LLC laws and trust laws are renowned for being extremely private, and allowing sometimes some nefarious actors to get involved in the state. So this would basically at least make an effort at trying to kind of address some of those issues that had been brought up.”

Wyoming has some of the most lenient and private corporate business filing laws in the country, and some of the lowest associated fees for registering LLCs.

Read the full story HERE.

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A Green River man is facing up to 10 years in prison on claims he pointed a loaded 9 mm pistol at a teen who parked a powered-off dirt bike on the grass in front of the man’s home.

Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that 70-year-old Boyd Kettle was charged Monday with aggravated assault in Sweetwater County Circuit Court.

“Boyd Kettle allegedly comes out and chastises the teen and points a loaded pistol at him. The reason that there’s an inference in that affidavit that it was loaded is that police met up with him later and collected a nine millimeter Taurus that had a full magazine and also one in the chamber.”

Wyoming law contains multiple variations of aggravated assault. Among those are charging options for people accused of pointing a “drawn deadly weapon” at others.

Read the full story HERE.

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Former President Donald Trump is paying attention to Wyoming and its 2024 races for the state Legislature. Over the weekend, Trump endorsed Cheyenne Republican Senate candidate Darin Smith on his social media platform Truth Social.

While Trump has endorsed Wyoming candidates before, he hasn’t expressed support for anyone running for the state Legislature until now, reports Cowboy State Daily’s Leo Wolfson.

“Smith is running in Cheyenne is rural Laramie and Platte counties for the state senate for a seat currently occupied by Senator Anthony Bouchard, a Republican from Cheyenne. It’s notable that Smith got the endorsement, as it is the first endorsement Trump has ever made for a Wyoming State Legislature candidate.”

The track record shows that a Trump endorsement usually turns out well for those candidates.

Read the full story HERE.

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A half-shredded blade hanging from a wind turbine just off Interstate 80 west of Cheyenne is a reminder that these towering electricity generators are not immune to the sometimes-violent hail and lightning storms that roll through southeastern Wyoming.

Laurie Farkas, a spokeswoman for Black Hills Energy, told energy reporter Pat Maio that the blade was damaged by a lightning strike July 17 at the Corriedale wind farm west of Cheyenne.

“If you look at it really closely, and I did, I stopped off on the side of the road there and looked at it with the telephoto lens, and you can see, like strands of rope, almost, dangling where it had been snapped in half. And it’s basically a carbon fiber type of substance, and they have to be disposed of properly in the right landfill and whatnot. And there is a big landfill that does take them up in Casper, but they stopped doing it a couple years ago.”

Lightning damage is the single largest cause of unplanned downtime for wind turbines and the most common insurance claim filed by wind farm owners.

Read the full story HERE.

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The needless suffering of animals dying slow deaths tangled in old barbed wire fences inspired an army of volunteers to clean up rusted wire from an area between Cody and Yellowstone National Park.

Outdoors reporter Mark Heinz spoke to volunteers involved in the Absaroka Fence Initiative, which aims to rid the area of these specific hazards to wildlife. The initiative was sparked by a property owner who witnessed a tragic incident in 2012 in which two deer were tangled in barbed wire right in front of her house.

“It just turned into this horrible agonizing episode where it’s like two or three hours, and they finally got one of the Bucks free and it wandered off the property and didn’t live. The other one Game and Fish wardens had to put down on the site… on Monday, 12 years later, the Absaroka Fencing Initiative… they got about 40 people, and they came in and they removed three miles of old nasty rusty abandoned barbed wire, so that this doesn’t happen to any more animals or pets or things like that.”

Abandoned fences, usually dating from the early 1950s-1990s, are a problem all over the Cody region and the rest of Wyoming.

Read the full story HERE.

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Douglas Smith continues to profess his innocence after being accused of killing two people during a daytime robbery of a downtown Cheyenne coin shop in 2015.

The 68-year-old California resident pleaded not guilty to two counts of first-degree murder during his arraignment hearing Monday in Laramie County District Court. That’s according to Cowboy State Daily’s Leo Wolfson.

“A jury trial has been set for December in that case, and he is still being held with no bond. During Monday’s court hearing, his attorney argued for reduced bond or any bond at all. But the judge has kind of delayed that for the future.”

Smith is accused of shooting and killing the then-owner of The Coin Shop, 67-year-old Dwight Brockman and his friend, 76-year-old George Manley, during that year’s Frontier Days. The brazen nature of the murder left many in Cheyenne shocked.

Read the full story HERE.

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Accused of going after four transients with a machete under a bridge in Green River — and slicing open the ear of one of them — a California man could face up to 40 years in prison.

Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that 34-year-old Jacob Rial of Gaberville, California, was charged Monday with four counts of aggravated assault in Rock Springs Circuit Court.

