Episode Details

It's time to take a look at what's happening around Wyoming, for Thursday, July 25th. I'm Wendy Corr, bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily newsroom - brought to you by Wyoming Senior Olympics, reminding you that this year's Summer Olympics start July 31st in Cheyenne - and volunteers are needed! Become a volunteer today at Wyoming senior Olympics dot org.

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U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman is catching heat from the Wyoming Democratic Party for saying Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris was hired by President Joe Biden to be his VP, not because of her qualifications, but because her race and gender fulfilled the president's diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, goals.

Cowboy State Daily's Leo Wolfson reports that the Wyoming Democratic Party took offense to these comments, calling them "racist."

"This stems from a comment that President Joe Biden made back in 2019 when he said he was looking to find a person of color and a woman to fill his VP role, which obviously Harris fulfills both those requirements. But the Democratic Party of Wyoming finds this was a racist comment on Hageman's part, and they want her to apologize for making it."

Hageman said, quote, "If you don't want people to say she was hired only because she's a black woman, then maybe Biden shouldn't have said he was only gonna hire a black woman." Endquote.

Read the full story HERE.

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On Tuesday, the Black Diamond Pool in Yellowstone National Park violently erupted. The force of the eruption sent rocks hundreds of feet into the air and destroyed the boardwalk that dozens of people had been standing on when it blew.

Cowboy State Daily's Andrew Rossi spoke to Mike Poland, scientist-in-charge of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, about the science behind the event, which Poland categorized as a "small" hydrothermal explosion.

"A hydrothermal explosion happens when water converts to steam, because it expands so much, up to 1000 times, just creates a lot of energy, and that's what happened beneath Black Diamond Pool on Tuesday… Poland told me that these kind of hydrothermal explosions happen, maybe not all the time, but there are at least a couple of them every year… I guess the scary thing is, they can happen anywhere at anytime in Yellowstone."

The Biscuit Basin boardwalk remains closed to visitors while geologists and National Park Service teams assess the damage and current behavior of Black Diamond Pool.

Read the full story HERE.

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Residents in a small Montana town were saddened and angered when they learned a headless grizzly carcass that was left in the Yellowstone River was a popular bear well known to townspeople.

The 15-year-old male was Grizzly 769, a bear dubbed the Blacktail Lakes Bear. And outdoors reporter Mark Heinz says this was the same bear that had made trouble in Gardiner, Montana, and had to be put down by wildlife agents.

"They shot it when it was in the river, because they figured that was the safest option, rather than trying to shoot it in the middle of a bunch of houses and stuff. And it died and the carcass sort of floated down the river… and it finally got hung up and stopped in a place where they just couldn't get it from shore… So what they did is they cut off the head and the paws of the grizzly because grizzly claws can bring a lot of money on the black market."

Despite what some see as a terrible waste, the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks sees as nature taking care of business,