Wyoming

Viral post misleads about Wyoming fires, rare earth minerals | Fact check

Published

1 month ago

October 14, 2024

Press Room

Viral post misleads about Wyoming fires, rare earth minerals | Fact check

The claim: All ‘major’ Wyoming wildfires are burning on ‘privately owned’ land near site of rare earth metal discovery

An Oct. 8 Instagram post (direct link, archive link) shows what appears to be a group of elk running through a burning field.

“WYOMING. Multiple wildfires are ongoing near Wheatland, where it’s reported that there is approximately 2.34 billion metric tons of rare earth minerals,” reads on-screen text in the clip, which includes a screenshot of a post on X, formerly Twitter.

The Instagram post also shows a video of a man speaking to the camera about the fires, saying at one point that “these major fires are all in the privately-owned sectors” of the state.

It echoes claims spread widely by former CBS News reporter Lara Logan and other users on X who suggest the fires are part of a land grab.

The Instagram post received more than 10,000 times in six days.

More from the Fact-Check Team: How we pick and research claims | Email newsletter | Facebook page

Our rating: False

The post is wrong on multiple fronts. The major wildfires in Wyoming are burning national forests, not private land, and they are hundreds of miles from the spot where the minerals were found.

No evidence to support land-grab conspiracy theory

Firefighters in Wyoming have been battling two massive blazes that, as of Oct. 14, have combined to burn more than 160,000 acres. The Pack River Fire, which broke out Sept. 15 with a lightning strike and then merged with another blaze, has burned in excess of 75,000 acres. Another lightning strike 12 days later started the Elk Fire, which has burned more than 85,000 acres.

Fact check: Image doesn’t show Smokehouse Creek fire, it’s an illustration from 2017

Taken together, several elements of the Instagram post promote a baseless conspiracy theory that links the fires to the February discovery of more than 2 billion metric tons of rare earth minerals in the state and suggests they are part of a land grab orchestrated by the government. But there is no credible evidence to support that claim, and a closer look at the details unravels the alleged conspiracy.

While the post does not identify the wildfires by name, it makes clear references to the Elk and Pack Trail fires. The U.S. Forest Service on Oct. 14 listed seven fires in Wyoming on its InciWeb website, and those were the only ones that both involve more than 1,000 acres and were not at least 90% contained.

“For active fires, those are the two big ones,” said Tucker Furniss, an assistant professor at the University of Wyoming and leader of the school’s fire and landscape ecology lab.

Post mischaracterizes locations of fires

The post misleads with its assertion that the fires are “near” both Wheatland, Wyoming, and the lode of minerals found in that area.

The city and the discovery site are both in the state’s southeastern corner. But the Elk Fire is more than 200 miles north-northwest of the lode near the northern border with Montana. Kristie Thompson, the forest service’s public information officer for the Elk Fire, characterized that blaze as “not near” the mining site in a conversation with USA TODAY. The Pack Trail Fire is even farther away, in western Wyoming more than 250 miles northwest of where the minerals were found.

The Instagram post also includes a TikTok video claiming, among other things, that “these major fires are all in the privately owned sectors” of the state. That’s not true. The Elk Fire is burning in Bighorn National Forest, while the Pack Trail Fire is in both the Bridger-Teton and Shoshone national forests.

The TikTok video goes on to claim the “worst of the fires” were burning in the state’s southeast corner. But that’s also false. Two of the seven fires listed on InciWeb were in the southeastern quadrant, the site of the mineral lode. But as of the date of the post, both had been 100% contained for weeks or months.

The TikTok begins with a declaration that “Wyoming’s on fire” and a separate map in the background that appears to indicate dozens of fires across the state. However, a closer look at the map – published by a nonprofit group called the Fire, Weather and Avalanche Center – shows the vast majority of those are classified as “small” at 1,000 acres or fewer and have been contained, as indicated by icons of gray flames. Only one fire in the state’s southeastern quadrant was considered large: a 1,400-acre brush fire 20 miles north-northeast of Laramie, Wyoming, and emergency officials said on Sept. 21 that it, too, had been fully contained.

