At the behest of state lawmakers, Wyoming in 2024 took unprecedented steps to regulate shed antler hunting — actions that have started a western trend. Specifically, the Equality State now requires out-of-state residents to get a conservation stamp and to wait a week, giving residents a head start. 

Those changes caught some shed-seeking Westerners off-guard. But the majority of antler seekers are relishing the new rules, wildlife officials now know. 

“High levels of approval, in and of itself, shows that people were really receptive to the regulation,” said University of California-Berkeley PhD candidate Sam Maher, who’s been studying antler hunting in Wyoming since 2023. 

In 2024, Maher and her collaborators surveyed 318 shed hunters online and in person at trailheads within the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, where there’s a seasonal closure on antler gathering until May 1. The results suggest that 64% of all respondents were in favor of the new restrictions on non-resident antler gathering. To no surprise, Wyoming residents who stood to benefit were the most on board: 87% favored the new rules, versus just 27% of non-residents. 

The new regulations also motivated more locals to hit the hills. Some 22% of the Wyoming residents that Maher and company surveyed said they “would not have shed hunted otherwise,” but went out because there was the perception of less competition. Non-residents, meanwhile, were effectively dissuaded from coming to Wyoming, even after they could on May 8. Some 29% of those surveyed reported not coming because of the new regulations. 

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“We asked residents and non-residents how it changed their behavior,” Maher said of the new rules. “It seemed like the increased enthusiasm by residents offset the fact that non-residents couldn’t come in for the first week.” 

Studying under UC-Berkeley professor and seasonal Wyoming resident Arthur Middleton, Maher has been examining the burgeoning pursuit of antlers in the American West for a chapter in her dissertation. The first batch of data she received after her 2023 surveys provided new insights into the demographic makeup of shed hunters: The majority are white male westerners who like nature and exercise and are not motivated by the high dollar that elkhorn can fetch. She’s adapted the results into a user-friendly story map dubbed “Brown Gold Rush.”    

There’s also a greater goal for the research. Maher and the University of Wyoming’s Tyler Kjorstad are working on an academic paper, “The emerging need to manage scavenged wildlife resources,” that’s going through the peer-review process with the Journal of Biological Conservation.

Kjorstad, who’s with UW’s College of Business, is also working with Maher on another paper estimating the economic contribution of shed hunting in Wyoming. All the data they’re amassing, he said, is useful outside of academia. 

“There’s information that’s advantageous for policy managers and ecologists, and in my opinion, economists,” Kjorstad told WyoFile.

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The steps that Wyoming has taken to regulate shed antler hunting are “a big deal,” Maher said. Those regulations started with seasonal closures back in 2009 to protect wintering wildlife, but have since evolved to protect the experience of shed antler hunting. Antlers fall into a “weird gray area” because, after they separate from an animal, they’re typically not protected from commercial sale, like wild game meat is. 

“The act of regulating this is pretty unprecedented and interesting,” Maher said. It sets the stage, she said, for land and wildlife managers to regulate “similar resources,” naming bird feathers, snake skins and seashells. 

Already, neighboring states are copying Wyoming’s approach to regulating shed hunting. Starting in 2025, for example, out-of-state shed hunters in Idaho will have to possess a nonresident hunting license — a $185 investment. The Montana Legislature also is weighing a bill that proposes a $50 non-resident license fee for shed hunting, according to the Montana Free Press’ bill tracker.

The post Wyomingites dig new antler regs — they’re even shed hunting because of them, survey finds appeared first on WyoFile .

HULETT—Jim Neiman says that the best-case scenario for his family’s timber mill at the base of the Bear Lodge Mountains is that it doesn’t shutter. 

The Crook County sawmill in 2022 shrunk to one shift to survive hard economic times and a dearth of available timber. Three years later, there are what appear to be major industry tailwinds: a pro-logging presidential order, prospective tariff hikes on Canadian timber and now a U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary’s order declaring an “emergency” to stimulate logging on 112.6 million acres of national forest. The order covers nearly 60% of all national forest lands.  

Collectively, it stands to help, Neiman said. The timber sale approval process, which is run through the National Environmental Policy Act, is likely to go much faster. 

“The old process with NEPA could sometimes take a year and a half to five years,” he said. “This will speed that up to a few months.”

Yet, the businessman and cousin of the Wyoming Legislature’s speaker of the House is not optimistic that he’ll be returning to two shifts at his Wyoming mill anytime within the foreseeable future.   

“I would hope to maintain one shift in Hulett and two shifts at our Spearfish operation,” Neiman told WyoFile. 

That’s the optimistic outlook. The alternative is he has to close. 

“Something’s got to happen fast,” he said, “and it can’t wait three years.” 

Hulett, which houses one of the Equality State’s few remaining large commercial sawmills, is in as good a position as any Wyoming community to benefit from what proponents hope will be a Trump-driven revival of a dying timber industry. Yet, industry insiders, watchdog groups and foresters all say that it’s questionable whether another golden era of timber cutting will return to the Black Hills region, or any reach of Wyoming, soon. The infrastructure that would enable such a boom has faded into history, and in its absence prospective large-scale cuts don’t pencil out for large swaths of the state. And there’s likely too much regulatory uncertainty, or not enough accessible timber, to stimulate new mills in the old logging towns, like Afton and Dubois, that lost them long ago.  

Nevertheless, the Trump administration is attempting to stimulate commercial cutting on national forests all around the country. 

Federal directive

The latest effort comes from Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins. An April 3 secretarial order from the Texas attorney eliminates the “objection” process and requirements to provide a range of options under the National Environmental Policy Act when reviewing different timber cutting projects. The regulatory streamlining applies to the majority of the federal forestland nationwide and in Wyoming. Forestland that got bunched in includes those rated at “very high” or “high” wildfire risk, and areas at risk of “substantially increased tree mortality” in the next 15 years. 

