Wyoming
Researchers tag Wyoming’s first barred owl near its Grand Teton nest – WyoFile
Jackson researchers had been attempting to trap the male barred owl for more than a week, but the wary raptor was proving elusive. First, the owl swooped in for the bait mouse but glanced off the trap. The next time, he performed evasive flight maneuvers and escaped.
Then on Thursday, they set up a different trap in the Teton County forest habitat, this time with dho-gazza nets — fine mist nets designed to envelop raptors that unknowingly fly into them.
“And then, literally out of nowhere, the female came in and got caught,” said Bryan Bedrosian, conservation director at the Teton Raptor Center.
His team affixed the female with a GPS tracker. And like that, the bird became the first-known barred owl tagged in Wyoming. To Bedrosian’s knowledge, it’s also the first barred owl tagged in the Rocky Mountains.
The tagging comes two years after the pair became the first documented nesting barred owls in Wyoming, news that ruffled some scientific feathers. Though they are eastern birds, barred owls have expanded their range westward through the boreal forests of Canada and down into the Pacific Northwest, where they have outcompeted the imperiled northern spotted owls and created significant management conflicts.
Wyoming raptor experts and others are wary about the impact the adaptable and aggressive barred owls could have on native species like great gray owls.
Those concerns prompted the Teton Raptor Center to initiate the tracking project. Bedrosian and his team aim to tag the female’s wily mate, along with any chicks that hatch from a nest the pair is currently tending. The goal is to gather data on the birds’ movement and behavior to see if and how it’s impacting other raptors.
“I’m not suggesting we do anything right now, but with any invasive species, it’s always easiest to do action at the beginning rather than being reactionary later,” Bedrosian said. Information gathering is step one.
Potential competition
Barred owls are similar in size to great horned owls, but lack the distinctive “horns.” They are similar in profile to great gray owls, but are smaller and have black eyes in contrast to the great grays’ yellow ones.
In Washington, Oregon and California, their negative impacts on federally protected northern spotted owls have prompted wildlife authorities to classify them as invasive. Barred owls, which are territorial and eat a variety of prey, have edged out the more shy and specialized spotted owls.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has wrestled with the issue for years, even resorting to killing barred owls to help prevent further damage to the declining spotted owls. Those conflicts stirred up concern after the nesting pair was documented in Wyoming by nature photographer Tom Stanton.
But Wyoming, unlike the PNW, has limited data.
The relationship between barred and spotted owls in the Pacific Northwest is “one of the most extensively studied cases of competitive exclusion in the history of wildlife ecology,” said Wyoming Fish and Game Nongame Bird Biologist Zach Wallace.
Meanwhile, Wallace said, “next to nothing is known about potential competition between barred owls and great gray owls.”
The Wyoming project, he said, is a good step toward filling in that information gap. That’s why his agency helped support the application for a grant that’s helping to fund it.
The National Park Service is also in the loop on the project and monitoring the situation, Bedrosian said.
Data gathering
Barred owl sightings are not unheard of in Wyoming — the 2023 report is just the first documentation of a nesting pair. What scientists are trying to understand now is what the nesting birds do year round, and if others are present in the state and pose competition to other owls.
Teton Raptor Center is approaching the questions with a multi-pronged strategy. One prong involves analyzing years of historic acoustic data in the region.
The center also received grants from the Wyoming Governor’s Big Game License Coalition, the Jackson Hole Community Foundation and the Jackson Conservation District to help monitor the birds with GPS transmitters, satellite trackers and acoustic recorders.
The team this spring placed recorders in roughly 200 spots in the Grand Teton National Park vicinity — those recorders yielded proof that at least one other individual, likely a bachelor male, has been in the region.
The final piece is the tracking. The hope is to tag each member of the nesting family, Bedrosian said. The owls produced three chicks in 2023, but their nest failed in 2024. They are nesting again currently, though it’s unknown how many eggs they have.
But if they get trackers on all of the owls, ecologists can better understand their territory, where they spend the winter months, where their offspring go and if there is competition with other species.
“One of the biggest concerns is the potential impact on other species that aren’t used to this generalist, very aggressive predator,” Bedrosian said.
“Where this bird has been located is a historic great gray owl territory that is now vacant,” he continued. “And so did the barred owls push out the great gray? We don’t know. But if you take evidence from the Pacific Northwest with the spotted owls, it doesn’t look good.”
Since moving to Wyoming many years ago, and having lived in a few towns around the state, I find that some town and city rivalries must be addressed. Some are based on past conflicts that still cause pain to this day. Some are unexplained.
For example, to this day, all of Johnson County still does not trust Cheyenne after the Johnson County War of 1892. Cattlemen in Cheyenne sent a hit squad hired by the barons to invade Johnson County to eliminate alleged rustlers. A shootout that lasted several days ensued.
Other town rivalries include:
Green River vs. Rock Springs: The two towns are close together and share one of the most intense and oldest community, cultural, and athletic rivalries in the state.
Lander vs. Riverton: Located in Fremont County, this rivalry dates back to 1922 and divides the area over high school football bragging rights. They talk a lot of smack about each other.
Cheyenne vs Casper: The towns just HATE each other. I’ve lived in both, and I can tell you that there is nothing wrong with either town. But I’ve come across people in both towns who talk about their hatred of the other.
