Wyoming
Why Nighttime ‘Spotlighting’ Of Wyoming’s Prized Wildlife Is Mostly Illegal
Wyoming’s wildlife is always in the spotlight, but that doesn’t mean it can be spotlighted. That’s illegal.
Spotlighting is the practice of using bright lights to hunt or observe wildlife at night. The concept is inherently simple: All that’s needed is a bright light and a dark night.
Wildlife spotlighting is an increasingly common practice across Africa, where vehicles carrying tourists might have a mounted spotlight for nighttime wildlife tours or to increase visibility for photography.
But simple concepts have a penchant for being abused. Poachers often use spotlighting to stun animals, making them easier to hunt.
Year after year, wildlife tourism has contributed to record-breaking attendance in Yellowstone National Park and elsewhere around Wyoming. With larger herds of people flocking to see those wild herds, there could be a growing interest and demand for wildlife spotlighting.
The good news for Yellowstone purists is that the question of spotlighting has already been asked and answered — nope, can’t do it — and it’s unlikely to change, as long as Wyomingites ensure it doesn’t.
Lights Off
Spotlighting is illegal on public land in Wyoming. The state banned spotlighting in conjunction with hunting, and the federal government prohibits spotlighting for wildlife observation in Yellowstone and throughout the National Park System.
Laws and regulations can change with enough public support or opposition, but there isn’t much demand to allow spotlighting in Yellowstone or Grand Teton national parks.
“We’ve never been asked for that,” said Alvin Heggie with Cody Shuttles, which conducts tours of Yellowstone. “Nobody’s asked us for ways to attract wildlife. They are more focused on what kind of equipment we have for them to use to see wildlife.”
Heggie said people might book a wildlife tour through Cody Shuttles and other wildlife tour companies for various reasons. Most want to get the best experience within the legal and ethical boundaries established throughout the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.
“They want to see wildlife in wild country,” he said. “Tourists are looking for the people they feel are going to treat them the best and put them in the best position to see wildlife.”
Making The Market
The only night tours offered in the Greater Yellowstone region are for stargazing in the pristine dark skies over Yellowstone and Grand Teton. If there’s ever a future demand for nighttime tours with wildlife spotlighting, Heggie doesn’t see it starting with tourists.
“It would be more of a pull than a push,” he said. “It’s hard to forecast because it’s not permissible or ethical here now. But I would imagine for that kind of an experience, outfitters and guides would offer that service and create their own interest. It doesn’t feel like that would be very pervasive.”
Even if spotlighting were permitted in Yellowstone, which is extremely unlikely, Heggie wouldn’t promote the practice. He believes many wildlife tour companies would also shun it.
“I’m not a fan of them,” he said. “It diminishes the wildlife experience because you’re not watching wildlife. You’re watching a stunned, kind of manipulated animal, causing them undue stress. It’s an unnecessarily dangerous situation, and I don’t think that’s appropriate.”
The Ethical Status Quo
There’s not much chance that wildlife spotlighting will ever be permitted in Yellowstone National Park. But in the 21st century, the struggle over what is and isn’t allowed in the park is constantly challenged, mainly by the accelerating sophistication and accessibility of new technologies.
For instance, it didn’t take long for commercial drones to be banned throughout the National Park Service after a visitor crashed one into Grand Prismatic Spring in 2014. Often, new gadgets and technologies aren’t banned until they’ve already caused significant incidents.
Regarding wildlife tourism in Yellowstone, Heggie doesn’t necessarily believe in following “the status quo.” His primary considerations are the most ethical practices for the safety of tourists and wildlife.
“Maintaining the status quo is not a goal of mine,” he said. “I think the question is more about ethical practices. If it’s an ethical practice and you can leverage it, I think you should. If not, it should be banned because it’s not good for what we do and the wildlife.”
In Heggie’s perspective, wildlife tourism companies and guides have just as much responsibility as tourists. The best way to prevent literal spotlighting is to focus the metaphorical spotlight on the people and companies providing wildlife experiences within ethical boundaries.