“It’s a chasm of two sides to this story if I’ve ever seen one. On the one side, you have the defendant saying they tried to jump me, they tried to drown me. I pulled out my machete, I defended myself. I got away. And on the other side, you have the four people, two of whom are badly cut. I mean, one guy got his ear slashed, and saying, we were just talking, and randomly he grabs a machete out of his tan backpack and starts swinging, and we tried to fight it away from him. And that’s how two of us got cut.”

One of the men had a severe laceration to the side of his head and his ear, and the other had a less-severe cut to his neck.

Read the full story HERE.

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And that’s today’s news. Get your free digital subscription to Wyoming’s only statewide newspaper by hitting the Daily Newsletter button on Cowboy State Daily Dot Com – and you can watch this newscast every day by clicking Subscribe on our YouTube channel. I’m Wendy Corr, for Cowboy State Daily.

Radio Stations

The following radio stations are airing Cowboy State Daily Radio on weekday mornings, afternoons and evenings.

KYDT 103.1 FM – Sundance

KBFS 1450 AM — Sundance

KYCN 1340 AM / 92.7 FM — Wheatland

KZEW 101.7 FM — Wheatland

KANT 104.1 FM — Guernsey

KZQL 105.5 FM — Casper

KMXW 92.5 FM — Casper

KJAX 93.5 FM — Jackson

KROE 930 AM / 103.9 FM — Sheridan

KWYO 1410 AM / 106.9 FM — Sheridan

KYOY 92.3 FM Hillsdale-Cheyenne / 106.9 FM Cheyenne

KRAE 1480 AM — Cheyenne

KDLY 97.5 FM — Lander

KOVE 1330 AM — Lander

KZMQ 100.3/102.3 FM — Cody, Powell, Medicine Wheel, Greybull, Basin, Meeteetse

KKLX 96.1 FM — Worland, Thermopolis, Ten Sleep, Greybull

KCGL 104.1 FM — Cody, Powell, Basin, Lovell, Clark, Red Lodge, MT

KTAG 97.9 FM — Cody, Powell, Basin

KCWB 92.1 FM — Cody, Powell, Basin

KVGL 105.7 FM — Worland, Thermopolis, Basin, Ten Sleep

KODI 1400 AM / 96.7 FM — Cody, Powell, Lovell, Basin, Clark, Red Lodge

KWOR 1340 AM / 104.7 FM — Worland, Thermopolis, Ten Sleep

KREO 93.5 FM — Sweetwater and Sublette Counties

KERM 98.3 FM — Goshen County

Check with individual radio stations for airtime of the newscasts.

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Wyoming

Property Tax Relief vs. Public Services: Weed & Pest Districts Enter the Debate

Published

2 hours ago

January 9, 2026

Press Room

Property Tax Relief vs. Public Services: Weed & Pest Districts Enter the Debate

As property tax cuts move forward in Wyoming, schools, hospitals, public safety agencies and road departments have all warned of potential funding shortfalls. Now, a new white paper from the Wyoming Weed & Pest Council says Weed & Pest Districts could also be significantly affected — a concern that many residents may not even realize is tied to property tax revenue.

Wyoming’s Weed & Pest Districts didn’t appear out of thin air. They were created decades ago to deal with a very real problem: invasive plants that were chewing up rangeland, hurting agricultural production and spreading faster than individual landowners could manage on their own.

Weeds like cheatgrass and leafy spurge don’t stop at fence lines, and over time they’ve been tied to everything from reduced grazing capacity to higher wildfire risk and the loss of native wildlife habitat.

That reality is what led lawmakers to create locally governed districts with countywide authority — a way to coordinate control efforts across both public and private land. But those districts now find themselves caught in a familiar Wyoming dilemma: how to pay for public services while cutting property taxes. Property taxes are among the most politically sensitive issues in the state, and lawmakers are under intense pressure to deliver relief to homeowners. At the same time, nearly every entity that relies on those dollars is warning that cuts come with consequences.

The Weed & Pest Council’s white paper lands squarely in that debate, at a moment when many residents are increasingly skeptical of property tax–funded programs and are asking a simple question — are they getting what they pay for?

That skepticism shows up in several ways. Critics of the Weed & Pest District funding model say the white paper spends more time warning about funding losses than clearly demonstrating results. While few dispute that invasive species are a problem, some landowners argue that weed control efforts vary widely from county to county and that it’s difficult to gauge success without consistent performance measures or statewide reporting standards.

Others question whether residential property taxes are the right tool to fund Weed & Pest Districts at all. For homeowners in towns or subdivisions, the work of weed and pest crews can feel far removed from daily life, even though those residents help foot the bill. That disconnect has fueled broader questions about whether funding should be tied more directly to land use or agricultural benefit rather than spread across all residential taxpayers.

There’s also concern that the white paper paints proposed tax cuts as universally “devastating” without seriously engaging with alternatives.