There is not a lot of love across Wyoming for Jackson, mostly because of the mega-rich liberals who live there. Many of those mega-rich liberals look down on the rest of Wyoming.
Folks talk smack about Laramie, but in a very different way than people talk smack about Gillette.
Having traveled around Wyoming, I can tell you that most of this hate is just nonsense and a waste of time. In the end, we are all Wyomingites. Just one big bickering family who still have each other’s backs when it comes down to it.
The Charmingly Odd Town Of La Grange Wyoming
It is well worth the long drive to see one of the most interesting and quirky little towns in Wyoming.
Stay for lunch. You won’t regret it.
Gallery Credit: Glenn Woods
Jay Em, Wyoming, Frozen In Time
Jay Em, what an unusual name for a town.The few people who live there are proud of what their spot on earth once was, and they work to preserve it. They keep this little community frozen in time.
Gallery Credit: Glenn Woods
Wyoming
Hoping to draw Colorado interest, construction begins at $80M betting facility in Laramie County
CHEYENNE, Wyo. — Foundation work is beginning this week on Wyoming’s next horse betting and gaming house.
The $80 million Wyoming Downs facility in Laramie County, one of two the company is investing in over the next couple of years, is poised to be one of the largest facilities of its kind in the state. The company is aiming for a spring 2027 opening.
The facility will host upwards of 600 historic horse racing machines, Wyoming’s largest TV wall, multiple dining options and more across 58,000 square feet. More land was bought for future hotel development. Commuters driving between Cheyenne and the Colorado border can see clearly from Interstate 25 the expansive development.
That placement along the travel corridor is purposeful, Wyoming Downs and 307 Horse Racing President Kyle Ridgeway said.
“I think that the targeted consumer for this is from Colorado or from the Front Range,” Ridgeway said. “I anticipate we’re going to have plenty of people from Cheyenne come down here to play and enjoy the amenities, but when you look at 600,000 people within a 30-minute drive, that’s what justifies this investment and brings all that tax revenue in from another state, which is fantastic.
“We don’t get the opportunity to do that in Wyoming very often.”
There is still plenty to offer Cheyenne residents besides the facility’s amenities. Ridgeway said in a speech to attendees at the project’s groundbreaking Tuesday, June 2, that more than 150 permanent jobs will be supported by the facility on top of the dozens supported by the companies’ corporate offices and the 400-plus involved in the project’s construction.
Groathouse Construction, a Wyoming business, is the project’s general contractor. Wyoming Downs said it believes putting the project in local hands also helps keep the project uniquely Wyoming-focused.
Ridgeway added the facilities have already proven themselves to be effective tax revenue generators for the local governments. The Wyoming Gaming Commission’s 2025 report, released in late May, shows bettors wagered $2.49 billion on historic horse racing machines last year, a jump from the $2.11 billion wagered in 2024.
Wyoming Downs facilities generate roughly $25 million in taxes annually across the state, and Ridgeway estimated after the ceremony that the upcoming $80 million facility alone will generate an additional $3 million for Laramie County once the property has been in operation for a few years.
Horse betting sites have been increasingly popping up across Wyoming this decade. The Wyoming Downs location will be Cheyenne’s second large-scale horse betting facility since 2024, when the 30,000-square-foot Horse Palace at Swan Ranch opened. Ridgeway said Wyoming Downs is still offering something fresh for tourists and residents.
“This’ll have amenities that Swan Ranch doesn’t have, including the largest TV wall in Wyoming and a pretty super-cool sports viewing area with a restaurant and just a level of finish and class that I don’t think Wyoming has quite seen yet with these types of properties,” he said.
Ridgeway said he thinks resident fatigue with these facilities isn’t as strong as it appears, especially given the tourism benefits of off-track betting.
“Wyoming’s been built on mineral extraction and tourism, and what this is is a touristic facility. I’m not aware of any particular pushback about this specific facility outside of — you see random social media comments where people say, ‘Oh, another gambling facility.’ But where this is located, I think people in Cheyenne have generally been supportive of,” he said.
The Laramie County facility will be just one part of a larger project Wyoming Downs is working on over the next few years. Construction will begin in early 2027 on a similar facility in Evanston looking to draw in Utah and western Colorado crowds.
Some of the company’s current facilities, notably in Casper, Cheyenne and Rock Springs, will see millions poured into renovations as well. New smaller-scale parlors will also go up in Gillette and Green River this year, according to an information packet provided by the company.
More details will come as the construction process develops, Ridgeway said. Details about amenities, such as what the complex’s dining options will look like, remain undisclosed, though Ridgeway promised that options will be “excellent.”
“We haven’t made final selections on what the options are, but we have a number of different options on the table that we’re considering for what we want to offer for the customers,” Ridgeway said. “You have to have something that’s high quality for where this is located. If somebody’s going to drive 25 or 35, or even 45 minutes to come here, they got to be able to sit down and have a quality meal.”
For more information as it becomes available and to learn more about Wyoming Downs facilities and 307 Horse Racing‘s events and offerings, see the companies’ websites. Renderings for the upcoming Cheyenne facility commissioned by the company are available for viewing below.
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