Other claims in the post also don’t add up. The man in the TikTok says the fires “just so happened to get hit by lightning,” But there is no credible evidence to counter the forest service’s conclusion that lightning caused both. And that’s not an anomaly. Lightning strikes are “a common source of ignition,” Furniss said.

“We know basically every lightning strike, when and where it occurs,” he said. “When there’s a lightning strike and then a fire starts right there, that’s a pretty surefire way to know exactly what caused it.”

Even the clip of elk running near flames in the X post is misleading. It has nothing to do with Wyoming, was taken from a video shared by ABC in 2021 and shows a fire in Montana’s Big Horn County.

USA TODAY reached out to the Instagram and X user who shared the post but did not immediately receive a response. The TikTok user did not address the claim in a response to USA TODAY.

Our fact-check sources:

Tucker Furniss, Oct. 11, Phone interview with USA TODAY
Kristie Thompson, Oct. 10, Phone interview with USA TODAY
U.S. Forest Service, accessed Oct. 11, Incident Table (Wyoming)
Forest Service, accessed Oct. 11, Elk Fire 2024
Forest Service, accessed Oct. 11, Pack Trail Fire
Forest Service, accessed Oct. 11, La Bonte Fire
Forest Service, accessed Oct. 11, Pleasant Valley Fire
Forest Service, Sept. 29, Daily Update Fish Creek and Pack Trail Fires
American Rare Earths, February 2024, Technical Report of Exploration and Updated Resource Estimates of the Halleck Creek Rare Earths Project
Google Maps, accessed Oct. 11, Wheatland, Wyoming
Google Maps (archive), Oct. 11, 101124 Map from Halleck Creek to Elk Fire
Google Maps (archive), Oct. 11, 101124 Map From Halleck Creek to Pack Trail Fire
Fire, Weather and Avalanche Center, accessed Oct. 11, Fire Map
Albany County, WY Emergency Management, Sept. 21, Facebook post
U.S. Forest Service – Bighorn National Forest, Oct. 7, Facebook post
ABC, Aug. 2, 2021, X post

Thank you for supporting our journalism. You can subscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or e-newspaper here.

USA TODAY is a verified signatory of the International Fact-Checking Network, which requires a demonstrated commitment to nonpartisanship, fairness and transparency. Our fact-check work is supported in part by a grant from Meta.

Source link

Click to comment

Wyoming

Wyoming governor pledges to appeal after judge blocks pro-life laws

Published

4 hours ago

November 21, 2024

Press Room

Wyoming governor pledges to appeal after judge blocks pro-life laws

By Kate Quiñones

CNA Staff, Nov 21, 2024 / 06:00 am

Here is a roundup of recent pro-life and abortion-related news.

Wyoming judge blocks state pro-life laws

Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon plans to appeal to the state Supreme Court after a county judge blocked two pro-life laws in Wyoming. The judge blocked the Life Is a Human Right Act, which protected unborn children except in cases when the mother’s life was at risk or in cases of rape or incest, as well as a law prohibiting chemical abortions via abortion pills, a law signed by Gordon in March 2023.

Gordon said on Tuesday that the ruling was “frustrating” and that he instructed his attorney general to prepare to appeal the decision to the Wyoming Supreme Court.

Teton County District Judge Melissa Owens ruled on Monday that the two laws violated the state constitution by restricting medical decisions. Owen has blocked Wyoming abortion laws three times since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. Now that the ruling has been struck down, abortion is legal up until fetal viability in Wyoming.

The plaintiffs included Wyoming abortion clinic Wellspring Health Access, two obstetricians, two other women, and the Wyoming abortion advocacy group Chelsea’s Fund. Following the ruling, Chelsea’s Fund stated on Tuesday that it “will do everything in our power to uphold this ruling in the Wyoming Supreme Court.”

Montana judge blocks licensing law for abortion clinic

A Montana District Court temporarily paused the state’s recent health department licensing regulations for abortion clinics amid pending litigation. House Bill 937 required licensure and regulation of abortion clinics and included rules for sanitation standards, emergency equipment, and hotlines for women who are coerced into an abortion or are victims of sex trafficking.

