Articles written by Mike Koshmrl


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  • Judge backs feds in Wyoming black-footed ferret dispute

    Mike Koshmrl, WyoFile.com|Sep 12, 2024

    A federal judge has upheld the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's plans for managing black-footed ferrets in Wyoming, the state where the once-presumed-extinct species was rediscovered some four decades ago. The dispute over how the federal government managed the endangered weasel-like animal traces back nearly a decade to when federal wildlife managers officially designated the Wyoming population as "nonessential, experimental." That classification allows for more regulatory flexibility than... Full story

  • BLM wins two lawsuits, clearing way for elimination of two Wyoming wild horse herds

    Mike Koshmrl, WyoFile.com|Aug 22, 2024

    WHITE MOUNTAIN-"That's a lot of horses," lamented Cheyenne resident Robyn Smith from a high-desert ridgeline. It wasn't her first exasperated exclamation. "Argh, oh crap," was her immediate reaction to learning a federal judge had given the Bureau of Land Management the OK to proceed with plans to fully remove two wild horse herds from the landscape in southwest Wyoming. A retired architect donning a "Return to Freedom" ball cap that featured a bucking mustang, Smith proudly described herself... Full story

  • Wyoming wolf torment case catalyzes pack of activists calling for national reform

    Mike Koshmrl, WyoFile.com|Jul 11, 2024

    WASHINGTON, D.C.-Flanked by three fellow activists, Kristin Combs was tired, hungry and catching up on messages after hours of trying to convince congressional staffers that legislation was needed following the most infamous animal welfare case in recent Wyoming history. The all-women activist crew, who traveled from around the country, had met with the offices of several congressional Endangered Species Act Caucus members: U.S. Reps. Debbie Dingell (D-Michigan), Don Beyer (D-Virginia), Raúl... Full story

  • A Wyoming mule deer herd is so riddled with CWD it could nearly vanish

    Mike Koshmrl, WyoFile.com|Jun 27, 2024

    WIND RIVER VALLEY-Biologists Tucker Russell and Rene Schell stopped in their tracks. Spooked out of a daybed, a mule deer doe sprung to her feet. She bounded up a gentle, grassy slope amid badlands-like rock formations overlooking the Wind River, then froze, staring right back. But Russell, with the University of Wyoming, and Schell, with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, had eyes on something else. A still-spotted fawn. Within moments, the youngster abandoned its hiding spot, bolting for mo... Full story

  • Five grizzly bear cubs make the largest litter in Yellowstone-area history

    Mike Koshmrl, WyoFile.com|Jun 13, 2024

    Within hours of the sighting on Wednesday, Frank van Manen caught word that there was a grizzly sow with five cubs in tow spotted in Yellowstone National Park. Five cubs following mom is so unlikely that van Manen, who leads the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team, pondered an explanation. Maybe, he said, there was an adoption event: Sometimes two female siblings produce cubs in the same year, and one ends up with the other's youngsters. "We've seen that before, with adoptions taking place," van... Full story

  • Could Wyoming water get piped to Colorado? A decades-old plan resurfaces

    Mike Koshmrl, WyoFile.com|Jun 6, 2024

    A gas exploration company with Florida ties is pursuing plans to pull groundwater out of existing coalbed methane wells in southern Wyoming, then pipe it into the lower reaches of the water-stressed Colorado River Basin. The project was formally initiated in December, when the State Engineer’s Office received 21 groundwater test well applications from Mark Dolar of Dolar Energy, LLC. The test wells are all located on Bureau of Land Management property south of Rawlins in the Atlantic Rim gas field. Two test well applications have since been r...

  • Wyoming, tribal impasse over hunting rights persists despite judicial order

    Mike Koshmrl, WyoFile.com|May 30, 2024

    It’s been nearly five years since the U.S. Supreme Court issued a landmark decision recognizing tribes’ treaty-based hunting rights, and two months since a lower federal court issued an order related to tribal elk hunting in the Bighorns. Still, many of the fundamental legal and policy questions about where, when and if certain Native Americans are bound by state hunting regulations remain far from resolution. Meanwhile, the landscape of case law in which observers expected the lingering leg... Full story

  • As disease threatens feedground elk, Wyoming mired in planning and consensus-seeking

    Mike Koshmrl, WyoFile.com|Mar 21, 2024

    For the first time in its history, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department has a formal plan in place for managing the state's 21 winter elk feedgrounds. The 96-page document allows for changes to feedgrounds that could avert the worst consequences of an ugly disease that's ramping up - a sickness that scientists expect will devastate Northwest Wyoming's six fed elk herds in the long term if feeding continues. Notably, the plan does not compel reform or call for closing feedgrounds, but it does... Full story

