Latest news with #WyoFile
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Yahoo
Speed unknown factor in death of Grizzly 1058, one of 399's offspring
A sign that informs passersby about grizzlies stands along Highway 89 in the Snake River Canyon near Jackson Hole, Wyoming. (Angus M. Thuermer Jr./WyoFile) This story was first published by WyoFile on May 7, 2025. A grizzly death attributed to a fatal vehicle strike has triggered an outpouring of rage on social media about people driving too fast, but law enforcement could not determine whether speed was a factor in the collision. The bear that died, Grizzly 1058, is one of the famous 'quads' of their even more famous mom, Grizzly 399, who died last year after being fatally struck by a vehicle on a highway south of Jackson. Grizzly Bear 399 lived to old age because we made room for her. She died because we're in her wilds In the death of Grizzly 399, authorities ruled that the driver was not speeding. As for Grizzly 1058, 'law enforcement rangers were not able to determine if speed was a factor' in the collision, Grand Teton National Park spokeswoman Emily Davis said in an email Wednesday. Nonetheless, park officials asked people to slow down and be vigilant for wildlife in a Tuesday news release confirming the bear's death. While reducing speeds can help protect wildlife along Wyoming highways, it's not the only factor setting the stage for fatal collisions. 'It's terribly unfortunate that this happened,' said Brian DeBolt, large carnivore conflict coordinator with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. 'But it's becoming all too common with these bears that spend so much time roadside.' The more time bears hang out near roads, the higher the probability that they're going to be struck and killed by a vehicle, DeBolt said. Game and Fish is finding that younger bears, like the 5-year-old subadult found Tuesday, are being forced to make a living in more marginal habitat along roadsides because more prime habitat is already occupied. What park officials have confirmed so far is that Grizzly 1058 had been spotted in the park since he and his three siblings split from their mom in 2022. But there were no confirmed sightings of him this spring, the park release said. Park law enforcement found the bear's remains Tuesday in a patch of willows about 125 yards from the highway, within park boundaries east of the Buffalo Fork River. The Jackson Hole News&Guide reported that a law enforcement ranger found the dead bear after spotting ravens and eagles scavenging along the highway and stopping to investigate. The park bear biologist told the News&Guide the animal had likely been there for several days. The park relied on ear tags and a 'PIT' tag to identify the 5-year-old bear, which the park release said 'appeared to be in good condition for his age and the time of year.' The outer park highway sees more diverse traffic — including commuters and semis — and higher speed limits than the inner park road. Just up the highway on Togwotee Pass, where vehicles have struck roadside grizzlies, wildlife managers and law enforcement have struggled to manage traffic jams created by bear watchers. As more bears live roadside, and get habituated to people, the more risk of collisions, DeBolt said Wednesday. 'We don't want bears to be so comfortable roadside,' he added. The speed limit on Togwotee Pass is 55 miles per hour, but once drivers cross into Grand Teton National Park, there is a nighttime speed limit of 45 mph on that same highway. Safety concerns along that highway, where it crosses through the Bridger-Teton National Forest, prompted one retired U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service special agent to propose a 'grizzly bear speed limit,' using variable speed limits similar to how the state handles blizzards on the interstate. 'Maybe we ought to consider having a grizzly bear speed limit, you know, when the bears are around the highway,' said Steve Stoinski, a retired Fish and Wildlife Service agent who spent a summer managing bear traffic jams on Togwotee Pass. But that speed limit would only work with regular enforcement, Stoinski told WyoFile. DeBolt said he'd be open to reducing speed limits if it would reduce wildlife-vehicle collisions and was reasonable and logistically possible. But setting speed limits is not Game and Fish's call to make. DeBolt also sees larger factors at play. 'Although it seems like maybe a simple fix,' DeBolt said. 'It's not that simple.' Inside Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks where reduced speed limits are enforced, wildlife still die in vehicle strikes, DeBolt said. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
18-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
As international visitors stay away, Yellowstone National Park tourism industry banks on Americans