Two abortion providers, All Families Healthcare in Kalispell and Blue Mountain Clinic in Missoula, and an abortionist sued over the regulations, saying they would have to close if they were implemented. Lewis and Clark County District Court Judge Chris Abbot ruled in their favor, saying that H.B. 937 was a shift in “the status quo” that abortion providers “are not generally considered health care facilities subject to a licensure requirement.” Montana voters approved Initiative 128 on Election Day, enshrining a right to abortion in the constitution and allowing abortion after fetal viability.

Virginia bishops condemn fast-tracked right to abortion proposal

Two Virginia bishops recently opposed a proposed amendment granting a right to abortion, which was fast-tracked by the state House Privileges and Elections Committee. Bishops Michael Burbidge of Arlington and Barry Knestout of Richmond in a Nov. 13 statement called the proposed right to abortion “a fundamental tragedy.” Virginia law currently allows abortion up to 26 weeks and six days and allows abortion after that in certain cases. Burbidge and Knestout encouraged Virginia to “work instead for policies that affirm the life and dignity of every mother and every child.”

The bishops also opposed a fast-tracked proposal to remove the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman from the state constitution. The bishops noted that they “affirm the dignity of every person” and “affirm too that marriage is exclusively the union of one man and one woman.” Following the election, the bishops encouraged “deep engagement in decisions” that are at “the heart of who we are.”

Kate Quiñones

Kate Quiñones is a staff writer for Catholic News Agency and a fellow of the College Fix. She has been published by the Wall Street Journal, the Denver Catholic Register, and CatholicVote, and she graduated from Hillsdale College. She lives in Colorado with her husband.

Source link

Wyoming

Wind advisory includes Genesee, Orleans and Wyoming counties

Published

11 hours ago

November 20, 2024

Press Room

Wind advisory includes Genesee, Orleans and Wyoming counties

State

Zip Code

Country

Source link

Wyoming

What Wyoming coach said about Boise State, Ashton Jeanty

Published

19 hours ago

November 20, 2024

Press Room

What Wyoming coach said about Boise State, Ashton Jeanty

Wyoming head coach Jay Sawvel had high praise for No. 12 Boise State during his weekly press conference.

“This is probably the best Mountain West team that I’ve seen in the five years I’ve been in this conference,” Sawvel said of the Broncos (9-1, 6-0), who travel Wyoming (2-8, 2-4) this Saturday.

“It’s a big challenge when you’re playing a team that’s on track to play in the playoff. They’re very well-rounded. They’ve got experience on defense, and they’re productive and opportunistic on that side of the ball. And then obviously Ashton Jeanty, who is kind of ridiculous. … We’re obviously going to have to play our best game we’ve played all year defensively to hang in with them.”

The Cowboys are coming off a 24-10 road loss to Colorado State.

Here are the highlights from Sawvel’s press conference.

On Boise State’s offense

“There’s a large model of what they do that is what we want to become. When you look at the blueprint in a sense, nobody is going to have Ashton Jeanty, I get that … but there’s a lot of things foundationally to what they do that is like ‘OK, this is what we want to look like.’”

On Boise State’s balance

“(Ashton Jeanty), great player there. But to be honest with you — he’s amazing and he deserves the credit that he gets, Heisman consideration and those types of things — but the quarterback, Maddux Madsen, really makes them go. Because … you can load the box on everybody run-game wise, but his accuracy and what (offensive coordinator) Dirk Koetter does with him offensively creates a balance for them that makes them that much harder to defend.”

On maintaining eye discipline, spying Madsen

“You’ve got to do your job and you’ve got to have your eyes in the right spot. That’s something that’s foundational to anything defensively. But if you start looking around too much in the run, (Madsen) is a very good quarterback. They’ve got good skill that opens things up. Just his movement, his ability to move. He’s a hard guy to sack. He’s got 19 touchdowns and three interceptions, so there’s an accuracy there that’s important, too.”

On ‘getting up’ to play Ashton Jeanty

“Well, let’s be careful a little bit about that. There’s a guy from San Diego State that chirped a lot about Ashton Jeanty, and that didn’t work out very good. So look, anytime there are good players on the field, I think players want to play good when there are other good players on the field.”

Source link