Wyoming
There Are Plenty Of Coyotes And Wolves In… | Cowboy State Daily
As near as anybody can tell so far, Wyoming coyotes are just that: coyotes.
Even though there are plenty of coyotes all around the Cowboy State, and they share territory with Wyoming wolves, as far as anyone knows they haven’t mated with wolves to produce hybrid offspring.
But in the Eastern United States and Canada, the coyotes people encounter are likely to be coywolves, or coyote-wolf crossbreeds, frequently also with some dog DNA tossed in.
Different canine species can, and in some places have, successfully crossbred and had fertile offspring, some experts told Cowboy State Daily. But in Wyoming, wolves and coyotes tend to avoid each other, and coyotes risk getting killed by wolves.
A Bigger Dog
Coywolves, or Eastern coyotes, are burlier than coyotes out West.
“They’re larger than your Western coyotes. They average about 35 pounds, and the largest ones can get up over 50 pounds,” David Sausville, wildlife management program lead with the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department, told Cowboy State Daily.
Even on the larger end, Western coyotes rarely tip the scales past 30 pounds.
Sausville is a Vermont native, but has experience with both Eastern and Western coyotes, as well as purebred wolves having spent some time in the Dakotas and Alaska.
Eastern wolves, which might, or might not, have been smaller than wolves out West, were wiped out, probably by the early 1900s, he said. Coywolves moved in to take their place.
“They’ve taken over the niche of what our Eastern wolf used to do,” he said.
The coywolves’ prey consists largely of rabbits and small mammals, but they will also take down deer from time to time.
“They’re opportunistic. And if they get the opportunity to take a deer, especially a fawn, they’ll take it,” Sausville said.
Wyoming’s coyotes are also known to occasionally take deer fawns or elk calves, but in some places they must compete with wolves or grizzlies for those tasty prizes.
Coywolves also adjust well to urban living.
“I’ve heard reports of them in New York City,” Sausville said. “They catch them down there at night sometimes.”
No Proof So Far Of Wyoming Coywolves
While coywolves are increasingly common in the East, in Wyoming they’re more likely than not in the same category as jackalopes — mythical creatures.
Particularly since the advent of social media, rumors crop up and get circulated about somebody spotting a coywolf slinking through the mountain forests or bounding across the prairie.
Those are probably rumors and nothing more.
“I’m not aware of any coywolves being documented in Wyoming,” Wyoming Game and Fish Large Carnivore Specialist Dan Thompson told Cowboy State Daily.
“In an evolutionary sense, species with the same genus (such as canine) can breed and produce offspring, but it is not something that occurs regularly, based on behavioral adaptations and other social hierarchy,” he added.
Researcher Kira Cassidy monitors and studies wolves in Yellowstone National Park, including the tenacious 11-year-old, one-eyed Wolf 907F.
Yellowstone has its share of coyotes too. To survive, they must be crafty about out-competing bears, wolves and mountain lions for big game carcasses and other food.
And one celebrity coyote named Limpy has mastered the art of looking pathetic and suckering tourists for snacks, even though feeding wildlife in Yellowstone is strictly against the rules.
But seducing wolves and producing supersized offspring isn’t a trick that Yellowstone coyotes have learned, Cassidy told Cowboy State Daily.
“I’ve never heard of a coyote/wolf pairing out here. It’s rare to even see a coyote and wolf in the same vicinity without showing a classic dynamic of a wolf trying to chase and catch/kill the coyote, or multiple coyotes chasing away a single wolf, usually near a coyote den,” she said.
Colorado Coywolf Rumors Probably False Too
There’s also been social media chatter and barstool talk of coywolves or other such critters to the south of Wyoming in the Centennial State.
But that’s also likely just unsubstantiated talk, Colorado Parks and Wildlife spokesman Joey Livingston told Cowboy State Daily.
There’s never been a verified report of any such animal in Colorado, he said.
“Wolves and coyotes have coexisted in the Rockies for many years, and they are still distinct species. That should be good evidence to say they will continue to not breed with each other at any significant rate,” Livingston said.