West Yellowstone, Montana, workers stock the Yellowstone Bargain Store on April 15, 2025, as the tourist town prepares for interior park roads to open for automobiles. Located a few hundred yards from the entrance to Yellowstone National Park, the store specializes in tchotchkes, gewgaws, trinkets and clothes. (Angus M. Thuermer Jr./WyoFile) WEST YELLOWSTONE, MONTANA — Tchotchke shop owners are busy stocking shelves with Old Faithful shot glasses, stuffed teddy bears and Yellowstone hoodies. Motel managers are hiring their last employees as the summer tourism season begins with the opening of Yellowstone's West Entrance today. After park crews plowed a winter's worth of snow from roads, visitors are now motoring to Old Faithful, Canyon and Norris, marking the unofficial start to the summer. This year, fewer of those tourists, ogling at 'red dog' bison calves, delighting in a geyser's eruption and soaking up spectacular mountain views, will likely be international travelers. Overseas travel to the U.S. nosedived 11.6% in March, reflecting jitters over Trump administration tariffs, stock market turmoil and foreign bitterness toward the country's altered relationship with the rest of the world. Several data points reveal a sluggish start to the summer tourism season. The International Trade Administration, an arm of the U.S. Department of Commerce, reported the 11.6% drop in overseas visitation in March. (The figure, compared to the same month last year, does not reflect travelers from Canada and Mexico.) 'U.S. Economy to Lose Billions as Foreign Tourists Stay Away,' Bloomberg headlined an April 14 story. Mike Gierau, a Wyoming state senator, restaurant owner and co-chairman of JH AIR, a nonprofit business consortium that coordinates service to Jackson Hole, sees the tide. 'International travel is dropping like a stone based on all the stuff coming from Washington,' he said. Moreover, at the South Entrance to the world's first national park, the Jackson Hole Chamber of Commerce reports a dip in the 60-day outlook for already booked hotel rooms compared to 2024. Rick Howe, the chamber's president, said June and July 'are not as strong as we would expect — they're not picking up as quickly as they [usually] do.' That 60-day outlook, released March 31, shows about 54% of coming days falling shy of last year's numbers based on bookings at 16 hotels. 'It's not going to be a record year,' Howe said. In 2024, travel spending in Wyoming amounted to $4.9 billion, according to the Wyoming Office of Tourism. Travel and tourism supported 33,610 jobs, generated $278 million in tax receipts and resulted in 8.8 million overnight visitors, the office said in a review of last year. Tourism, Gierau said, is the second-largest revenue-generating industry in the Equality State behind energy development. 'In tourism, everything you do is taxed,' he said, 'everything we buy, everything we sell.' Despite the data dips, industry officials hope and believe in redemption. If overseas visitors aren't coming to the U.S., Americans could forego foreign travel as well, spending their time vacationing closer to home instead. 'One door closes, another opens,' Gierau said. Also, the outlook for visitors to Jackson Hole, while not yet documented by the chamber, is upbeat for August and September, Howe said. Overall, 'we're pretty much on par with last summer — for the moment,' he said. At Yellowstone's East Entrance near Cody, lodge owners have seen 'a little bit of a drop,' in reservations, said Jennifer Thoma, the executive director of the Cody Country Chamber of Commerce. There's now a glimmer of relief. 'It seems like reservation numbers are back up,' she said. In addition to tariffs, market turmoil and foreign enmity, DOGE cuts to the National Park Service and U.S. Forest Service have rattled travelers. Those indiscriminate firings and resignations have sparked worries that campgrounds won't open and toilets won't be cleaned. Tourism industry leaders seek to assure potential customers that DOGE disorder won't affect their vacations. Yellowstone National Park Lodges General Manager Mike Keller acknowledged in an email that Park Service 'staffing uncertainty' has generated worries. 'We are here to assure you that our operations are unaffected and we are ready to welcome you to a memorable Yellowstone experience this spring and summer,' his email reads. 'The park remains open, the views are as breathtaking as ever, the wildlife is flourishing, and the sense of wonder that Yellowstone National Park evokes is unchanging and eternal.' For Howe at the Jackson chamber, the season could mimic the surge in RV campers and regional travel that accompanied the COVID-19 pandemic. 'People are not worried services won't be available,' he said. 'We are not hearing the concerns that we were two to three weeks ago,' Howe said. 'Those calls are not happening anymore.' He also asked innkeepers a month ago to report whether they're getting calls from people cancelling reservations because of economic hardships. 'The answer is 'no,'' he said. Reflecting information from airlines, Gierau predicted 'a good summer,' but also one that's 'just different.' There will be fewer bus tours filled with foreigners and, instead, more people 'on the senior circuit,' he said. The next Jackson chamber 60-day outlook through mid-June, compiled by consultants DestiMetrics, publishes April 20. A crash is 'not a major concern at the moment,' Howe said. 'It's kind of a moving target,' Howe said of the summer forecast. 'With all the things going on, things changing rapidly, it's hard to know.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