A map accompanies the order. By some measures, it’s crude. The map shows that Rollins’ emergency declaration extends to areas that are unlikely to ever be logged because of other federal laws and designations. Encompassed by the emergency declaration are large swaths of designated wilderness areas and inventoried roadless areas, the map shows.

“Wyoming’s got about two-thirds of its forested lands in roadless and wilderness [areas], and so only a third of the Forest Service lands are probably even accessible to manage,” Wyoming State Forester Kelly Norris told WyoFile. “But there are still a lot of lands to manage.” 

From Norris’ perspective, Rollins’ order is the latest in a succession of “positive changes” in trying to “make timber more accessible.” Via that order, the agriculture secretary also directed the Forest Service to update its guidance to speed up timber sales, “increase certainty in future timber supply” and boost cutting. 

Forest Service Acting Associate Chief Chris French announced he was acting on that guidance in tandem on April 3, writing in a memo that he’d be completing a national strategy within 30 days. His memo tasks regional foresters with developing five-year strategies aimed at achieving a 25% increase in timber production within two months of the national strategy’s completion. 

Only time will tell whether that’s an achievable goal within the eight national forests that are partially or fully within Wyoming. But it’ll be “tough,” at least in the view of Bridger-Teton National Forest retiree Andy Norman, a wildfire specialist who has a background in forestry. 

“It’s economics,” Norman said. “You can say as much as you want, but it’s still going to be tough.”

‘Timber mining’

Part of the issue is that Wyoming is a substandard state to grow trees. It often takes so long for trees to mature — a century even — that it’s effectively “timber mining.”

“You harvest them,” Norman said, “you’re not going to come back.”

The other part of the equation is the scarcity of large commercial sawmills that can enable timber sales to pencil out. Only a few remain, including Neiman Enterprises’ operation in Hulett, a Saratoga mill that relies on standing dead timber and the South and Jones Timber Company mill in Evanston. 

Because cut trees have to be shipped to one of those spots or out of state, the cost of diesel and gasoline can have a lot of bearing on the viability of a logging project, Norris said. 

There are subsidized logging efforts underway in parts of Wyoming a long way from a sawmill. 

Norris pointed to the Dunoir watershed in the Shoshone National Forest, which was designated as a “critical fireshed” during the Biden administration. 

“Funding was given to do the work,” the state forester said. The National Forest Foundation and Mule Deer Foundation, she said, have also assisted in the project by paying for a “Good Neighbor Authority” forester position. 

U.S. Forest Service Rocky Mountain Regional Forester Troy Heithecker said in early March that the bipartisan Fix Our Forests Act could speed up the work in the Dunoir area. The act, which has passed the U.S. House, has been introduced in the Senate and has support even from Democratic lawmakers like California Sen. Alex Padilla.

“We’re ready,” Heithecker told state lawmakers at the Legislature’s annual “forest health briefing.” “We have projects lined up as soon as that bill passes.”

In Hulett, Neiman operates out of a region that’s one of the most favorable for modern-day Wyoming logging. The dominant conifer in the Black Hills is the ponderosa, which is faster growing. And there are still mills in close proximity, unlike many of Wyoming’s other national forests.  

“We’ve got the sawmill capacity, but we don’t have the supply of trees,” said Dave Mertz, a retired Black Hills National Forest staffer who’s now a member of a South Dakota public lands stewardship group, the Norbeck Society. “I would say that the Black Hills National Forest is an outlier because of that.” 

‘Been through a lot’

The Black Hills region’s forests, he said, have “been through a lot,” including the mountain pine beetle epidemic and large wildfires around the turn of the century. Overcutting what’s left, he said, is a concern — and partly for the industry’s sake. 

“The Norbeck Society, and pretty much everybody, wants to see a sawmill industry here for the long term,” Mertz said. “We absolutely realize the value of having that, but we think that the surest way to lose them would be overcutting the forest.”

“Eventually,” he added, “there won’t be enough left there to support them.”

But Neiman simultaneously feels pressure to bring in more timber from the Black Hills National Forest to keep the lights on and his remaining staff employed. Across all his mills, he’s already laid off 200 people in the last five years. At the current rate of timber sales, he’s not going to be able to keep going, he said. 

“They’ve only put 400,000 board feet up,” Neiman said of the current fiscal year. “That won’t run us a week. That’s unacceptable.” 

Neiman spoke from a family restaurant, the 77 Steakhouse and Saloon, located in the clubhouse of a golf course that he built to help diversify the northeastern Wyoming community’s economy. He brought golf to Crook County, along with an airport, after seeing firsthand what happened to Pacific Northwest timber towns when the floor fell out during the spotted owl wars late last century. 

“Unemployment went to 70%, divorce rates went up, all the social issues just skyrocketed,” Neiman said. 

Hulett’s in a relatively better position if its mill someday becomes a relic. There’s a tourism economy from Devil’s Tower National Monument and an active real estate industry capitalizing on ranchland that’s being subdivided. That, however, is yet another challenging dynamic for commercial timber cutting in the Bear Lodge Mountains. 

Some of the newcomers don’t allow logging, said Doug Mills, who runs Bearlodge Forest Products, a business that includes a pallet-cutting mill in Hulett. Even when it’s available for cutting, subdivided ranchland doesn’t always make financial sense to log, he said.

“You can’t just roll in there and take care of a guy’s 40 acres,” Mills said. “It costs so much to mobilize equipment.” 

Challenges aside, Mills, like Neiman, is hopeful that the storm of federal policy changes “lifts some of the pressure” and provides some momentum to keep going. 

“A lot of the mills are tapering down, or selling off,” Mills said. “Once a business like that … goes away, they don’t come back very soon.”

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With spring comes wedding season, when Cara Rank begins to rent table settings for Jackson Hole occasions with hundreds of guests. She plans ahead, placing orders six to nine months in advance. President Donald Trump’s now-paused tariffs would have slapped a $40,000 import tax on her roughly $200,000 shipment of hand-painted porcelain dinnerware, cutlery and glassware — all coming from Europe in May.

