Episode Details

It's time to take a look at what's happening around Wyoming, for Monday, October 28th. I'm Wendy Corr, bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily newsroom - brought to you by 4 Wyoming Pack. 4 Wyoming Pack says, "This November, Wyoming will vote to allow residential homes to be taxed at a lower, fairer rate, even the playing field, and give families a much-needed break." 4 Wyoming Pack wants you to Vote Yes on Amendment A.

There are too many bison in Yellowstone National Park.

That's what Yellowstone's bison program manager reports - over 6,000 of them, actually, and plans are to remove more than 1,300 over the winter, in order to keep the herd within population ranges established by the Interagency Bison Management Plan.

But wildlife advocates believe the long-term ecology of Yellowstone's bison management is being jeopardized by short-term decisions to cull the herds, which are perceived as political rather than scientific. That's according to Cowboy State Daily's Andrew Rossi.

"The concerns are that, as the expert that I spoke to put it, we're gradually domesticating bison… because we're keeping them confined to this space where their gene pool is being diluted because they're not don't have the ability to expand into their historic range. So we're losing a part of the bisons wild nature because of this management plan, and that's not the fault of the National Park Service for implementing it. It's because of the conflicts outside the park that they the Bison would inevitably run into."

Through the work of the National Park Service, tribal partners, and conservation groups like the Montana Wild Bison Coalition, there are possible solutions to address this urgent issue. The stakes are high, as the consequence is losing wild bison forever.

Read the full story HERE.

Wyoming uses cloud seeding as an environmentally friendly way to squeeze a little more snow from clouds, boosting annual snowpack. That feeds a little more water into its reservoirs to supply both cities and agriculture.

But, if this technique is truly effective, why isn't it being used to help fight wildfires? Cowboy State Daily's Renee Jean, a scientist herself, went searching for the answer to that question.

"In order to seed a cloud, you have to have a cloud. Cloud seeding does not conjure clouds for you… the reason we get rain is sometimes these little bits of water vapor are happy to get closer and closer and clump together, and they get heavy enough to fall… but sometimes they could care less about each other, and they just keep their distance in the clouds, then just kind of dissipate and go away and we get no rain… this is where the cloud seeding can kind of come in and help… so you can shoot some silver iodide in there that gives something that's gonna help attract and clump together these little water particles so they'll finally fall out of the sky… And there are months of studies that go into where do these ground cannons need to be aimed, how much iodide do they need to shoot?... You can't do that kind of study in the middle of fighting a fire."

Jean says the dry air compounded the conditions that made this fire season so destructive. Even if cloud seeding had been an option that firefighters were prepared to implement, there were no clouds to seed during the worst of the fires.

Read the full story HERE.

Nearly four weeks ago, the Elk Fire exploded by nearly 20,000 acres across the eastern face of the Bighorn Mountains in n