16-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Trump and Musk's DOGE ‘functionally destroying' historic Yellowstone grizzly science team
After swimming across the Snake River, one of Grizzly 399's subadult offspring shakes off excess water in May 2022. (Mark Gocke/Courtesy) A dismayed Chris Servheen is raising the alarm about what's become of federal scientists who have kept watch over the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem's grizzly bear population for the last 55 years. The group of research biologists and technicians, known as the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team, are being hamstrung at best and arguably dismantled, he told WyoFile. For decades, until his retirement in 2016, Sevheen worked closely with the study team while coordinating grizzly bear recovery for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 'It's functionally destroying the organization,' Servheen said. 'The study team has been in place since 1970 — over 50 years of work and experience and knowledge. It's going to just disappear and die.' Servheen's perplexed about what the Trump administration has to gain. 'How could anybody be so negligent and vile that they're trying to destroy something that has brought grizzly bears back from the edge of extinction?' he said. 'Why would you do that? It's just so destructive.' Led by Elon Musk, the Department of Government Efficiency's dismantling started with a hiring freeze. Longtime supervisory wildlife biologist Mark Haroldson retired, and his position is not being filled, according to Servheen. Then, the team's longtime leader, Frank van Manen, announced an earlier-than-desired retirement. 'He didn't want to leave,' Servheen said of van Manen, who declined to comment. According to Servheen, van Manen's departure was related to the federal government's ongoing upheaval. 'They're putting fear into people,' Servheen said. 'That's basically evil, to do that to hard-working people who have been civil servants for decades.' The Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team is part of the U.S. Geological Survey, and its website lists four other employees. Three are technicians, which are often seasonal, entry-level employees. The remaining staff biologist has been in the job about three years. Although located in Bozeman, many of the federal facility's researchers do work in Wyoming. 'They do all kinds of other stuff: brucellosis and chronic wasting disease and aquatic species,' Servheen said. 'It's a huge science center.' The planned closure has elicited protests. According to 42 retired or active biologists petitioned Montana's congressional delegation to use their influence to 'protect (the science center) and its employees from these unwarranted attacks by DOGE.' Federal offices located in Wyoming have not escaped the closures. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's tribal-focused Lander conservation office and a USGS Cheyenne water science station are among those that have been marked for the chopping block. WyoFile could not officially confirm impacts to the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team. Federal agencies under the Trump administration have declined or not responded to WyoFile's requests for more information on downsizing and office closures. An inquiry to a USGS public affairs officer on Thursday yielded no information about the matter. The Center for Biological Diversity has been pressing the federal agency for details as well. On Thursday, the environmental advocacy organization publicized a Freedom of Information Act request to gain more insight into the future of the federal grizzly team. Both recently departed veteran study team members — van Manen and Haroldson — are staying engaged in grizzly science in pro-bono emeritus roles, according to a source familiar with the situation. Nevertheless, Servheen worries that the hit to the science team could trickle down to the grizzly population — estimated at 1,000 or so bears in the Greater Yellowstone — that it's charged with studying. During the decades, federal researchers have played a pivotal role in improving understanding of the region's bruins, including completing studies that have helped make the case that grizzly bears are fully recovered and no longer require Endangered Species Act protection. They've also amassed mortality and other demographic datasets and compiled an annual report. 'The foundation of Yellowstone grizzly bear recovery has been built on science,' Servheen said. 'Removing that science eliminates our ability to maintain Yellowstone grizzly bears.'