Preparing to absorb that cost on Wednesday morning and fearing a recession, Rank decided not to hire a new full-time position, at a salary of $70,000 with benefits, even though she had a finalist for the job. 

“Do they want me to put people to work and pay them a living wage or do they want me to pay tariffs?” Rank told WyoFile on Wednesday. “Because that’s the decision in my mind.”

But then Trump soon reversed course, announcing a 90-day pause on all “reciprocal” tariffs that went into effect at midnight, except for China, which is now facing a triple-digit tariff. (Trump did maintain a 10% tariff rate on most countries.)

“I think the message that was sent to Donald Trump was very clear that the world will not accept these tariffs. What you saw yesterday was him reacting to that,” Rank said. “It’s a roller coaster, you don’t know how to plan for your business because he is so erratic.”

Small businesses from Jackson to Casper are being whipsawed by the Trump administration’s on-again, off-again tariffs on one side and a global trading system that they depend upon to run their businesses on the other. Small businesses accounted for 129,426, or 65.1%, of Wyoming employees, according to a 2024 report by the U.S. Small Business Administration. 

Rank owns two Jackson businesses, Objet West by XoWyo, which does event rentals, and XoWyo Paper and Press, which also relies on imported materials to print high-end wedding invitations and other custom stationery. She has 11 employees right now, and that number will jump to 25 during the height of weddings and other summer events.

Rank’s pessimism about the economy Wednesday turned to cautious optimism by Thursday. For now, facing 10% baseline tariffs Trump imposed April 5 on nearly all countries, she might still hire that position and grow her company, she said. 

Wyoming businesses are at the mercy of a global trading system that has been decades in the making. One Casper storefront, and its mannequins, has stood watch through the many changes. Dawn Stevenson took ownership of the Mode O’ Day clothing store franchise in downtown Casper in 1974. That same year, Congress passed the Trade Act of 1974, giving the president more authority to negotiate trade deals.

At that time, Casper’s store was one of 840 franchises around the country. In a 2019 interview with Oil City News, Stevenson said the company eventually rebranded to Fashion Crossroads to stay relevant with changing trends, but went bankrupt in the 1990s. Stevenson bought the brand and kept operating the store. 

Kyleen Stevenson-Braxton bought the store from her mother, and Fashion Crossroads remains a steady presence today, celebrating its 50th anniversary last year. But Stevenson-Braxton now runs a business woven together by global relationships. America’s textile manufacturing industry is almost nonexistent, so stocking a store with American-made goods affordably and consistently isn’t an option. 

Instead, Stevenson-Braxton orders a lot of her premium items from Canadian producers, comparing their textile industry to what America’s once offered as far as quality. With her current stock pre-booked with vendors last year, prices are locked in through the fall season. 

“I won’t see price changes until I go to market in August when I’m looking at the spring 2026 season,” she said. 

Her store’s less expensive merchandise comes mainly from China, India and Mexico, and she expects to see those prices rising soon. Although the Trump administration paused higher tariffs for countries like India, the president doubled down on China.

“Based on the lack of respect that China has shown to the World’s Markets, I am hereby raising the Tariff charged to China by the United States of America to 125%, effective immediately,” Trump posted Wednesday on Truth Social. “At some point, hopefully in the near future, China will realize that the days of ripping off the U.S.A., and other Countries, is no longer sustainable or acceptable.” (The cumulative U.S. rate for Chinese imports is now 145%.)

Closer to home, Stevenson-Braxton is afraid she might have to drop vendors she’s used for decades if they’re forced to price themselves out of the market, particularly those based in Canada. 

“It’s very scary to me honestly as a business owner,” she said. “Not just the tariffs, but I’m afraid that our economy’s going to get broken.” 

All the turmoil and uncertainty follows what has already been a tough time for clothing retailers. 

“Small businesses in general – and clothing in particular – we never really recovered from COVID because supply chains were affected and all of the elements that go into making clothing went up [in price]. So thread, buttons, zippers, cloth, all of these commodities went up in price.” 

She said wholesale and operating costs such as rent and energy have risen as well. “You have a choice: You can either pass it on or you can try and eat it, but we can’t pass on all of these increases, and we can’t just eat all of it.”

There’s only so much her store can absorb before she has to pass costs on to her customers, she said, “and then the customer has a threshold of what they’re willing to spend because they’re dealing with all of the same things.”

Another Casper business, Wyoming Camera Outfitters, carries consumer and professional imaging gear from Canon, Nikon and Sony. They also have extensive offerings of aftermarket lens makers, such as Tamron. 

It’s been chaotic behind the scenes, store manager Chris Luse said Tuesday before Trump reversed course on hefty tariffs for countries like Japan. Most of the equipment the store offers is manufactured in Japan and the Philippines, with some imports from China and other Asian countries. 

“We’re getting emails left and right from all of the manufacturers,” he said. He said the first thing they’ll likely see is quick elimination of rebates and incentives. 

Luse thinks the manufacturers will have something of a longer term outlook by the end of this week. “Most of the manufacturers should start having better game plans by then.” 

The store has heard from numerous regular customers who are worried about price increases, and they’ve seen a bit of “panic buying” already. 

Rank herself was contemplating rushing purchases on electronics for her business to get ahead of tariff-induced price hikes. While somewhat reassured by Trump’s pause, Rank is still adding up what the 10% baseline tariff will mean for her bottom line. Her business also typically buys packing materials, bags, foam, ink, tape and glue from China.

“What’s going to happen with China? Should I stock up?” Rank pondered Thursday. “Do I want to spend $10,000 on computers today rather than spacing it out over three to four months?”

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A dismayed Chris Servheen is raising the alarm about what’s become of federal scientists who have kept watch over the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem’s grizzly bear population for the last 55 years. 

