Episode Details

It's time to take a look at what's happening around Wyoming for Tuesday, July 15th. I'm Wendy Corr, bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily newsroom - Brought to you by Cheyenne Frontier Days. Ten days of rodeo thrills, Xtreme Bulls, live concerts, carnival rides, western heritage, and unforgettable cowboy spirit in Cheyenne, Wyoming! Don't miss the 129th Daddy of 'Em all July 18-27th.

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Yellowstone National Park has announced the discovery of a new thermal feature — a 13-foot baby blue hot spring in the Norris Geyser Basin.

The U.S. Geological Survey announced that the new pool emerged sometime around Christmas and was first spotted in April. While the feature doesn't have a name, Cowboy State Daily's Andrew Rossi reports that it's an exciting new addition to the most dynamic thermal basin in Yellowstone.

"It was a Christmas gift of sorts to geologists who study Yellowstone National Park. It wasn't there December 19 of 2024, but it started forming within that window, and by February, we had a 13 foot wide pool that is filled with - it's a hot spring, so its water is warm, but not scalding hot… the kind of milky blue color, which Wendy so aptly described, like the blue milk from Star Wars… comes from the high amount of dissolved silica in the water. So it's just kind of like a cloudy blue that's a result of the rock that's in the area. But it is a new pool in Yellowstone, and geologists are monitoring it very closely, because it's it's an ever changing place, but it's exciting when you get something like this that came subtly."

Unlike the explosion in Biscuit Basin last year, or other more volatile changes in Yellowstone, the event that led to the formation of this new pool didn't register on any of Yellowstone's seismic stations and barely registered on acoustic sensors.

Read the full story HERE.

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While efforts are moving forward to reverse part of a Biden administration rule that would end mining coal in Wyoming's Powder River Basin by 2041, Montana faces a similar fight.

Cowboy State Daily's David Madison reports that Montana's entire congressional delegation has introduced legislation to overturn a Biden-era decision that effectively bans new coal leasing on nearly 2 million acres of federal land in eastern Montana.

"I won't get into the kind of boring minutia of the rule making, but they can introduce a resolution to essentially reverse decisions made in the Miles City Resource Management Plan, which oversees Montana's section of the Powder River Basin. So it's a lot of area, it's a lot of coal resource, and we'll see how the industry responds… We spoke to one local conservationist who's worried that this whole process and approval timeline is speeding up so much that he's concerned that he and his neighbors might not have their voice heard as they're watching different areas in eastern Montana get put up for potential development."

The Powder River Basin spans both Montana and Wyoming and makes up about 85% of federal coal production and 40% of all coal production in the United States.

Read the full story HERE.

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A 61-year-old New Zealand man was sentenced Monday to 4-4.5 years in a Wyoming prison for stealing millions of dollars in silver and gold from his father's Lincoln County home while his 90-year-old father was away from home.

Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports that in late 2023, Michael Reps started taking gold from his father's home, but told authorities that he had no idea that this c