Yahoo
01-04-2025
- Yahoo
‘Come out and tell the truth': Parents of teen who died outside Riverton wait for answers
Andrew GrahamWyoFileIt's been three weeks since Stephanie Bearstail died under suspicious circumstances on the Wind River Indian Reservation, and the 18-year-old's family is mourning her as they wait for answers from federal was a passionate softball player and determined student eager to graduate high school and enter college — she had recently expressed interest in becoming a radiologist, her parents Nikki and Kevin Ferris told WyoFile in a phone interview this week. As a senior, she was already taking courses at Central Wyoming College. Their only daughter was also a certified goofball, a little boss of the house and her three brothers, and a bright light in the lives of the family and many others on the reservation. 'Even we were surprised how many people knew her,' Nikki Ferris said. 'We knew of her friends, but we didn't know how many she had.' On March 15, those friends and others — as many as 200 people, according to news reports — walked to a fence line along the side of Wyoming 137, a road that cuts across the reservation, running from near the Wind River Casino outside Riverton west to Fort Washakie. That's the area where authorities say Bearstail somehow exited a moving vehicle on a windy March night. At the demonstration, Bearstail's supporters wore red — the color that has become a symbol for the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women that plagues communities on and off the reservation. They carried signs that read 'Justice for Steph,' some of which still hung weeks later on the barbed wire fence that threads between the sage brush. Bearstail's death, her mother said, 'just blindsided all of us.' The Ferrises declined to share details, saying they do not want to publicly reveal information that could complicate the job of investigators. But they have reason to believe their daughter was a victim of violence, they said. 'The main thing that I think of every day is I just wish somebody would come out and tell the truth about what happened,' Nikki said. 'I don't understand how anyone could know what happened and not say anything.' Bearstail grew up and lived her entire life in Fort Washakie, where her father was involved in law enforcement and today is a judge on the Wind River Tribal Court. The night of March 4, Bearstail did not return home by her 10:30 p.m. curfew. The parents could remember only one other time their lively but studious daughter had been late for her curfew, they told WyoFile. They grew worried, and within an hour, left home to look for her. The parents tracked their daughter's phone location, which placed her in the area between Riverton and the small reservation community of Arapahoe. 'She did need help, and we were trying to find her,' her mother said. On the drive, they received word she had been hospitalized, and so they headed to SageWest Hospital in Riverton. They were able to spend time with Bearstail before she died, but their daughter was unable to speak or share what happened to her, they Wyoming Highway Patrol, which maintains a list of highway fatalities from around the state, published an entry to the list about a week after Bearstail's death, according to news reports. The entry states: 'An unknown SUV was traveling westbound on Rendezvous Road. The SUV passenger allegedly jumped out of the vehicle while it was in motion for unknown reasons.' The entry does not say where investigators learned of the allegation that Bearstail jumped from the SUV. Authorities haven't identified the driver. The Wyoming Highway Patrol directed WyoFile to the FBI for comment on the case. The FBI has said only that the case remains under investigation. The Fremont County Coroner's office is conducting the autopsy, which hasn't been finalized, a representative of that office said this week. Using the limited information from the highway patrol fatality database, news organizations ran headlines stating that Bearstail 'allegedly jumped' from the car to her death. Those reports disturbed the family, the Ferrises said, because taken in isolation, the information suggests Bearstail was responsible for her own death. The headlines, Nikki said, served 'to deflect off what happened to her.' But Bearstail's community appears dedicated to keeping focus on her case and on the issue of domestic violence, which they believe led to her death. Other community events are in the works, the Ferrises told WyoFile. Native American women fall prey to violence, murders and unexplained deaths at disproportionally higher rates compared to other demographics in the United States. Many of the cases go unsolved, and reformers have pointed to the complicated jurisdictional nature of reservations — where local, state, federal and tribal law enforcement sometimes overlap in areas that are often economically depressed and, in the West, geographically isolated — as leading to a lack of accountability for perpetrators of does not appear to be the case here, as the FBI swiftly took control of the investigation. 'In this case, the FBI, they were [at the crime scene] that morning,' Nikki said. 'They got involved quickly.'Bearstail was the second oldest of the couple's children. Her younger brothers, ages 15 and 13, have tried to return to school, but on some days have had to go home or haven't been up for going at all, their mother said. 'They're not doing OK,' Nikki said. 'It's really hard.'Since her daughter's death, Nikki has made a steady stream of posts to social media, calling for justice, expressing her raw grief and remembering her daughter. There are videos of Bearstail running track, and of her dancing — full of life. As the Ferrises have received messages sharing swirling rumors about the night Bearstail died, they've implored people to take what they know to the FBI. But to date, all the family has been told by officials is that an investigation is active, the parents said. The FBI 'said it would take time,' Nikki said in the March 25 interview. To her knowledge, 'they're still out there investigating,' she said. In a statement to WyoFile sent Wednesday evening, an FBI spokesperson for the Denver Field Office said the agency 'appreciate[s] public interest in this incident and encourage[s] anyone with information to contact the Bureau of Indian Affairs/Wind River Police or the FBI.'The agency could not offer a time frame for when it would conclude the investigation, the statement read. 'We methodically and thoroughly address every element of the incident,' spokesperson Vikki Migoya is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and This story was updated to correct a misspelling of Nikki Ferris' name. —Ed.