The group of research biologists and technicians, known as the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team, are being hamstrung at best and arguably dismantled, he told WyoFile. For decades, until his retirement in 2016, Sevheen worked closely with the study team while coordinating grizzly bear recovery for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 

“It’s functionally destroying the organization,” Servheen said Thursday. “The study team has been in place since 1970 — over 50 years of work and experience and knowledge. It’s going to just disappear and die.” 

Servheen’s perplexed about what the Trump administration has to gain. 

“How could anybody be so negligent and vile that they’re trying to destroy something that has brought grizzly bears back from the edge of extinction?” he said. “Why would you do that? It’s just so destructive.”

Led by Elon Musk, the Department of Government Efficiency’s dismantling started with a hiring freeze. Longtime supervisory wildlife biologist Mark Haroldson retired, and his position is not being filled, according to Servheen. Then, the team’s longtime leader, Frank van Manen, announced an earlier-than-desired retirement. 

“He didn’t want to leave,” Servheen said of van Manen, who declined to comment. 

According to Servheen, van Manen’s departure was related to the federal government’s ongoing upheaval.  

“They’re putting fear into people,” Servheen said. “That’s basically evil, to do that to hard-working people who have been civil servants for decades.” 

The Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team is part of the U.S. Geological Survey, and its website lists four other employees. Three are technicians, which are often seasonal, entry-level employees. The remaining staff biologist has been in the job about three years.

If any of the study team’s employees opt to stick it out amid a second wave of buyouts, they’re likely to be out of an office space come fall. The Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center, described by its director as “one of the nation’s key laboratories to study the ecosystems and species of the Northern Rockies,” is one of hundreds of federal facilities being shuttered by DOGE. 

Although located in Bozeman, many of the federal facility’s researchers do work in Wyoming. 

“They do all kinds of other stuff: brucellosis and chronic wasting disease and aquatic species,” Servheen said. “It’s a huge science center.” 

The planned closure has elicited protests. According to Yellowstonian.org, 42 retired or active biologists petitioned Montana’s congressional delegation to use their influence to “protect [the science center] and its employees from these unwarranted attacks by DOGE.”

Federal offices located in Wyoming have not escaped the closures. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s tribal-focused Lander conservation office and a USGS Cheyenne water science station are among those that have been marked for the chopping block. 

WyoFile could not officially confirm impacts to the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team. Federal agencies under the Trump administration have declined or not responded to WyoFile’s requests for more information on downsizing and office closures. An inquiry to a USGS public affairs officer on Thursday yielded no information about the matter. 

The Center for Biological Diversity has been pressing the federal agency for details as well. On Thursday, the environmental advocacy organization publicized a Freedom of Information Act request to gain more insight into the future of the federal grizzly team. 

Both recently departed veteran study team members — van Manen and Haroldson — are staying engaged in grizzly science in pro-bono emeritus roles, according to a source familiar with the situation. 

Nevertheless, Servheen worries that the hit to the science team could trickle down to the grizzly population — estimated at 1,000 or so bears in the Greater Yellowstone — that it’s charged with studying.

Over the decades, federal researchers have played a pivotal role in improving understanding of the region’s bruins, including completing studies that have helped make the case that grizzly bears are fully recovered and no longer require Endangered Species Act protection. They’ve also amassed mortality and other demographic datasets and compiled an annual report. 

“The foundation of Yellowstone grizzly bear recovery has been built on science,” Servheen said. “Removing that science eliminates our ability to maintain Yellowstone grizzly bears.”

The post Trump and Musk’s DOGE ‘functionally destroying’ historic Yellowstone grizzly science team appeared first on WyoFile .

The five-week pause on abortions at Wellspring Health Access will continue for now. 

A judge heard arguments Tuesday on whether to temporarily halt enforcement of new state regulations that forced the Casper clinic to stop providing abortions in late February. But at the hearing’s conclusion, state Judge Thomas Campbell said he would issue a forthcoming written decision rather than ruling from the bench. 

In the meantime, Wellspring will continue to refer patients seeking abortions to out-of-state providers, while continuing to serve patients seeking non-abortion care, its founder said after the hearing.

“We are committed to seeing this through,” Wellspring president Julie Burkhart told reporters.

Burkhart’s attorneys and state lawyers defending the new regulations spent Tuesday afternoon inside a Casper courtroom debating whether Campbell should grant a preliminary injunction that would pause enforcement of the rules while a legal challenge proceeds.

At issue are two laws passed earlier this year by the Wyoming Legislature. One requires abortion clinics to be regulated as ambulatory surgical centers, a designation that brings with it more strenuous rules and restrictions. The second mandates pregnant women undergo ultrasounds and a 48-hour waiting period before receiving abortion medications.

Unnecessary regulations? 

Attorneys representing Burkhart and other abortion advocates maintain the new laws are unconstitutional and nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt at halting abortion altogether after a separate judge blocked Wyoming’s two existing abortion bans in November. They maintain the new laws unfairly target Wellspring and won’t make women seeking abortions any safer.

“At the end of the day, the state has done nothing to show these laws protect women’s health,” said Peter Modlin, one of several attorneys representing the plaintiffs at Tuesday’s hearing. 

Modlin questioned why a clinic that provides abortions should be regulated as an ambulatory surgical center when its procedures don’t involve things like incisions or anesthesia. He noted that lawmakers don’t require the ambulatory surgical center designation for clinics that provide more invasive procedures like vasectomies. 

“On its face, the law doesn’t make sense if its purpose is to protect public health,” he told the court.

Turning to the ultrasound law, Modlin questioned why the new mandate was necessary. If an ultrasound requirement was truly about keeping pregnant women safe, then why only require it for women seeking abortions, he asked. 

The lawyer also cited comments made by Wyoming Speaker of the House Chip Neiman, who has acknowledged that his push to pass new abortion restrictions is focused on ending the practice, rather than merely making it safer.

