Episode Details

It's time to take a look at what's happening around Wyoming for Wednesday, June 25th. 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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Even if they can't agree on much else, Wyomingites across the board value access to public land. That's what the state's four living former governors told Cowboy State Daily's Mark Heinz. They said that it comes as no surprise that strong opposition to proposed public land sales crossed political party and ideological lines.

"We talked today with all four of Wyoming's living formal former governors, Matt Mead, Dave Freudenthal, Jim Geringer and Mike Sullivan, and they all pretty much said the same thing, that really that's a huge part of why people even live in Wyoming is those vast tracts of easily accessible public land right outside their back doors. They don't have to ask anybody permission. They don't need any special permits, no trespass fees. They just go where they want to. You know, whether it's hunting, fishing, mountain biking, name, any outdoor activity that you can name, Wyomingites love it. And so that was one big reason why there was such a unified pushback against this bill."

Read the full story HERE.

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Now Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports that the Senator from Utah who has ignited controversy in Western states by proposing a mandatory selloff of between 2 million and 3 million acres of public lands in the next five years is offering to scale back his plan.

"Monday night, Senator Mike Lee did this big post on x.com like, I'm gonna pull the Forest Service lands. I'm gonna winnow the BLM land so it's just five miles outside of a population center. We're gonna have freedom zones to benefit American families. And it sounded great. And some people were like, yeah, they're listening, you know, to the outcry. But David Wills, who works for a group that's concerned about public lands, was like, we haven't seen the text, firstly. And secondly, I mean, this could hit the Senate floor Thursday, whereas usually, like, if there's a public land transfer under… federal law, there's like weeks of public comment and there's like stakeholder meetings, and there's all this deliberation. So he was saying, it still is something that is getting jammed through in a budget reconciliation bill."

Alex Bakken, who spoke to Cowboy State Daily on Tuesday in his role as president of the Bow Hunters of Wyoming, was cautiously optimistic after hearing Lee's proposed change. If nothing else, he said, it's a sign of congressional lawmakers listening to people.

Read the full story HERE.

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A revolution in drilling technology is transforming Wyoming's Powder River Basin, turning what was once an economically challenging oil play into a more promising frontier.

The revolution centers on horizontal drilling. Although the technique has been around for more than a century, Cowboy State Daily's David Madison reports that Anschutz Exploration Corp is pushing the industry by drilling Wyoming's first 3-mile lateral well on a pad in Johnson County.

"If you think of a oil well as a straw going into the ground, the horizontal technology essentially bends the straw and goes hori