Rebecca Martinez

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There’s a new news service in Fremont County that exists solely on the Internet. County-10-dot-com is powered by a full-time reporter and a Lander software company, and offers hyper-local, to-the-minute reports on its website and social media outlets. The service exploded since its launch in early December – it had 15-thousand views its first month – and it’s still growing. Wyoming Public Radio’s Rebecca Martinez visited their Lander office and filed this story.

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The Wyoming house voted to introduce a bill that would require people applying for public assistance to submit to drug testing. If an applicant tests positive for controlled substances, his or her eligibility would be suspended.
Republican Sue Wallis of Recluse supported the bill. She says drug testing is a normal part of many jobs, so it’s fair to require it of people receiving state support.
“I mean, you know I’m all about liberty and freedom,” says Wallis. “But if you’re using taxpayer dollars, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suggest that maybe you need to submit to those drug tests.”
Democrat Joe Barbuto of Rock Springs voted against the bill. He says in a budget session, the state has bigger fish to fry.

The Travel, Recreation, Wildlife and Cultural Resources Interim Committee has passed a final draft of a wolf management plan. The state must maintain no fewer than 10 breeding pairs or a hundred individuals and would protect wolves in Yellowstone and the Wind River Reservation, designate them as trophy game in parts of the Western Mountains, and allow people to shoot them on sight in the remaining 85 percent of Wyoming.

Rep. Allen Jaggi of Uinta and Sweetwater Counties says the bill might not be perfect, but it’s a hard-fought effort to satisfy federal wildlife protection standards and Wyoming ranchers.

The federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration is honoring a youth program on the Wind River Reservation for its efforts to prevent substance abuse and the spread of HIV.

This is the first time a Native American group has received a Voices of Prevention award. The Wind River Tribal Youth Program offers a range of health and social programs to kids from the Northern Arapaho Tribe. 

Executive Director Donna Trosper says substance abuse is a big problem among young people in the area.

“Alcohol leads to harder drugs, harder drugs leads to the gang mentality, whatever they’re watching on TV becomes something that they want to be a part of, because they’re not being a part of anything else,” says Trosper.

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Company proposes boosting Wyoming’s energy economy with coal-to-oil plant
The town of Medicine Bow is currently planning for a DKRW proposed coal to liquids conversion facility. The plant would be a financial boom for the state and bring jobs to the county. But this isn’t the first time Wyoming is looking into a project that would add value to its coal so it’s undergoing close scrutiny.

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DKRW Advanced Fuels has licensed technology from GE and Exxon-Mobil to transform coal into gasoline at a proposed plant in Medicine Bow. But theirs is just one system of creating liquid fuel. Wyoming Public Radio’s Rebecca Martinez spoke with some experts about how synthetic gas, or syngas, is made.

If you’ve got the stagger and the moan, a Wyoming film company is looking for you.

Bighorn Samurai Sinema will host auditions this month for extras and small roles in its upcoming zombie Western, “From the Trailer to the Grave.”

Executive Producer K. Harrison Sweeney says the film is a romantic comedy set in the not-too-distant future, in which a zombie epidemic is sweeping the nation. Wyoming is remote and sparsely populated enough to build a wall around its perimeter before it can be infected. Sweeney says he’s looking for people to play zombies, but he also wants survivors with a variety of talents.

“No skill set is too obscure,” Sweeney said. “There’s gonna be a rapier and dagger fight between a zombie and human. There’s roping.”

The Western Sugar Cooperative’s Lovell facility is working day and night to process an unexpectedly abundant yield of sugar beets from this fall.

Wyoming beet farmers harvest their crops in October, and in a normal year, processing would wrap up about now. But super cooperative beets in 2011 were exceptionally large, yielding almost 29 tons of sugar per acre. That’s a two-and-a-half ton increase from the year before.

It’s a relief for Glen Reed, who raises sugar beets in Cody. He said an autumn cold snap in 2009 ruined about 40 percent of his crop.

“We had about 4 days in the teens it just froze the beet crop and froze the ground too. And so the beets that were exposed froze and compromised their ability to be able to be put in long-term storage.”

The show will go on, says the Laramie Film Society. For weeks the group has been hawking pre-sale tickets for its annual Spring Film Series at the Wyo Theatre.

The series usually features artistic films, many of which are nominated for Academy Awards.  After years of poor attendance, the owners of the single-screen Wyo Theater threatened to cancel the series unless the group could sell 500 tickets by the Monday deadline. The group has sold more than twice that many.

Film Society President Bob Roten  says film buffs usually have to go to other cities to watch movies like these. This series is meant to give them options.

Despite faltering natural gas prices, the mining sector led all other Wyoming industries in job growth during the second quarter of 2011. That’s according to a report by the Wyoming Department of Workforce Services.

Statewide employment grew by more than 2,000 jobs that quarter, and about a third of those came from oil and gas positions in Natrona County alone.

Department of Workforce Services Senior Economist David Bullard says that while natural gas prices dropped, other energy sectors kept busy, and had more jobs to fill.

"A significant portion are related to oil, and the oil prices have held up well, so that may be offsetting a lack of drilling for natural gas."

Bullard says the preview of the third quarter showed continued growth in the industry. 

The Bureau of Land Management has drastically cut the amount of land it plans to open up for oil shale and tar sands development in Wyoming, Colorado and Utah.

The BLM’s 2008 environmental impact statement would have allowed 2 million acres to be open for Oil Shale Research, Development, and Demonstration Leases.

Conservation groups joined to sue the BLM for endangering wilderness lands and core sage-grouse habitat, and reached a settlement last year. As a result of that settlement the BLM released a new plan Friday that would open up only 461,000 acres to RD&D leases.

BLM spokesperson Megan Crandall says the agency believes the land included in the plan is now “most appropriate” for this energy research.

An international team of scientists are studying earth core samples from the Bighorn Mountains to better understand climate change. Traces of natural substances leave hints about ancient climates in the rock.

Will Clyde teaches geology at the University of New Hampshire and leads the Project. He says the Bighorns were created during a period of intense global warming, 56 million years ago. There were even palm trees and crocodiles living in Wyoming.  Clyde’s team is investigating natural occurrences that threw off the earth’s carbon cycle, causing the earth’s temperature to spike drastically.

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A population of pronghorn antelope have been migrating back and forth between the Red Desert and Bridger-Teton National Park for thousands of years, despite growing development threatening their path. Individual conservation efforts have protected parts of their route, but the Wyoming Department of Transportation is working on a project near Pinedale that might make the trip a whole lot easier. Wyoming Public Radio’s Rebecca Martinez reports.

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