Episode Details

It's time to take a look at what's happening around Wyoming, for Thursday, June 5th. I'm Wendy Corr, bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily newsroom - Brought to you by the Wyoming Community Foundation, who asks you to give back to the place you call home. "5 to thrive" is YOUR opportunity to leave a legacy for generations to come. Support the community nonprofits you care about with a gift through the Wyoming Community Foundation. Visit wycf.org to learn more.

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Sublette County commissioners and leaders of the Sublette County Hospital District are locked in a dispute over the county's withholding of $2.7 million that had been pledged to help build a new long-term care facility, a component of a larger project to give the rural county a hospital.

The Sublette County Commission says its withholding of money is temporary and meant to secure "adequate assurances" that the hospital district will hold up its end of the two entities' agreements.

But Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports that the hospital district says it didn't breach any agreements — and the county government's move, even if it's temporary — could have a "catastrophic" effect on health care services in the county.

"It's a big controversy… So the county, on the one hand, is saying, Okay, this is temporary. We just gotta work out these assurances, whereas the hospital district is saying temporary or not, this is hurting us now, because we need these funds now to keep people on the payroll, so we're not pulling from payroll accounts and then get through that rocky startup phase where we have to show the federal government that we qualify for special rural hospital reimbursements under Medicare."

Sublette County voters in 2020 approved the formation of the Sublette County Hospital District. The county currently has two clinics but no hospital, making it the only county in Wyoming without a hospital.

Read the full story HERE.

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A Wyoming hunter says he plans to be in Daniel on June 14 to offer a different point of view during the "Hogs For Hope" motorcycle rally, organized in protest of the alleged torture and killing of a wolf in February of last year.

Gillette-Area resident and outdoorsman Mitch Gilliam said that he wants to push back against what he says is the unjust demonization of Daniel resident Cody Roberts, who has been at the center of a firestorm of controversy, based on allegations that he ran a wolf down with a snowmobile, injuring it, and then kept the animal alive for hours before finally killing it.

Gilliam told Cowboy State Daily's Mark Heinz that he's talked with Roberts about what happened on Feb. 29, 2024, and is convinced that the widely-reported narrative of events that day isn't accurate.

"He's a friend of Cody's, and says many of those details are inaccurate. He said the wolf was actually a young male, not a young female. He says that, according to what he understands, Cody did not run it over with the snowmobile. He used the snowmobile to catch up to it and then captured it physically, and sort of had the idea of keeping it as a pet. He wasn't trying to torture it. He wanted to keep it as a pet. But then other people who knew him said, Look, Cody, that's a terrible idea. And so that's ultimately the decision was made to kill the wolf, which is perfectly legal to do in that part of Wyoming. So, you know, make of that what you will."

Gilliam said he's concerned that Hogs For Hope, and others who share the organizer's views, want wolves put back o