Whatever Neiman’s intent, the laws he supported have dramatically halted abortion in Wyoming. Wellspring performed 71 abortions between Jan. 1 and Feb. 27, when the new ambulatory surgical center regulations went into effect. In the month that followed, it stopped providing abortions and referred 80 patients seeking them to other providers.

“This law is carefully tailored to put that one clinic out of business,” Modlin said.

Defending the laws

Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, abortion rights advocates in Wyoming have focused on a 2012 amendment to the Wyoming Constitution that protects people’s rights to make their own health care decisions. Lawyers for abortion providers successfully used that amendment to convince a different judge to overturn the abortion bans passed by the Wyoming Legislature in 2023. That case is set to be argued before the Wyoming Supreme Court next week.

On Tuesday, Senior Assistant Attorney General John Woykovsky took aim at those arguments. The state maintains abortion does not qualify as health care in the context of the constitutional amendment. And regardless, that amendment still allows the Wyoming Legislature to enact restrictions related to health care, he said.

“There is no fundamental right to make health care decisions that are unrestricted,” he said.  

Beyond that, Woykovsky noted that Wellspring, while saying the new rules are too onerous, hasn’t provided details about how much it would cost to upgrade the facility to comply with them.

“All we know is Wellspring has stated they are not willing to try,” he said.

What’s next?

Abortion opponents packed one side of the courtroom for the hearing, and as it wound down, Judge Campbell appeared to acknowledge that many in Wyoming were awaiting his ruling. He said he would try to work as quickly as possible to produce a written opinion.

The case took a circuitous route to even get to this point. Before lawyers had a chance to argue the merits, they clashed over where the case should be heard. The plaintiffs first filed their suit on Feb. 28 in Natrona County. But when Natrona County District Judge Dan Forgey did not act on their request for an emergency hearing after 12 days, the plaintiffs refiled the matter in Teton County, where it was assigned to Melissa Owens, the same judge who struck down the 2023 abortion bans.

Attorneys defending the abortion restrictions fought the venue change, saying it amounted to forum shopping. Owens agreed the case belonged in Natrona County and sent it back there. But instead of going back to Forgey, the case was assigned without public explanation to Campbell. 

While the rules remain in effect, Wellspring is providing medical services that don’t involve abortion, including family planning and general gynecological services, Burkhart told reporters after the hearing. She said she didn’t know how long the clinic could continue to operate without its full slate of services. Wellspring has three doctors and seven other clinical staff, and to date, hasn’t laid anyone off.

In the meantime, the clinic has referred patients to facilities in Colorado, Salt Lake City and Montana. If Campbell grants the preliminary injunction, Wellspring would immediately restart its abortion services, Burkhart said. 

“We are a pretty tenacious group of people,” she said. “We are not going to shrink from this.”

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In a battle over taxes and access to Wyoming’s wide open spaces, U.S. Sens. John Barrasso and Cynthia Lummis voted against a measure that would have blocked the government from selling public land to help fund the federal budget.

Wyoming’s two Republican senators voted Friday evening against a budget amendment brought by Colorado’s Democratic Sen. John Hickenlooper that would “prevent[…] the use of proceeds from public land sales to reduce the Federal deficit.”

Democrats and conservationists have decried the GOP’s openness to sell federal land to fund the budget, saying such a divestiture of beloved public assets would be used to offset tax cuts for the wealthy.

“Republicans are saying that they need to sell off your public lands to solve the housing crisis,” said Sen. Martin Heinrich, a New Mexico Democrat who co-sponsored the failed budget amendment. “But we already have laws that allow for targeted land transfers for things like housing,” he said in an Instagram post.

Instead, Heinrich said, selling public land under budget reconciliation “means their goal isn’t housing — it’s selling your public land to pay for a tax cut for people like Elon Musk.”

Wyoming public land users should take note of their senators’ votes, said Jordan Schreiber, an Equality State native and director of government relations with The Wilderness Society.

“I think it’s a signal to Wyoming [that Barrasso and Lummis] are OK with selling off public lands for the benefit of America’s wealthiest people,” she said.

The Wyoming Outdoor Council also criticized the Wyoming senators, saying their “disappointing” votes “leave our public lands vulnerable in this budget reconciliation process.”

Their vote “completely ignores the vast benefits that our public lands in Wyoming provide for rural communities and our quality of life,” Alec Underwood, Outdoor Council program director, said in a statement.

Neither Lummis nor Barrasso responded to a request for comment Monday.

False hype?

Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah called the anti-sales budget amendment “false hype” that would only restrict use of land-sales funds. “It doesn’t stop land sales,” he said, promoting the effort.

Opposition to federal land sales “restricts our ability to do anything, everything, develop, plan, build houses, which we desperately need, even to fund our schools, our search-and-rescue, our police services,” Lee said. “This is disgraceful,” he said of the amendment just before it failed Friday.

While Republicans say sales will resolve affordable housing problems in expensive real estate markets near national parks and other desirable locations, Democrats and conservationists see the move as more insidious.

That’s because Republicans have put federal land sales on a menu of items Congress could use to pay for the budget, according to a document obtained by Politico. The menu catalogues as a “savings” any action that “increases sale of federal land.” The value of such sales to the budget is “to be determined,” the document states.

“This vote [on the amendment] is a wake-up call and part of a concerning, larger campaign being waged against public lands at every level of government,” said Wilderness Society President Tracy Stone-Manning, who served as director of the Bureau of Land Management under President Joe Biden. In a statement, she ticked off other anti-conservation actions by the Trump administration, “including mass firings of land managers and executive orders that demand more drilling and mining.

“It appears,” she said, “their ultimate goal is to destroy our conservation heritage, totally contrary to what Americans actually value.”

That conservation heritage underpins Wyoming’s outdoor recreation and tourism economies, both of which are centered around the Yellowstone ecosystem. Tourism is Wyoming’s second-largest industry and generated $4.8 billion in 2023, employing 33,000 people, according to a University of Wyoming study.

