Episode Details

It's time to take a look at what's happening around Wyoming! I'm Wendy Corr, bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily newsroom, for Thursday, May 23rd.

The out-of-state man who was mauled by a mother grizzly in Wyoming's Grand Teton National Park on Sunday apparently had a phenomenal stroke of luck when the apex predator essentially bear-sprayed itself.

Park service officials told outdoors reporter Mark Heinz that the 35-year-old Massachusetts man did everything right, including pulling out his readily-available can of bear spray when he rounded a corner and came face to face with a bear cub and its protective mama.

"So he did what you're supposed to do. He got down flat on his belly, interlaced his fingers behind the back of his neck… The bear spray was apparently still hooked to one of his fingers, and the bear got to biting him and at some point she bit into that can of bear spray and the can burst in her face, and she and the cub took off… I did talk to a couple of pretty hardcore outdoor people who spend a lot of time in grizzly country. They said that's a new one… We've never heard of an attack being stopped by a bear spraying itself."

The man, who was not identified by the Park Service, was released from the hospital Monday and is expected to recover fully from his injuries.

The largest solar power project in Wyoming — a $1.2 billion dollar, 1.2-million panel farm -- was given the green light Tuesday to start building.

Cowboy State Daily's Pat Maio reports that the 771-megawatt solar farm will be built by Canadian energy giant Enbridge, and will supply electricity to data centers which will be built in south Cheyenne.

"Enbridge has gotten the green light on construction. I mean, it still has these little minor ones that it has to deal with, like, the air permit, which is usually pretty easy for a solar farm, but the construction permit is huge. And it's going to be a huge bill that they're gonna have to pay to build this - but… they have big customers, Meta and Microsoft."

The solar power facility will generate enough electricity to light up more than 771,000 homes, more than in all of Wyoming.

A Gillette atheist who lost a lawsuit over prayers before public meetings is now suing to put the atheist 21 Rules alongside a 10 Commandments monument in a local park. Bruce Williams and the Hypatian Society, which is a religious or charitable "church" he co-founded, are also demanding about $240 million in damages in a federal lawsuit filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for Wyoming, according to Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland.

"In his past state level lawsuit, Williams was complaining that he doesn't get a proportionate number of invocations at public meetings in Gillette… But he added a new complaint saying, you guys have this Ten Commandments monument in city park, and it … infuriates that Williams doesn't get to put up his 21 Rules associated with his atheist organization he co-founded that he calls a church."

Willaims lost his prior state-level lawsuit and appeal against city officials — which presented other but similar complaints — because the city has sovereign immunity from being sued on his claims.

Sixteen members of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus believe Wyoming's governor has to make a swift, decisive response in fighting a new BLM rule issued last week that would end coal production in Wyoming's energy-rich Powder River Basin by 2041.

The Freedom Caucus describes the new BLM rule as part "of the Biden administration's anti-American, anti-energy 'climate crisis' agenda." That's according to politics reporter Leo Wolfson.

"They believe he waited too long with a prior coal dispute