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.

UPDATE: Fire 30% Contained, Plans In The Works To Lift Evacuation Orders

U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman, R-Wyoming, was teary-eyed and fought back her emotions talking about her family’s loss this week of her childhood home, which went up in flames when Wyoming’s largest wildfire roared through the Haystack Range.

The Hageman homestead, a rustic cabin-like structure with plastered walls and built into the side of a hill near McGinnis Pass, Wyoming, was destroyed by an uncontained wildfire in rough terrain littered with huge granite boulders and tinder fueled with juniper pinions woodland and sagebrush.

“It’s been pretty devastating,” Hageman told Cowboy State Daily.

Back in Washington, D.C., doing what she does there, Wyoming’s lone U.S. House member was preoccupied with upsetting late-night telephone conversations with her brother Hugh and older sister Julia in Torrington, who lives closest to their 100-year-old mother, Marion, in a local nursing home.

Matriarch of the family, Marion Hageman, hasn’t fully grasped the family’s devastation.

“I just saw her a couple of days ago when I was home. I’m not even sure she even knows about this fire yet,” said Hageman of her mother.

“It was a very old log house, with very thick walls because they didn’t split the wood. It was very cold in the wintertime,” she recalled. “We had one woodburning stove, and we would take Montgomery Ward catalogs when we were younger and put them on the stove and heat them through, and then wrap them in fabric and take them to bed to stay warm.”

Wind Shifts, More Evacuations

Meanwhile, by Friday evening the wind had shifted, prompting an urgent notice from Platte County officials for residents in the tiny town of Hartville and nearby Whalen Canyon to evacuate, their second in less than a week.

“Attention!!! Residents of Hartville and Whalen Canyon Evacuate Now!” reads a Platte County Sheriff’s Office Facebook post. “The winds have changed and the fire is advancing west. Pleasant Valley residents begin evacuation process.”

The evacuation notice also came with the announcement of local road closures, specifically for Highway 270, Whalen Canyon Road and Pleasant Valley Road.

As of 9:06 p.m. Friday, “Fire crews have been able to regain control of the fire at this time,” the sheriff’s office reported.

Among those who were quickly evacuated were the staff, volunteers and animals at the Kindness Ranch Animal Sanctuary.

“This evening we had to make the difficult decision to evacuate Kindness Ranch,” the sanctuary posted to its Facebook page. “The fire was picked up by the wind and headed our direction.”

All the people and animals were hustled out safely, and the “large animals (are) houses safely in metal buildings with lots of food, water and a dedicated small number of staff staying back and caring for them,” the ranch says. “We are all safe, the animals and humans.”

The wildfire as of late Friday was also upgraded from a little over 23,000 acres to 25,000 acres burned in a huge swath of flatland and hills leading into the Haystack Range.

The fire is stuck to the north of U.S. Highway 26 in the Haystacks with no containment, according to a statement issued Friday afternoon by Tyson Finnicum, a spokesman for the Wyoming State Forestry Division.

Family Roots

It’s an area Hageman knows well.

It’s where her roots are.

Hagemans are everywhere in this part of Wyoming.

One brother lives by the historic Fort Laramie near the North Platte River. Another brother lives out along U.S. Highway 26 about 4 miles west of Fort Laramie where the fire roared along the main thoroughfare on Wednesday.

Nephews, nieces and sons-in-law live everywhere around the Cowboy State.

Harriet Hageman played in the Haystacks and grew up there on the family homestead until she was 7 years old, after which time her family moved closer to Fort Laramie so that she and her siblings could participate in sports and other school activities.

“We grew up in an area we referred to as ‘The Hills,’” Hageman said. “We grew up in the Haystacks, and in a house that was on the Cheyenne to Deadwood stage trail. It was an old, old home, you know, 100-plus years old.”

For sure, the former stage route has a colorful past.

According to the Wyoming State Historic Preservation Office, the stage route was in operation from 1876 to 1887 between Cheyenne and Deadwood, South Dakota. Thousands of passengers, tons of freight and express and millions of dollars in gold passed over this trail until the railroad came.

During the years the trail was in use, it was the scene of numerous Indian and outlaw plunderings.

The home, said an emotional Hageman, was “very special to all of us.”

“That’s where we were all raised,” she added. “It burned.”