“The coywolf issue usually comes from the Eastern U.S./Canada,” he said. “There are always rumors about coywolves and wolf-dogs in the northern Rockies, but it has rarely been proven and has never been a problem.”
On the off chance coywolves ever do take hold in Colorado, they wouldn’t be a protected species there, Livingston said.
“They would be managed as any other wildlife species without Federal Endangered Species protections,” he said.
Taking The Long Road To Vermont
It took considerable time and coyotes traveling long distances to produce a permanent population of coywolves in Vermont and across the East.
“The Eastern coyote (Canis latrans) moved eastward from west of the Mississippi and first appeared in Vermont in the late 1940s,” according to Vermont Fish and Wildlife.
“It is generally larger than its Western ancestor because it gained size by breeding with gray wolves occupying the Great Lakes region, Eastern wolves, and even domestic dogs in southern Canada before it moved into our area,” according to the agency.
Coywolves have become more common over recent decades as they’ve moved in and claimed territory, sometimes pushing out foxes, Sausville said.
And there’s some misconceptions built up around them, he added. For example, that they regularly hunt in packs and howl like wolves.
In the springtime, pairs of coywolves, or Eastern coyotes, might hang out and hunt together with some of their offspring, he said. But then they’ll tend to go their separate ways in the fall.
As far as howling goes, Sausville said he’s mostly just heard coywolves yipping, much like the coyotes he heard in the Dakotas.
“I actually think that domestic dogs howl more than Eastern coyotes do,” he said.
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
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An influential seven-member industrial siting group in Wyoming plans an early July meeting to sort out a legal mess that could determine the future of the $500 million Rail Tie wind farm development in Albany County.
The industrial siting group will likely head into a closed-door executive session July 10 to determine the “financial adequacy” of the former owner of the wind farm project and whether it was done legally by a Nov. 1 deadline, as well as whether the deep pockets of the new owner from Spain are sufficient to get the project built, according to sources involved in the meeting interviewed by Cowboy State Daily.
The cornerstone of the special meeting is to review financial adequacy statements of the wind farm development’s sponsors, according to an announcement issued by the Department of Environmental Quality’s Industrial Siting Council, which is tasked with the job of examining new energy projects in Wyoming.
Dusty Spomer, chairman of the Siting Council, could not comment on the matter at press time.
The 504-megawatt Rail Tie project, which is located to the southeast of Laramie, is expected to benefit Albany County by generating $130 million in new tax revenues, according to figures provided by the new owner of the project to Cowboy State Daily.
The dust-up over the future of Rail Tie is the result of the Fish Creek Preserve Homeowners Association, which had filed a lawsuit to halt the development. The group claims that the bureaucratic mess on whether to build the project has been upended because of the Industrial Siting Council’s missteps.
“They don’t know what they are doing,” said John Davis, a homeowner in the Fish Creek Preserve area and a retired accountant and lawyer involved in the lawsuit to halt the wind farm development.
Ruins View
The Fish Creek Preserve homeowners oppose the development of the Rail Tie wind power project near Highway 287 outside of Tie Siding because it “diminishes the value” of the association’s properties in “the view scape” of the area, according to Davis.
Davis has an important role in the July 10 meeting.
He will participate because of his designation as an intervenor in the litigation filed against the project. He also signed a nondisclosure agreement to not discuss the financial muscle of Rail Tie’s developers.
However, Davis said that the previous owner could not have gotten the project built without the “credit enhancement” of its private equity parent.
As background, the special meeting July 10 relates to a Dec. 4, 2023, order by the Industrial Siting Council that approved the so-called Rail Tie wind project.
But Davis and his group said that the council approved the “financial adequacy” of the previous owner by not sharing the financial resource information with his group, which is an intervenor in the case. This was done outside of the legal bounds of how power projects are supposed to be approved, Davis said.
The legal mess has grown murkier because of the entrance into Wyoming of a new owner of the project. Davis claimed that the new entrant may have to start the Rail Tie permitting process all over because of his claim that the ConnectGen “financial adequacy” process wasn’t done properly last fall.
Spanish Connection
Last fall, Spanish energy giant Repsol broke into the U.S. market for onshore wind power with a $768 million deal to buy Houston-based renewable energy firm ConnectGen from private equity firm Quantum Capital Group. This is how Rail Tie came into the hands of Repsol.