Yahoo
01-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Wyoming town leaders balk at immigration jail
Andrew GrahamWyoFile The private prison industry has again come knocking in southwestern Wyoming, pitching the for-profit detention of immigrants as a potential boon for the region's transitioning economy. But unlike during President Donald Trump's first term, this time the corporations don't seem to be finding a foothold. Last week, a company called Sabot Consulting pitched the Kemmerer City Council, and a packed room of townspeople, on the construction of a 900-bed jail to hold immigrants detained by U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. Construction of the facility would have been paid for by the city through a bond issuance, two council members told WyoFile. Kemmerer would have owned the jail, and a third entity — an Alaskan Native corporation that is heavily invested in the private immigration detention business, including a controversial encampment in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba — would have staffed it through a contract with the federal government. Sabot's role was to work with the city, ICE and the Alaskan corporation, Akima, to bring the project to fruition. The jail would have brought both high-paying jobs and revenues to Kemmerer, Sabot cofounder Darren Chiappinelli told the city council. But the proposal got a poor reception from the public, and the council has no plans to pursue it, the two council members told WyoFile. 'There's no interest among council members or even the majority of our constituents to keep it on our plate,' Kemmerer Mayor Robert Bowen said, describing the community reaction as 'overwhelmingly 'no.'' Council member Bill Ellis also told WyoFile the city wasn't interested. 'We said, 'We can't do it, and we don't want it,'' he said. ICE has put out notice to private prison companies that it is seeking an 850-950 bed facility within a two-hour drive of the Salt Lake City airport, according to a Facebook stream of the presentation that a Sabot Consulting official made to the Kemmerer council. Though the proposal came as President Trump does everything in his power to deport immigrants — both those here without documentation and increasingly those with it — the latest quest for large numbers of holding cells near Salt Lake City stretches back to former President Joe Biden's administration. Promoters of the project first contacted the city last May, well before November's election swept Trump back into office, Kemmerer City Administrator Brian Muir told WyoFile. Representatives for Sabot Consulting did not respond to messages from WyoFile seeking comment. It's unclear if the company is pitching other Wyoming communities on the immigration jail idea. An elected official in nearby Uinta County, where Evanston saw years of divisive debate over for-profit prison companies' proposals from 2017 into 2020, told WyoFile the county commission had recently received outreach from a company he believed was also Sabot. But Uinta County Commissioner Mark Anderson said this time around, his board is also choosing not to pursue the idea. The reluctance to engage with the private prison company comes even as Wyoming's elected officials, including legislators and many county sheriffs, are moving the state in line with Trump's deportation agenda. Kemmerer is the county seat of Lincoln County, where voters, as they did statewide, backed Trump by a large margin. Nearly 83% of the 10,580 Lincoln County residents who cast a vote for president in November chose to send Trump, with his campaign promises of mass deportation, back to the White House. But ideological support for more detainments and deportations doesn't make a large immigration jail an automatic fit for the coal town, which is in the midst of an ongoing economic transition, the council members said. Trona mine expansions, carbon dioxide storage projects and a $4 billion innovative nuclear power project have been driving a construction boom in southwestern Wyoming. Kemmerer in particular is benefitting from the nuclear plant, a project of Microsoft-founding billionaire Bill Gates, as its coal industry continues to contract. Gates visited Kemmerer in June for a groundbreaking ceremony on the project, which received its construction permit in January and is slated to be generating electricity in 2030. Amid those developments, getting into the private prison industry isn't needed in Kemmerer and could even be counterproductive, Bowen said. 