Wyoming residents and lawmakers have supported the industry and public lands in a number of ways. This year, the Legislature defeated a resolution calling on Congress to begin the process of turning over all federal land in the state, except Yellowstone, to Wyoming.

In 2024, Wyoming lawmakers also authorized the sale of the square-mile Kelly Parcel of state school trust land in Grand Teton National Park for conservation, not for development or affordable housing.

The state itself, through Gov. Mark Gordon and Attorney General Bridget Hill, also refused to back the grossest claims in a fast-track Utah petition to the Supreme Court that sought to give the Beehive State 18.5 million of federal land. Wyoming’s official filing tepidly supported Utah but stopped short of demanding federal property.

The Supreme Court rejected Utah’s effort, dismissing strong Utah backers like Wyoming’s lone U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman and Wyoming Freedom Caucus members. Critics of Western states’ efforts to take over ownership of federal property say the states could never afford to manage the land and would end up selling it to private interests, destroying the public access to public lands enjoyed by all Americans.

Colorado’s Sen. Hickenlooper, who sponsored the anti-sale budget amendment that died Friday, said his measure would have “prevent[ed] this reckless fire sale of our campgrounds, our forests, our national treasures.”

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It’s spring: time for migratory pronghorn to leave the Green River Basin for their more verdant summer habitat to the north, but not without encountering “bottlenecks” along the way. 

The definition of the geographic pinchpoints is straightforward: A “bottleneck” is any portion of migration corridor where “animals are significantly physically or behaviorally altered,” according to Wyoming’s migration policy. 

As the herds drop off the Hoback Rim, the fleet-footed tawny-and-white ungulates hit the “Noble Basin Bottleneck.” It’s a strip of land, primarily on privately deeded ground, where the forest closes in on the open country pronghorn prefer. 

To the northeast, another segment of the migratory Sublette Pronghorn Herd bound for Jackson Hole via the Gros Ventre River drainage faces the “Kendall Bottleneck.” There, the animals encounter a “very tight restriction between a dense residential subdivision that includes many fences and forested habitat to the west that is not preferred by migrating antelope.” 

Those details about the Sublette Pronghorn Herd’s migrations, which are at “high risk” of being lost, come from the Wyoming Game and Fish Department’s recently completed 140-page “biological risk and opportunity assessment.” It’s the next step in the effort to designate and protect the historically significant “Path of the Pronghorn” migration, a process that Wyoming wildlife managers have been navigating for over six years. 

The assessment examined one of the “most data-rich ungulate populations in the world,” and put some numbers and analysis to the landscape that the massive pronghorn herd depends on for survival. Biologists, for example, detailed how there are 13 bottlenecks within the Sublette pronghorn migration corridor. Although they take up the least amount of land within the 2.6-million-acre corridor at just 27,375 acres, nearly half of bottlenecks occur on private land. That’s important because private land is exempted from restrictions imposed by Wyoming’s migration policy. 

“Bottlenecks, some of them were just ideal areas for private land ownership during the settlement era,” said Doug Brimeyer, a recently promoted Game and Fish deputy director. “People selected those kinds of habitats.” 

A century-plus later, a herd of 20,000-plus pronghorn still recovering from a harrowing winter are passing through the same places. If access further diminishes, it’d be an enormous blow: Some 75% of the herd is migratory, according to Game and Fish. 

Brimeyer knows the Sublette Pronghorn Herd’s migration routes and the threats they face about as well as anybody. As a Game and Fish biologist in July 1998, he fitted GPS collars onto pronghorn in Grand Teton National Park. Long before Wyoming even had a migration policy, movement data from that work and follow-up studies were used to justify a 2008 forest plan amendment that provided protections to the migration corridor, albeit only the portion on the Bridger-Teton National Forest. 

Fast forward to the present, and Wyoming’s “risk assessment” provides a much more complete picture of what was protected on the national forest 17 years ago. There are even two new forest bottlenecks — one dubbed Bacon Creek and another Red Hills — that haven’t been mapped before, according to Meghan Riley, the Wyoming Outdoor Council’s wildlife program manager. That’s “significant,” she said, especially because the Bridger-Teton’s Forest Plan is up for revision. 

Riley lauded Game and Fish’s exhaustive assessment. It was “pretty unflinching” in examining threats, she said, which were identified for the entire corridor and specifically for 10 different segments. Habitat fragmentation from residential development and the energy and mineral industries were at the top of the list, but threats were numerous and covered everything from cheatgrass incursion to highways and fences. 

“I thought it was great the department made it clear that there are many things threatening connectivity for these animals,” Riley said, “and that you can’t protect the migration if you don’t address all of them.” 

If it makes it the distance, the Sublette Herd’s migration would be the first pronghorn route designated under Wyoming’s new policy. Three mule deer corridors have been designated — for the Sublette, Platte Valley and Baggs herds — but all were completed prior to the state overhauling its process in response to industry concerns. The new designation process, being taken for its first spin, extends beyond the Wyoming Game and Fish Department’s purview. If the agency’s commission decides to recommend designation to Gov. Mark Gordon, and he’s on board, the state’s chief executive would then have to appoint an “area working group” consisting of county commissioners, hunting advocates, industry reps and others. 

“The area working group will make a determination and deliver that to the governor,” Brimeyer said. “He’ll either formally designate, he’ll return with some recommendations to the department — then we might do some further refinement — or he can just reject that, and it’ll stay identified.”

First, however, steps remain within Game and Fish. The agency’s commission is expected to vote on the route’s formal designation at its July meeting in Evanston. 

The public has a say in the matter, too. There are also several upcoming public meetings: One in Green River on April 9, Jackson on April 10 and Pinedale on April 15.  

The Sublette pronghorn migration biological risk assessment is also open to comments through May 2. Wildlife officials are looking for any and all feedback, including about the 13 bottlenecks. 

“We included [bottlenecks] in the risk assessment to get a take from our public,” Brimeyer said. 