  • How sage grouse eke by in Wyoming's carved-up coalbed methane country

    Mike Koshmrl, WyoFile.com|Jan 11, 2024

    Newly published research exposes the role gas drilling infrastructure played in shrinking habitat for northeast Wyoming's dwindling sage grouse population - and it also provides a blueprint to help the imperiled species continue to exist on industrialized landscapes. In the Powder River Basin, a coalbed methane industry boom around the turn of the century brought with it some 30,000 wells, thousands of miles of roads, power lines and pipelines, along with scores of wastewater ponds resulting... Full story

  • Montana to start trucking grizzlies into Yellowstone region to improve delisting prospects

    Mike Koshmrl, WyoFile.com|Dec 14, 2023

    Fresh grizzly bear bloodlines are expected to arrive in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem this summer, adding genetic diversity to a population of animals that's been isolated for a century. The infusion of genetics will come from the North Continental Divide Ecosystem, and it will roll down the highway in the form of a slumbering grizzly or two. Why truck in grizzly bears to a population last estimated at nearly 1,000 animals? Montana and Wyoming - which have hashed out an agreement - are... Full story

  • Path of the Pronghorn at 'high risk' of being lost

    Mike Koshmrl, WyoFile.com|Nov 16, 2023

    The pathway of a highly migratory western Wyoming pronghorn herd that's been known by researchers for a quarter-century is at "high risk" of being lost. That's according to a draft "threat evaluation" released Thursday by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department in conjunction with an announcement that the state agency will consider identifying or designating migration corridors used by the Sublette Pronghorn Herd. "In summary, the known current and potential threats pose a high risk to the... Full story

  • Western Wyoming's big buck country sees slowest hunt in 30 years

    Mike Koshmrl, WyoFile.com|Oct 26, 2023

    ALPINE - Gary Fralick's calm demeanor shifted to a hustle for the hour that a steady stream of severed heads made its way through his check station on the last Saturday of deer hunting season. The Thayne-based Wyoming Game and Fish Department biologist and his colleague, Kelsie Hayes, checked one ungulate deadhead after another. The red-shirted duo was posted up where Greys River Road exits the Wyoming and Salt River mountain ranges. Fralick knows the spot well: This fall marked his 30th... Full story

  • Problem grizzly? Tribes find success diverting hikers in the Winds

    Mike Koshmrl, WyoFile.com|Sep 28, 2023

    Art Lawson wanted to show actor Martin Sensmeier what the Wind River Indian Reservation was all about when he came through town this summer. So Lawson, the Shoshone and Arapahoe Fish and Game's director, took Sensmeier fishing in the backcountry. The actor - star of the upcoming film, "Wind River: The Next Chapter" - got a good glimpse of the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho's 2.2-million-acre reservation's wild landscape. "A bear just popped up right in front of camp," Lawson recalled of t... Full story

  • Shorn down, growing back: Woolgrowers eye opportunity

    Mike Koshmrl, WyoFile.com|Jul 20, 2023

    WIND RIVER RANGE FOOTHILLS-Kristy Wardell dawned rain gear though the skies were clear. The lifelong rancher was dressed in protective garb to guard against manure and urine that 366 ewes and 442 lambs had discharged along the wheeled journey around the Winds. On her hands and knees, the 59-year-old crawled into the bowels of a big rig she'd driven to flush out the animals, which will summer on Jim Magagna's pasture land along the banks of Lander Creek. Not used to being trucked, the band "had a...

  • What's in store for the devastated Wyoming Range Deer Herd?

    Mike Koshmrl, WyoFile.com|Jun 15, 2023

    WYOMING RANGE-At nearly 14% body fat, mule deer F14 was plump in the rump, and expecting two fawns, going into this most recent winter. The 8-year-old doe's dual pregnancy was par for the course - F14 was prone to birthing twins. She was good at raising them, too. Four of her eight previous fawns had survived to independence. "F14 was a really good mom," University of Wyoming ecology PhD candidate Tayler Lasharr recalled. No track record of success could save F14 and her peers from the brutal...

  • Grizzly mama of the Tetons sets out to break a record

    Mike Koshmrl, WyoFile.com|Apr 6, 2023

    She's 27 years old, reputed for being a stellar mother and knows her way around a crowd. If you live in Jackson Hole she might be your nosy neighbor. Regardless, her olfactory senses are terrific. Wyoming resident Grizzly 399 has lived a wild life that has garnered attention around the world. Like the best of us, she's endured trials and tribulations and heartbreak. And her extraordinary life has inspired untold fans near and far. Hordes of the grizzly's faithful fan club will surely be staked...

