Today on the show, we hear how more businesses are registering in the Cowboy State. A new business court could help bring more. Wyoming is ranking better every year on child and family wellbeing. But more can be done. And, how one Kinnear resident is supporting change for people involved in the justice system. Those stories and more.

In Albany County, the school board pitched a new policy Wednesday that would limit students’ ability to make or share deepfakes.

Deepfakes are AI-generated videos or other AI-generated media depicting real people, often doing or saying things they did not actually say or do.

As the technology to make them has become more ubiquitous, deepfakes have been used to alter news photos, push misinformation and generate nonconsensual sexually explicit content, sometimes even involving minors.

“We just have to be very strong in saying, ‘No, we’re not going to do this in our district,’” Superintendent John Goldhardt said during the school board’s most recent meeting.

The proposed policy would prohibit students from making or sharing deepfakes depicting private individuals, like classmates or teachers, but not necessarily public individuals like celebrities or the president.

Chief Human Resources Officer Nathan Cowper said it would also ban all deepfakes depicting sexual activity.

“I would say those are the two main prohibitions of the policy,” he said. “We are always behind in these situations, and so the policy does say that this policy should be reviewed annually.”

School leaders weren’t aware of any other school districts in Wyoming looking into similar policies, but said Albany County should be proactive.

“Deepfakes between students have impacted the mental health and well-being of students, and unfortunately there have been young people across the country who have taken their own lives due to the severity of a deepfake,” Goldhardt said in an email. “In addition, deepfakes can potentially destroy and/or severely harm an educator's professional and personal reputation and credibility, and that is simply unacceptable.”

The move comes as a new state law adds criminal penalties for the making or sharing of nonconsensual sexual deepfakes.

Albany County Schools’ proposal passed unanimously on first reading this week. It will need to pass three readings to take effect.

School leaders say they are developing a more “comprehensive” AI policy that could be adopted next summer.

This story is part of our Quick Hits series. This series will bring you breaking news and short updates from throughout the state.

One of the most popular tourist destinations in the country, Yellowstone National Park, has its busiest May on record.

The National Park Service (NPS) says 570,272 people visited the park in May. That number is 20% higher than in May of 2021, which kicked off the busiest year on record with more than 4.8 million visitors. Yellowstone has seen more visitors this year to date, around 773,653 people, which is slightly higher than last year. This is typically the start of the park’s peak season. Other popular national parks, like Grand Teton and Yosemite, have also seen an uptick in visitation in May.

This year also marks the 250th Anniversary of American Independence celebrations. Yellowstone will be hosting many celebrations, which could draw crowds. Independence Day weekend will be free admission for Wyoming residents.

The growth in visitation comes at a time when Wyoming’s national parks face a combined $1.6 billion maintenance backlog. Pres. Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” has decreased the NPS budget by nearly $67 million since it was passed last year.

Yellowstone is due for upgrades to meet building codes, new wastewater systems, and more than 1,000 miles of trail work. With less funding, visitors have already experienced maintenance delays and staffing shortages.

Members of the Torrington High School band recently returned from a once-in-a-lifetime trip. The Torrington Telegram reports they traveled to Philadelphia and Washington, DC, to perform as part of the America 250 Concert Series. Students got to tour several iconic American landmarks and museums.

Powell High School music makers also recently returned from a trip, but this one was a bit further afield. The Powell Tribune reports band and choir students performed in historic venues in Italy. They were the first Wyoming group to present in Ponte San Nicolo outside of Venice.

And, according to the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, the amount of water from one of Old Faithful Geyser’s eruptions could fill 140 household bathtubs.

America’s Minutes-Stories of America 250
Crispus Attucks

90 Second stories of the Revolution, the Founding and Wyoming’s place in the American story.

This story is part of our Quick Hits series. This series will bring you breaking news and short updates from throughout the state.

Boaters found a deceased kayaker in Yellowstone Lake earlier this week.

Forty-one-year-old Brandon Rhea of Denver was discovered in the water on the northwest shore of the lake near Bridge Bay in Yellowstone National Park (YNP) on June 8.

National Park Service rangers responded and recovered the body, as well as a capsized kayak and personal belongings.