Noting portions of bottlenecks that might be high-priority for a conservation easement or highlighting existing land uses are the types of information that would be especially helpful, he said. 

The post Scientists find 13 bottlenecks on Path of the Pronghorn, name sprawl and drilling as chief threats appeared first on WyoFile .

Bakery owner Ben Ellis spent more than two years researching the ideal machine to mix and separate 400 pounds of dough before ordering heavy-duty equipment in November from the Czech Republic.

“This design works incredibly well with our bakery, it’s tight and efficient in a way that we haven’t been able to find anything close from a U.S. company,” said Ellis, who also looked at options in Japan, Denmark, Germany and France, which all have a tradition of making artisan bread.

If the mixer and specialized lift arrived today, Ellis would pay the original price. But since it’s in the final stages of manufacturing and scheduled to ship the second week of April, he’s now facing an unexpected 20% tariff. 

President Donald Trump announced sweeping new tariffs Wednesday. A baseline tariff of 10% on most imported goods starts at midnight tonight, with more punishing tariffs on roughly 60 countries, including the European Union where Ellis’ order is being made, set to kick in Wednesday.  

Ellis is locked into the purchase and now facing an unexpected import tax of roughly $30,000 — a shock to a Driggs, Idaho-based business that doesn’t take such capital investments lightly.

“For a little company, that’s a big risk,” said Ellis, whose 460 Bread sells in Wyoming stores in Thayne, Afton and Jackson as well as across eastern Idaho. “You have to plan it ahead. You have to get your capital right. You have to finance it correctly.”

Now Ellis is looking at all of his ingredients, including sugar, yeast, wheat, flax seed, salt, eggs and olives, to see what else might rise in cost. His small business can’t absorb all of those increases, which will get passed on to grocery shoppers, he said. 

“I don’t think anybody’s immune,” Ellis said. “I don’t think anybody can be distant from this. Everybody will experience higher costs.” 

The economics of tariffs

Until Trump, tariffs had been an academic backwater topic generating little interest, said Sasha Skiba, an associate professor of economics in the University of Wyoming’s College of Business. Not anymore. What struck Skiba about Trump’s tariffs rolled out this week is how vast they are.

“We haven’t seen anything like this before,” said Skiba, who has been studying trade barriers, including tariffs, for decades. 

During his first term, Trump imposed targeted tariffs on steel and aluminum, which allowed researchers to see how tariffs play out in a globally connected economy. 

“In 2018, we have actually observed a broad tariff applied in the modern economy,” Skiba said, which is useful since prior examples come from a period when national economies were more isolated. 

Due to COVID-19, researchers only had two years to see how the tariffs played out before the shock of a global pandemic kicked in. Data from that period shows foreign producers kept their prices the same, Skiba said. Since those exporters didn’t discount their goods to account for the tariffs, the added cost of those tariffs were passed on to American companies and consumers, he said. And there’s another phenomenon that economists often observe — when prices go up on foreign goods, domestic producers follow suit. 

“The domestic producers will also increase the prices,” Skiba said, “or they would be leaving money on the table.” 

That’s because tariffs distort the market, said Jason Shogren, a professor at UW’s College of Business. 

“You raise the price of an import, you lower the competition and the whole free market works with competition,” Shogren said. When you restrict competition, he added, “now you have fewer sellers and they have a little more market power over the consumer.”

It’s hard to say how soon consumers will encounter higher prices since some retailers might initially absorb the costs, said Wenlin Liu, chief economist for Wyoming’s Economic Analysis Division. 

Liu pointed out that many countries have higher tariffs than the U.S., but he stressed that doesn’t mean Americans are being ripped off. Imposing lower tariffs has meant lower prices for American consumers — and businesses like 460 Bread — on everything from machinery to clothing to electronics. While the U.S. has lost some manufacturing jobs, Liu said, “some 300 million consumers benefited.” The U.S. could produce more products, like textiles, but at a cost. 

“We can make it here,” Liu said. “The cost is absolutely higher given workers’ wages.”

Shogren agrees that American consumers have benefited from free trade. He recalled how buying a television once required a month’s salary. 

“Now it’s a day,” Shogren said. “We’ve outsourced a lot of this production because, typically, labor costs are less.”

Moving that production back to the U.S. could subject manufacturing to stronger labor laws and environmental protections, which could have social benefits, Shogren said.

“But they all come at a cost,” he said. “There’s no free lunch.”

Bringing manufacturing back to the U.S. sounds good, but if that manufacturing does not end up in places where skilled workers already live, those jobs could be hard to fill, Skiba said. Researchers have looked closely at retraining and relocation programs and found that workers are generally averse to uprooting their lives to follow manufacturing jobs, he said. 

Uncertainty and questions 

At Teton Motors’ Subaru dealership in Jackson, the Trump administration’s tariffs on auto manufacturers have yet to provoke a rush of purchases for fear of higher prices that’s been documented elsewhere. Shogren and Skiba see car prices as especially vulnerable to tariffs because auto parts cross multiple borders, multiple times as a car is being assembled, which layers on import taxes. 

“I’d say we’re getting one to three people a day who are inquiring about how the tariffs may affect the price of cars going forward,” autosalesman Jon Pinardi told WyoFile on Thursday. “They’re trying to figure out if it needs to be a stimulant [to buy now], but I haven’t [had] anybody say, ‘Oh, I’m going to buy today because of tariffs tomorrow.’” 

Pinardi’s response to the inquiries has been consistent so far. 

“We don’t have the foggiest idea,” he’s been telling prospective buyers. “We don’t know how it’s going to affect the pricing of vehicles going forward.” 

To date, General Motors and Subaru — the two manufacturers that Teton Motors sells — have not provided any guidance to dealers, he said. 

Agricultural producers also could be in the crosshairs as a global trade war escalates. But Theron Anderson is willing to accept some risk. A fourth-generation farmer in the Albin area, northeast of Cheyenne, Anderson grows dryland wheat, corn and millet. 