“There’s a stark difference between a guide service that has multiple experienced guides with decades of experience that know the ins and outs of the park and someone who’s using sound or light to attract wildlife,” he said. “I believe the ability to purvey in our market is predicated on our accumulated experience, the experience we create, and how well we communicate that to the consuming public.”
Andrew Rossi can be reached at arossi@cowboystatedaily.com.
If the Wyoming House and Senate approve its budget changes, then the chambers’ Joint Conference Committee will have helped the University of Wyoming dodge a $40 million cut, while also limiting the Wyoming Business Council to one year’s funding instead of the standard two.
The Joint Conference Committee adopted numerous changes to the state’s two-year budget draft, but didn’t formally advance the document to the House and Senate chambers. The committee meets again Monday and may do so at that time.
Then, the House and Senate can vote on whether to adopt that draft by a simple majority.
First, UW
Starting in January, the Joint Appropriations Committee majority had sought to deny around $20 million in exception requests the University of Wyoming made, while imposing a $40 million cut to the university’s block grant.
That’s about 10% of the state’s grant to UW but a lesser proportion of the school’s overall operating budget.
The Senate sought to restore the $60 million.
The House sought to keep the denials and cuts, ultimately settling on a bargain to cut $20 million, and hinge UW’s retention of the remaining $20 million on its finding and reporting $5 million in savings.
The Joint Conference Committee the House and Senate sent into a Friday meeting to negotiate those two stances chose to fund UW “fully,” Senate Majority Floor Leader Tara Nethercott, R-Cheyenne, told Cowboy State Daily in the state Capitol after the meeting.
But, $10 million of UW’s $40 million block grant won’t reach it until the school charts a “road map” of how it could save $5 million, and reports that to the Joint Appropriations Committee, she added.
“A healthy exercise, I think, for them to participate in, while the Legislature still allows them to receive full grant funding,” Nethercott said.
“I’m hopeful people feel confident the University is fully funded,” she continued, as it’s “on the brink of receiving a new president, having the resources he or she may need to continue to steer the leadership of the University, our state’s flagship school into the future.”
Hours earlier in a press conference, House Speaker Chip Neiman, R-Hulett, said the Legislature has been clear that UW should avoid “diversity, equity, and inclusion” or DEI programming, and that it’s the position of the House majority that the school should tailor its programming to Wyoming’s true business needs – so UW graduates will stay in the state.
Within an earlier draft of the budget sat a footnote blocking money for Wyoming Public Media — a publicly funded media and radio entity funded through UW’s budget.
That footnote is gone from the JCC’s draft, said Nethercott.
Wyoming Business Council
The Wyoming Business Council is set to receive roughly $14 million, confined to one year, for its internal operations, said Nethercott.
“Both chambers have decided to only fund the operations,” Nethercott said, “not all the grant programs.”
She said that’s to compel the Legislature to revisit the concerns it has with the agency, then return in the 2027 legislative session with a vision for its future.
The Business Ready Communities program is “eliminated,” she said.
JCC member Rep. Ken Pendergraft, R-Sheridan, elaborated further.
Of the appropriation, $12 million is from the state’s checking account, plus the state is authorizing WBC to use $157,787 in federal funds and nearly $1 million from other sources.
“We’re going to take it up as an interim topic in appropriations (committee) and how to rebuild it and make it work the way we think it should work,” said Pendergraft. But the JCC opted to fund the Small Business Development Center for two years, along with Economic Diversification Division for Manufacturing Works, and the Wyoming Women’s Business Center, Pendergraft noted, pointing to that language on his draft budget sheet.
Pendergraft made headlines last year by saying he wanted to eliminate the Wyoming Business Council altogether.
But Nethercott told the Senate earlier this month, legislators have complained of that agency her entire nine-year tenure.
She attributed this to what she called communications shortfalls that may not be intentional. She cosponsored a now-stalled bill this year that had sought to adopt a task force to evaluate WBC.