Quantum’s renewable energy arm, 547 Energy, owned ConnectGen.
The deal to buy ConnectGen closed with regulators in March.
ConnectGen, founded in 2018, operates 278 megawatts of solar energy projects in Arizona, California and Nevada.
Its nationwide development pipeline features more than 20,000 megawatts of wind power, solar power and energy storage projects.
Repsol told Cowboy State Daily in a recent statement that it remains committed to the Rail Tie project.
“We continue to work on the development of this project, which is an important part of our portfolio in the U.S.,” a Repsol spokeswoman said in an email statement from Madrid, Spain, where the company is headquartered.
Pat Maio can be reached at pat@cowboystatedaily.com.
WYOMING, Mich. (WOOD) — One person was injured in an off-road vehicle crash in Wyoming Saturday evening.
It happened around 8 p.m. on Longstreet Avenue SW near Alger Street, in the area of 28th Street and Clyde Park Avenue.
Wyoming police say the driver of the ORV sustained injuries that are not considered life-threatening.
Police did not provide information about what led up to the crash.
Wyoming
U. Wyoming’s vice president of DEI announces departure as university shutters DEI office | The College Fix
University will also end mandatory DEI statements for hiring, promotion
The University of Wyoming’s vice president for diversity, equity and inclusion has announced he is leaving the institution for a new job as UW prepares to shutter its DEI office next month.
Zebediah Hall, who was tapped for the top DEI position at UW in November 2022, has accepted a new position in a similar role at Salisbury University in Maryland.
It’s the latest development at the Cowboy State’s flagship public university, which is being forced to eliminate its Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion office due to legislative pressure, where Republicans hold a supermajority in the statehouse.
The university also announced in May it will no longer require job candidates to submit DEI statements nor evaluate employees’ commitment to DEI in annual performance reviews.
Campus media affairs representatives did not respond to repeated emails and a phone call in recent weeks seeking comment from The College Fix. Hall also did not respond to a request for comment.
University President Ed Seidel and the UW Board of Trustees made the changes “in response to legislative action that removed $1.73 million from UW’s upcoming biennium budget. A legislative budget footnote also directed that no state dollars be spent on the DEI office, effective July 1, 2024,” a news release stated.
“We received a strong message from the state’s elected officials to change our approach to DEI issues,” Seidel stated.
Seidel added support programs run out of the DEI office that handled other efforts, such as mandatory state and federal nondiscrimination trainings, and ones supporting veterans, nontraditional students, and students with disabilities, will be transferred to other offices and remain intact.
As for the closure of UW’s DEI office, some argue such moves may not go far enough.
In his piece “Closing DEI Offices is Not Enough,” political scientist Samuel Abrams argued DEI is so embedded in other aspects of campus life, from student support services to libraries to residential life programs, that the dogma will continue to be heavily propagated on campuses.
“Sarah Lawrence College, where I teach, provides a straightforward case,” he wrote in his April piece. “Only a handful of administrative staff are technically in the ‘diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging’ (DEIB) office, for instance.”
“But that has not stopped the overt and inappropriate activism of many other staff members employed by SLC to theoretically help elevate all students.”
At the University of Wyoming, programs that may be considered preferential to one group of individuals but are “deemed essential to help students,” such as Women in STEM activities or the Wyoming Latina Youth Conference, will be funded by “private” sources and continue on, the news release stated.
However, the University of Wyoming this summer will not host the annual Black 14 Social Justice Summer Institute. This program is for high school juniors and seniors with a “passion for social justice,” with learning outcomes such as exploring possibilities to social problems and promoting a sense of community “amongst a diverse group of students.”
“The University of Wyoming will not hold a Black 14 Social Justice Summer Institute this year, as members of the Black 14 have chosen not to participate in a third annual institute,” the university wrote in a May news release.
“In a letter to President Ed Seidel, three Black 14 members wrote that the group is discontinuing its involvement in the institute because Wyoming government leaders have eliminated funding for UW’s Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.”
MORE: U. Wyoming settles with Christian silenced for calling trans student ‘male’
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