Bridger-Teton National Forest

With the Fourth of July and hot and dry weather this week, fire managers are asking Wyomingites to be considerate of fire potential. Check your county’s emergency services website to sign up for evacuation and other emergency alerts delivered to your cell phone.

More than 200 people are working from the air and on the ground to suppress the fire despite erratic winds.

The National Interagency Fire Center predicts Wyoming will have an average fire season until August, when the likelihood of big fires will increase in the northeast part of the state.

The fire is about 35 miles west of Pinedale and is roughly 900 acres as of midday Monday.

Five employees of Friends of Bridger Teton will work alongside forest staff.

Friends of the Bridger-Teton is hiring five former forest workers. They’ll help complete projects the forest can’t get to this summer – an accumulation of years of lack of funding and more recently, DOGE cuts.

Several former employees of the Bridger-Teton National Forest and other forests received emails on March 18 that have left them “cautiously optimistic” they may have their jobs back. But the uncertainty of the future remains.

The layoffs come as Wyoming struggles with an affordable housing crisis.

A beloved fishing lake near Pinedale now has no fish. To top it off, the entire lake turned red a couple months ago, and land managers and biologists don’t know exactly why. WyoFile’s Mike Koshmrl first reported on this in early December and gives us a debrief.

Fire crews are starting to do some prescribed burning in Grand Teton National Park this week. The efforts help reduce future wildfire risk by burning dead wood and brush in the cooler late fall conditions.