The Wyoming Business Council’s functions range from less controversial, like helping communities build infrastructure, to more controversial, like awarding tax-funded grants to certain businesses on a competitive application process.
Wyoming Public Television
Wyoming Public Television, which is not the same as Wyoming Public Media, is slated to receive the $3 million it lost when Congress defunded the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Nethercott said.
It will also receive its usual $3 million from Wyoming.
The entity will not receive another $3 million it had sought to upgrade its emergency-alert towers, said Nethercott, “because we received information from them… they have another source to pay for the replacement and maintenance of the towers.”
Like the Wyoming Business Council, the Wyoming Public TV’s functions range from less controversial to more controversial.
The entity operates, maintains and staffs emergency alert towers throughout Wyoming.
Wyoming Public TV also produces entertainment and informational movies. Its state grants run through the community colleges’ budget.
State Employees
Nethercott noted that the JCC advanced to both chambers an agreement to pay $111 million from the state’s checking account to give state employees raises.
Those raises would bring them to 2024 market values for their work, she noted.
Because that money is coming from the state’s checking account, or “general fund,” and not its severance tax pool as the House had envisioned, then $111 million won’t impact the $105 million investment another still-viable bill seeking to build an “energy dominance fund” envisions.
That bill, sponsored by Senate President Bo Biteman, R-Ranchester, seeks to lend to large energy-sector projects.
Biteman told Cowboy State Daily in an interview days before the session convened that its purpose is to counteract “green” compacts investors have adopted, and which have bottlenecked energy projects.
Wyoming’s executive branch is currently suing BlackRock and other investors on that same assertion.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
It’s Week 11 in the 2026 Wyoming prep girls’ basketball season. That means it’s the end of the regular season. 3A and 4A schools have their final game or games to determine seeding before the regional tournament, or if a team is locked into a position, one last chance to fine-tune before the postseason. Games are spread across four days.
WYOPREPS WEEK 11 GIRLS BASKETBALL SCHEDULE 2026
Every game on the slate is a conference matchup. Several rivalry contests are part of this week’s schedule, such as East against Central, Cody at Powell, Lyman hosting Mountain View, and Rock Springs at Green River, just to name a few. Here is the Week 11 schedule of varsity games WyoPreps has. All schedules are subject to change. If you see a game missing, please email david@wyopreps.com.
CLASS 4A
Final Score: Laramie 68 Cheyenne South 27 (conference game)
CLASS 3A
Final Score: Lyman 40 Mountain View 26 (conference game)
CLASS 4A
Final Score: Evanston 41 Riverton 39 (conference game)
Final Score: Natrona County 42 Kelly Walsh 38 (conference game) – Peach Basket Classic
Final Score: #4 Thunder Basin 64 Campbell County 32 (conference game)
CLASS 3A
Final Score: #1 Cody 77 Worland 33 (conference game) – 5 different Fillies with a 3, and Hays led the way with 34 points.
Final Score: #2 Lander 49 Lyman 34 (conference game)
Final Score: #4 Wheatland 51 Douglas 40 (conference game)
Final Score: #5 Powell 48 Lovell 42 (conference game)
Final Score: Burns 56 Torrington 43 (conference game)
Final Score: Glenrock 78 Newcastle 30 (conference game)
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CLASS 4A
Rock Springs at #2 Green River, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
#4 Thunder Basin at #5 Sheridan, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
#1 Cheyenne East at #3 Cheyenne Central, 6 p.m. (conference game)
Jackson at Star Valley, 6 p.m. (conference game)
CLASS 3A
#3 Pinedale at Mountain View, 4 p.m. (conference game)
#1 Cody at #5 Powell, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
Buffalo at Glenrock, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
CLASS 3A
Newcastle at Buffalo, 12:30 p.m. (conference game)
Glenrock at Rawlins, 3 p.m. (conference game)
Torrington at #4 Wheatland, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
Wyoming Boys 4A Swimming & Diving State Championships 2026
4A Boys State Swim Meet for 2026 in Cheyenne
Gallery Credit: David Settle, WyoPreps.com
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