The death is under investigation and the agency has provided no other details beyond a June 11 press release at this time.

After Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) was detected on the National Elk Refuge in May, it prompted questions about one of Jackson’s water sources, also on the refuge.

Teton County Public Health Director Travis Riddell said in an interview he is exploring options to test the town’s water supply to get ahead of any potential concerns.

“People can choose to eat or not eat elk that may be contaminated with this,” Riddell said. “But your choice of where you get your public drinking water is a little bit [of a] different scenario.”

Hunters are advised against eating elk that could have been carrying the disease. All elk hunted on the refuge are required to be submitted for testing. On state lands, testing is only focused on priority herds.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services did not respond about water concerns or elk management plans by press time.

“The chance that this could become an actual health threat to humans is quite low,” Riddell said. “But it’s a new and emerging problem.”

Right now, there’s no indication that CWD — which primarily affects elk, moose and deer — can spread to humans. But the highly contagious disease kills 100% of its ungulate hosts.

Prion diseases – such as scrapie in sheep – are generally limited to species-specific boundaries, according to the Wyoming Wildlife Federation.

“That barrier seems to be stronger with CWD than the mad cow disease that made news in past decades,” the federation states on its website.

That barrier, however, is not necessarily always enough. In 2002, the fatal neurologic disorder Creutzfeldt-Jakob was found in hunters who caught a prion disease, what scientists call a “transmissible spongiform encephalopathy” like CWD.

For CWD, when a sick animal expels bodily fluids, it leaves behind the damaged proteins, or prions. Those can last in soil for years, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Riddell wants to know if any of the prions can be detected in the water given Jackson’s proximity to the refuge. He doesn’t yet know what that process could look like.

“No decision has been made yet,” Riddell said, “You can’t just send a water sample off to a standard commercial water lab and ask them to look for prions.”

That testing requires specialized expertise, Riddell added. It’s unclear if any municipality with known local CWD outbreaks across the country has tested a public water supply.

Testing is on the county’s radar because Jackson draws water from wells at the south end of the refuge. WyoFile reported that’s also the area where a sick cow elk was found and euthanized for CWD testing in April, which resulted in the positive test.

Researchers in Wyoming have isolated prions in soil samples in other parts of the state, including the mule deer Project Herd in the Wind River Basin, according to Ben Wise, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department’s disease biologist. The state has since started banking samples from feedgrounds to test for themselves.

But that doesn’t mean prions will show up in Jackson’s water.

“I’m very confident that detecting prion in water in Jackson is going to be a very, very, low probability,” said Wise. “[CWD is] new enough here. The density of prion is just not high enough to really see it in … water or the soil samples out on the refuge.”

But collecting data could still provide a helpful baseline, Wise said. Although, his department studies the implications for wildlife, not for humans.

Experts point to the high concentration of elk at the refuge as a stage ripe for disease spread. Over 11,000 elk congregate in close quarters each winter near the northern edge of town. There, they subsist on alfalfa pellets dolled out on the largest of 22 feedgrounds in Wyoming. Other states such as Montana have banned the controversial practice and asked Wyoming to do the same to keep ungulates healthy.

CWD’s epicenter is thought to stem from northern Colorado, where the first case was discovered in 1967. Since the disease made its way to Wyoming nearly two decades later, wildlife managers have found it at five of the 21 state-run feedgrounds.

CWD was first confirmed in the Jackson herd in 2020, after an elk tested positive in Grand Teton National Park.

For the Jackson herd, Wise said experts generally believe the long-term prognosis points to population decline for the country’s largest migratory elk herd.

“What that effect is going to be, it could be very minute,” Wise said. “It could be large. We don’t know.”

An abrupt end to feeding also risks the longevity of Jackson’s famous herd, which draws visitors from all over the world. Proponents of feedgrounds, such as outfitters, don’t want to see elk die of starvation, either. Elk plan managers are yet to announce any drastic changes in response to the refuge’s first positive test.

America’s Minutes-Stories of America 250
Yellowstone

90 Second stories of the Revolution, the Founding and Wyoming’s place in the American story.

America’s Minutes-Stories of America 250
Yorktown

90 Second stories of the Revolution, the Founding and Wyoming’s place in the American story.