'It's not a bad thing,' Bowen said of Trump's immigration initiatives, but the jail 'is not the right fit for our community.' He wondered if Gates would have pursued his energy project in Kemmerer if it was known as the host of a large immigration jail. Though the Trump administration is determined to deport growing numbers of people, Bowen also noted that tech billionaire Elon Musk and the DOGE initiative are gutting government contracts, raising questions about the federal government's reliability as a business partner. Since Kemmerer would have owned the facility, the city would have been responsible for making it pay for itself were a contract with ICE to change or dry up. He and Ellis both said they feared a day where the city was hunting for inmates of any kind to fill its big jail. 'The risk versus reward wasn't really there for us,' Bowen said, 'not in a community of our size.' During the first Trump administration, first one and then another large corporation pushed for an immigration jail in Evanston, a community of about 12,000 people about 50 minutes southwest of Kemmerer. Over three years, the idea drove local controversy, before the companies ultimately walked away from the idea. Management Training Corporation, a private prison company, first brought the idea to Evanston in summer 2017, proposing Uinta County use a county-owned property near Bear River State Park to build the jail. At the time, ICE was seeking 500 beds in the area. In 2019, however, the agency doubled the size of its request, to 1,000 beds. The proposal spurred contentious public hearings and drove a bitter divide in Evanston. Opponents accused Uinta County public officials of steamrolling them and operating in the shadows. Though the decision remained local, both the Wyoming Legislature and candidates during the bitter 2018 gubernatorial primary campaign debated the idea. Local proponents of the private prison meanwhile suggested outside influences were keeping a possible boon from the economically struggling town. The American Civil Liberties Union of Wyoming threatened litigation to force state-level elected officials to weigh in, while local and statewide activists coalesced into a group called WyoSayNo to oppose the project. In summer 2019, Management Training Corporation abruptly, and quietly, walked away from the idea it had pushed for two years. CoreCivic, another large and controversial, private prison corporation, stepped into the void, and pushed the project further, to the point of submitting environmental review documents to the federal government. The Uinta County Commission in January 2020 passed a resolution to sell CoreCivic the land it needed once the company had secured an ICE contract. But in April of that year, CoreCivic too walked away, without offering any detailed reason why. Akima, the company Sabot's representative cited as its partner on the proposal for Kemmerer, is another major player in the lucrative private prison industry. Akima is a subsidiary of the Nana Regional Corporation, one of 13 regional Alaskan Native corporations. Such companies pay dividends to indigenous Alaskans but are not staffed solely by Native Americans. Subsidiaries of the corporations like Akima are effective at securing government contracts as minority-owned businesses, according to a report in The Guardian. Akima's detention centers have been faulted by federal auditors and advocates for poor conditions and civil rights violations, The Guardian reported. It was Uinta County and Evanston officials who first directed the latest bid for a southwestern Wyoming immigration jail to Kemmerer, city manager Muir told WyoFile. During the previous effort in Evanston, the Uinta County Commission was staunchly supportive of the project, despite hard lessons from other communities that bet on private prisons and the often rancorous local opposition. But the ultimate abandonment of the idea by two consecutive companies left a bad taste behind, commissioner Anderson told WyoFile. 'All the public hearings, all of these promises of jobs and then these companies pulling out,' he said, 'it's just been so inconsistent that the appetite for it is just not there right now.' Anderson had received a voicemail in recent months from one of the private prison companies, and though he did not have the message at hand when he spoke with WyoFile by phone Wednesday, he said he believed it to have been Sabot. But it didn't really matter which company had reached out. 'I haven't even returned the phone call,' he said.