Some lawmakers and taxpayer advocates argue that Weed & Pest Districts should at least explore other options — whether that’s greater cost-sharing with state or federal partners, user-based fees, or more targeted assessments — before framing tax relief as an existential threat.

Ultimately, critics warn that leaning too heavily on worst-case scenarios could backfire. As Wyoming reexamines how it funds government, public entities are being asked to do more than explain why their mission matters. They’re also being asked to show how they can adapt, improve transparency and deliver services as efficiently and fairly as possible.

Weed & Pest Districts, like schools, hospitals and other tax-supported services, may have to make that case more clearly than ever before. The video below is the story of Wyoming’s Weed and Pest Districts.

Wyoming Weed & Pest’s Most Notorious Species

Gallery Credit: Kolby Fedore, Townsquare Media

Notorious Idaho Murderer’s Home Is Back On The Market

Convicted murderer, Chad Daybell’s home is back on the market. Could you live here?

Gallery Credit: Chris Cardenas

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Wyoming

Wyoming battles tougher flu in 2025–26 season, health experts report

Published

14 hours ago

January 9, 2026

Press Room

Wyoming battles tougher flu in 2025–26 season, health experts report

CASPER, Wyo. — While the fall and winter are often highlighted by snowfall and holiday gatherings, the season is also marked by the coughing, running noses and chills that come with the flu. This year, health experts warn of an especially virulent flu in Wyoming and beyond.

Data from the Wyoming Department of Health show that Wyoming saw 426 new influenza cases reported in just the final week of 2025, with well over 1,000 cases in total through flu season thus far in Wyoming. The report also states that, through Dec. 27, there had been 19 deaths in Wyoming caused by the flu this season. Nationally, the CDC reports more than 7.5 million cases of the flu and more than 3,100 deaths.

The uptick in flu cases is seen locally, too, the Natrona County Health Department told Oil City News on Thursday.

“While we don’t have exact numbers locally and only have the statewide data that’s reported, I can definitely say anecdotally that locally we’re seeing the same trends that we’re seeing statewide and nationally,” health department PIO Hailey Bloom said. “There is a surge in the rate across our community, the state and the country.”

Bloom said the surge in cases can partially be attributed to this year’s particular strain. The current flu is a mutated strain known as subclade K, originating from the common flu-causing virus influenza A and its variant H3N2. The strain is one of the more aggressive influenza variants, Bloom said.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, subclade K is also more adept at resisting immune systems that have already built up protections against other strains of the virus. Bloom also said this season’s vaccine may not be ideally suited for combating the current strain.

“We use the flu season in the southern hemisphere as a predictor [when crafting the vaccine], and we did see that there were some strains not as effectively combated by this year’s flu shot,” she said. “Some years we get a really, really good match on the flu shot and all of the circulating strains are perfect matches to that shot, and some years it’s not as perfect.”

However, Bloom also said some of the increased cases can be attributed to a lower number of people getting vaccinated, which remains the best way to avoid the virus.

Bloom said 989 Natrona County residents have gotten a flu shot through the health department so far this season. That’s down from the 1,227 distributed in the 2024–25 flu season and the 1,478 the year before that.

The decline in vaccinations similarly mirrors a nationwide trend. In mid-December, the CDC reported that roughly 32.5 million flu shots had been given thus far, which is down about 1.9 million from the same point the prior flu season.

People still in need of a vaccine can get one at the Natrona County Health Department by calling ahead and setting up an appointment or by walking in, Bloom said. Vaccinations can also be administered at other locations like various local pharmacies.

Other than getting vaccinated, tips for avoiding the flu include regularly washing hands, avoiding people you know to be sick, exercising caution if feeling under the weather and dressing appropriately for the weather, Bloom said.

“This year’s flu is more aggressive, more intense and not as well covered by the vaccine, so it’s definitely nasty,” Bloom said. “All that said, the flu shot is still going to give significantly more protection than not getting one.”

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Wyoming

Former director of Colorado Parks and Wildlife lands a job in Wyoming

Published

1 day ago

January 8, 2026

Press Room

Former director of Colorado Parks and Wildlife lands a job in Wyoming

This story is part of our Quick Hits series. This series will bring you breaking news and short updates from throughout the state.

The former director of the Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) agency is joining Wyoming’s Game and Fish Department.

9-News reported that Jeff Davis was hired as the department’s deputy director in late December. That’s after Doug Brimeyer retired.

He starts the job in February.

Davis resigned from CPW last year instead of being fired as part of a settlement agreement. The settlement agreement Davis signed did not directly cite a reason for his termination.

Davis joined CPW as the state reintroduced wolves. His resignation came shortly after Washington state said it would not provide wolves to Colorado’s reintroduction program.

Before joining CPW in 2023, Davis had a long career in the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. While there, he focused on coordinating conservation initiatives involving interdisciplinary teams and salmon recovery.

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