‘It’s Devastating’

Hageman grew up with five other siblings, including brother Hugh whose ranch has smoldering fields that wrap around the home where the family moved later in life after their earlier times at the homestead in McGinnis Pass.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, firefighters, planes and helicopters dropping water and slurry halted the fire’s march to Fort Laramie near the canal 2 miles on the western edge of town.

About 8,000 acres of Hugh Hageman’s 25,000-to-30,000-acre spread burned, taking away some of the pasture needed for his 1,000 head of cattle.

“It’s devastating,” said Hugh Hageman when reached by Cowboy State Daily late Friday.

“I’m out here fighting the fire right now,” he said, adding he was working with brothers and other family members, plus 15 forestry service volunteers trying to keep the fire from spreading on the southern and eastern front of the Haystacks. “I can’t tell on the west side.”

Hugh Hageman couldn’t confirm if any of the fire was contained, but he did believe it was more “controlled” as firefighters have encircled the fire with backburning to halt its spread on the eastern and southern fronts.

“We’re running a sprayer right now. We’re in the fire right now, doing some backburning,” he said. “We’ve got the fire surrounded now to keep it from coming back down from the hills.”

Hageman didn’t have a firetruck, but he did have his farm truck.

“We’ve got a little sprayer built just for this with a 500-gallon tank on the back. It’s putting out a lot of fire,” he said.

Late Friday, the congresswoman’s brother reflected on the family’s loss of their historic homestead.

“It burned to the ground. There’s nothing left,” he said. “It’s kind of sad. It was a place where we all went back to. It was in pretty bad shape before the fire. No one lived there since the early 1970s.”

Never Forget

The home may have been in bad shape, but the Hagemans have not forgotten their origins.

Harriet Hageman said that her parents had $200,000 in debt and had scraped together the money to buy the ranch land with the homestead back in 1962.

They had $35 left in their savings account.

“They just had nothing, but they built a very successful ranching operation over the years,” she said.

Her father, Jim Hageman, passed away in 2006 and is buried in a gravesite on “a little hill” probably about a half mile-away from her childhood home.

Jim Hageman was a member of the Wyoming House of Representatives from 1983 until his death in 2006.

A Wonderful Life

“We had two bedrooms and six kids,” she said. “The baby always slept in mom and dad’s room, and my three sisters and I slept in one bedroom and my brother slept in the dining room.

“It was a wonderful place to grow up. We had rattlesnakes, we had chickens, we had a garden, we had cattle, we had sheep, we had horses. It was an incredible place to grow up.”

The homestead life didn’t offer many of today’s comforts.

“We didn’t have a telephone, we didn’t have a television,” she said. “We rode ponies all the time. It was a great place to grow up.”

The simple life brought them close together.

“We were all very, very close with each other. We lived a kind of life almost straight out of the late 1800s. My parents were bound and determined to be ranchers,” she said. “You just really risk everything when you do it.”

Besides the Hageman children, her parents also helped raise more than 40 foster kids.

“They sent us all to college,” Hageman said of she and her siblings. “I think we’ve all been quite successful as a result of having that kind of an upbringing.”

Gunnysack Times

The Pleasant Valley Fire isn’t Hageman’s first rodeo with wildfire.

“I grew up fighting fire in those hills. It’s not easy fighting fire in the Haystack hills,” she said. “You take a wet gunnysack in one hand and a shovel in the other, and you just basically try to beat it out before it gets out on the prairie. It’s incredibly hard work.”

A gunnysack is a large sack made of a course fabric that can be used as a sandbag for erosion control or to hold grain, potatoes or some other agricultural product. The sacks are soaked with water to help fight grass fires in rural areas, like where the Hagemans lived.

The exact time of day that the Hageman homestead went up in flames isn’t known.

However, it is likely that it happened sometime Wednesday afternoon after the Haystack Fire and Pleasant Valley fires combined to form one big inferno now known as the Pleasant Valley Fire, which is what Hugh Hageman is fighting.

Since Wednesday, the fire has pulled back from U.S. Highway 26 and headed deep into the Haystack Range.

The burn area in the Haystack range is between the McGinnis Pass and McCann Pass in Goshen County at about 5,000 feet in elevation. The range passes are located east of Whalen Canyon Road in the county and are located about 6 miles apart.

The southern end of the fire is about 8 miles to the northeast of Guernsey, the area where the Pleasant Valley fire first started.

Pat Maio can be reached at pat@cowboystatedaily.com.