  • Bruce Moats' retirement blows another hole through the fraying fabric of Wyoming journalism

    Mike Koshmrl, WyoFile.com|Mar 16, 2023

    Bruce Moats has been accused of never having met a document that shouldn't be public or a meeting that shouldn't be open. "Largely I plead guilty to that, though not totally," the grayed, wiry 66-year-old Cheyenne attorney said. Moats' mindset and bias toward transparency was born partly from his upbringing, he said. Growing up in a massive family, with 10 kids, decision-making was a collective effort. Functioning as a family wouldn't have worked, he said, "unless all of us [knew] what's going... Full story

  • Resolution calls for gathering, slaughter of wild horses for meat

    Mike Koshmrl, WyoFile.com|Feb 2, 2023

    Rep. John Winter (R-Thermopolis) rode horseback into the Red Desert to see some new country last year. An outfitter and rancher, Winter was accompanied by a rangeland specialist and members of the Rock Springs Grazing Association. During the outing he learned a good bit about a growing natural resource concern in that corner of the state: Wild horses. "I'll tell you, there are just too many horses," Winter said. "They're affecting sage grouse and other wildlife, and it's ruining the range." Newl...

  • Understaffed, overworked wardens leery of predator night hunting

    Mike Koshmrl, WyoFile.com|Feb 2, 2023

    CHEYENNE—An “unprecedented” shortage of Wyoming game wardens is adding to angst about a legislative proposal that would attract coyote hunters onto public land at night, adding to the thinned corps’ around-the-clock duties. “Our folks are feeling the pressure of their significant workload that is not shared by as many people as it should be right now,” Wyoming Game and Fish Department Chief Warden Rick King testified last week. “Our folks work really hard and they’ll do the best they can, but that’s really one of the things I worry about: The...

  • Goldfishing the Tetons

    Mike Koshmrl, WyoFile.com|Jan 12, 2023

    GRAND TETON NATIONAL PARK— It wasn’t AJ Duda’s first brush with angling for goldfish and other former aquarium dwellers within view of the Teton Range. The Pine Island, Florida teen, visiting Jackson Hole with family, had scouted this unlikely microfishing honey hole during a prior vacation. This time he came prepared. Armed with a spinning rod rig, line tipped with flies and small jigs, Duda worked the geothermally heated water coursing out of Kelly Warm Springs as it left the small pond....

  • Game and Fish leaders pressed on migration designation delays

    Mike Koshmrl, WyoFile.com|Jan 12, 2023

    Pointing to a three-year delay in implementing Wyoming’s big game migration protection policy, some members of the Wyoming Wildlife Taskforce encouraged wildlife managers to act during the group’s final meeting. “We’re missing opportunities,” Sen. Larry Hicks (R-Baggs) said at the Dec. 14 meeting in Cheyenne. “It frustrates me to no end to sit here and say, ‘Well, we have to have the best-available science.’ We can’t afford the best-available science for every single wildlife population [or] corridor in the state of Wyoming. If that becomes t...

  • Study reveals Yellowstone elk reliance on unprotected private land

    Mike Koshmrl, WyoFile.com|Dec 8, 2022

    Millions of visitors flock to Yellowstone National Park each summer to gawk at geysers, waterfalls and charismatic megafauna like elk. Bugling bulls and their harems of cows are a major part of the draw to the iconic western park that's been protected for the past 150 years. Down the Yellowstone plateau dozens of miles to the east, however, the landscape is privately owned, increasingly valuable and changing rapidly. And the same elk spend much of their lives there. "These herds are important...

  • Wildlife task force takes shaky aim at hunting license abuses

    Mike Koshmrl, Wyofile.com|Jun 23, 2022

    Elk hunt area 124 south of Interstate 80 in the Red Desert, has been held up as a poster child for what’s wrong with the way Wyoming distributes special hunting licenses to landowners. The hunting zone reaching from Rock Springs to Baggs is 70% public land, and its northern half is dominated by the checkerboard-style land distribution which complicates or prevents the public from accessing federal lands. Limited-quota licenses to hunt a bull elk are hard to come by, especially for non-residents: 10 were available in 2021. And seven of those c...

  • Following Cheney censure, Wyo. Republicans evaluate allegiances

    Mike Koshmrl and Dustin Bleizeffer, WyoFile.com|Feb 10, 2022

    ROCK SPRINGS - To Lenore Perry's eye, the Holiday Inn ballroom Saturday night was packed with red dresses, scarlet shirts and a lot of Harriet Hageman supporters. Perry, an attorney, has the same profession as Hageman, who also attended the adult-prom themed "Conservatives in Crimson" gala. Hageman's appeal as a candidate to replace sitting U.S. House Rep. Liz Cheney stems not from their dealings in the courtroom, she said, but rather from getting to know her as a fellow Republican in the... Full story

  • Influencers get a hand on federal lands filming

    Mike Koshmrl, Jackson Hole Daily Via Wyoming News Exchange|Jun 3, 2021

    JACKSON — New legislation spearheaded by U.S. Sen. John Barrasso proposes to do away with permit fees for small film crews and social media influencers shooting video on most federal land. The bill introduced by Wyoming’s senior senator, called the Federal Interior Land Media Act, would codify a recent legal decision that led the National Park Service to suspend permit fees for “low-impact” filming outside wilderness areas. While that change in policy is confined to 85 million acres of Park Service property, the law that has been pitched...

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