STURGIS, South Dakota — Dozens of motorcycles carrying American flags rolled down Main Street in Sturgis, South Dakota, on Friday signaling the start of the annual motorcycle rally.

The rolling procession was part of the 84th Sturgis Motorcycle Rally’s opening ceremony and parade. It also included a welcoming message from the mayor of Sturgis for the 500,000 attendees expected to pack the small Black Hills town over the next nine days.

A member of the military sang the national anthem, and a “blessing of the bikes” was held. With the patriotic pomp and prayer over, it was go time for one of America’s most raucous events.

The odd thing was, the event was over just after 4 p.m.

Not 9 a.m. or 11 a.m. or even high noon, a time befitting of Sturgis’ Western heritage.

Why such a late start to the first day?

“They like to go riding in the morning when it’s cool,” speculated Cassey Weinhold, a bartender at One-Eyed Jack’s Saloon.

Maybe, but it’s also awfully convenient for those waking up late after imbibing a little too much on the eve of the rally, typically a big night for Sturgis bars.

The late-day start seems in-character for a city that published an entire webpage of drink recipes — like Jack’s Tennessee Honey Tea, Grape Sunrise and the Bacardi-infused Arctic Soda — on the official website for the city government.

The rally also remains one of the few major public events in the country that allows open containers, albeit in a zone that stretches about eight blocks on both sides of Main Street. Drinkers must use a special events cups, and only wine and malt beverages are permitted inside them.

Get Them An IV — Stat

This year, Sturgis has at least two vendors offering intravenous fluids to help rehydrate rallygoers.

One of those was Hydration Station IV Lounge, tucked away in the Thunderdome, a cavernous, 38,000-square-foot entertainment center located about 13 miles east of Sturgis that holds concerts and other events during the festival.

On Friday, stunt drivers were peeling out and making tight donuts in the Thunderdome parking lot as part of a rally contest; their junk cars pumping smoke, bits of rubber and screeching loud noise into the 93-degree heat.

But inside the arena, two men relaxed in foldable reclining lawn chairs as if they were in an oasis. Needles jutted out of their arms and saline solution bags dripped fluids over their heads back into them.

“When you’re dehydrated, you’re losing essential nutrients and minerals,” explained business owner Stacy Kenitzer.

It was the first year Kenitzer had opened a vendor booth at the rally. Her brick-and-mortar business is located in Rapid City, South Dakota, where she said she serves mostly people with medical conditions who have a hard time staying hydrated.

She also administers IVs for Rapid City Rush hockey players and rodeo participants, some of whom want to hydrate ahead of their events and others who desperately need to replenish fluids after.

Customers can choose a plain saline IV or one loaded with energy and vitality boosts that include vitamins C, B and magnesium, which helps prevent cramping, a symptom of dehydration.

Kenitzer, who is a registered nurse, said she believes her services would be in demand at Sturgis this year, primarily because so many riders are exposing themselves to 90-degree-plus rides this week.

Also Good For Hangovers

Kenitzer also recognizes that some of her clientele will likely be seeking help after rough nights.

Her goal was to serve 100 customers over the 10-day gathering. But by early afternoon Friday, she said she had only hooked IVs to four.

“One was really hungover,” she said. “The others were just dehydrated, overheated.”

A Slow Start

Some wondered why there seemed to be fewer people at the bars on the first day of the rally. Many of Main Street’s establishments that had opened during breakfast hours saw slower-than-normal business, bartenders told Cowboy State Daily.

Was it a case of an aging demographic? Boomers dominated the sidewalks Friday, but the rally has in recent years been getting younger.

The average age of attendees dropped from 53.1 years old in 2015 to 50.8 in 2022, according to a city survey.

At the Oasis Bar and Fireside Lounge, waitress Keri Jones bemoaned the lack of customers by lunchtime. It was her second year working the rally, and to the inexperienced eye, she seemed busy, juggling multiple tables.

But she said she only had four tables to mind. On a good day, she would be waiting on an entire section.

“Oh, looks like he needs a drink,” she said, before running over to a pair sitting at a high top. “I’m telling you, this is not busy. This is dead.”

Jones, like others wasn’t discouraged. It was just Day One. Nine more days to go.

Perhaps much like the rally’s opening ceremony, rallygoers are just getting a late start.

Justin George can be reached at justin@cowboystatedaily.com.