Anderson wants to see manufacturing return to the U.S. Having to order farm machinery and fertilizer from overseas — particularly from Russia and China — puts farmers at a disadvantage, he said, describing long waits for replacement parts. He also sees trade with Canada as unfair when it comes to importing wheat and dairy.

As for selling his own crops, Anderson isn’t sure it could get worse than it already is. His dad sold wheat for $5 a bushel in the 1970s when he could buy a new tractor for $25,000, Anderson said. Today, the cash price for wheat is $4.44 a bushel, he told WyoFile on Thursday, and a new tractor costs over half a million dollars. 

“You still go out after a bad habit until a banker tells you [that] you can’t do it anymore,” he said about continuing to farm. “The prices are so depressed, I don’t know that they’ll see a lot of damage coming from the tariffs at this point in time.”

Meanwhile, Ellis doesn’t expect the U.S. to start manufacturing artisan bread-making machines anytime soon. He has bought pans and a bagging machine from U.S. companies but other parts are hard to find. If Trump had given businesses more time to adapt to tariffs, it would have caused less turmoil, Ellis said.  

Ellis had been planning to invest in a part from Japan to make his operation run more smoothly. 

“Instead of having a piece of equipment that makes our products better and more efficient, we’re just not going to do it,” he said. “We’re just going to be less efficient.”

—WyoFile Staff writer Mike Koshmrl contributed to this story.

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After Wyoming lawmakers passed a slate of bills to restrict the rights of transgender people during the 2025 legislative session, LGBTQ+ advocates hope to use the legal system to defeat the new laws. 

“If you are discriminated against because of [one of these bills] … then please let us know. Please reach out to us,” Sara Burlingame, executive director of Wyoming Equality, said at a March virtual recap of the session. 

“Because what happens next is this has to go to the courts,” Burlingame said. “People need to be willing to say, ‘Hey, I’m a Wyoming citizen, and this has violated my right to privacy. This has violated my right to equal access.’”

The new laws include two separate restrictions on transgender people using certain private spaces, including restrooms and locker rooms, as well as an extension of the 2023 sports ban to collegiate athletics. Wyoming Equality announced plans to litigate the sports ban after it was enacted two years ago to prohibit transgender girls from competing in middle- and high-school girls’ sports events. 

So far, however, it’s gone unchallenged.

An estimated four transgender students were competing in Wyoming middle- and high-school athletics at the time the Legislature passed the 2023 ban. When Senate File 44, “Fairness in sports-intercollegiate athletics,” goes into effect on July 1, the ban will extend to students at the University of Wyoming and each of the state’s community colleges. But whether there are transgender college athletes in Wyoming who will be affected remains to be seen. In December, NCAA President Charlie Baker told a Senate panel there were fewer than 10 transgender athletes among the 500,000 total athletes at NCAA schools. 

Santi Murillo, the University of Wyoming’s first openly transgender student-athlete, works as the communications coordinator for Wyoming Equality. 

Coming out of the session, Murillo’s biggest concern is the “harassment we’re gonna face,” she said at the virtual event. 

“I used to feel safe in Wyoming, but now I don’t think so anymore,” she said. 

Bathroom bills

Set to go into effect on July 1, House Bill 72, “Protecting privacy in public spaces act,” requires public and educational facilities, like schools, state government buildings and prisons, to designate multi-occupancy restrooms, changing areas or sleeping quarters “for use exclusively by males or exclusively by females.” 

In other words, the new law will require people to utilize the facility that corresponds to the sex they were assigned at birth, regardless of their gender identity, physical appearance or what appears on their legal documents. 

The bill’s main sponsor, Worland Republican Rep. Martha Lawley, wrote in a pre-session op-ed that the legislation “ensures that women and girls can feel safe and respected in places where privacy is essential—bathrooms, lockers rooms, showers, and correctional facilities.” 

There’s also Senate File 62, “Sex-designated facilities and public schools,” which took effect when Gov. Mark Gordon signed it in March. It puts the onus on public school students to use restrooms, locker rooms and sleeping quarters to align with their sex at birth. 

Sen. Dan Laursen, R-Powell, brought the bill after the Park County School District 1 Board of Trustees voted unanimously in November for a resolution that called on lawmakers to pass legislation related to restroom use. 

The new law also requires school boards to adopt policies to provide for disciplinary action for students who refuse to comply. It also provides legal standing in court for parents or legal guardians should they sue a school district for not complying with the law — also known as a private right of action. Lawley’s bill also provides a private right of action, but without the restriction to parents or legal guardians. 

Neither bill includes other enforcement mechanisms. But that raises questions for Murillo. 

“These legislators know who I am. They know my identity,” Murillo said at the virtual event. When she and lawmakers return to the Capitol for the 2026 budget session, “are they going to heavily police me if I use the women’s restroom?” 

Elliot Hinkle, who is transgender and nonbinary, told WyoFile that legislators were not prepared to explain the more practical effects of such bathroom bans. 

“When I gave testimony at the Capitol this year, none of them answered that question for me — ‘Which restroom should I use?’” Hinkle said. 

What is a Woman Act

Hinkle posed this same question alongside other concerns last week at a town hall in Casper hosted by local Freedom Caucus-aligned lawmakers. 

“If I walk into a women’s restroom because I’m a trans person who was assigned female at birth, what might happen to me is someone would say, ‘Why is that man in the women’s restroom?’ rather than just letting me use the restroom and do my business,” Hinkle said at the event. 

“So the issue I’m worried about is also that I could do no harm to anyone, but still get falsely accused of something because of how I’m perceived. So the risk we have here is people choosing based on perception who is or isn’t supposed to be in a space, and then harm occurring to my community,” Hinkle said. 

“I encourage you to use the family, individual restrooms, and I think that alleviates the entire problem,” Rep. Jayme Lien, R-Casper, responded to Hinkle. 

Lien, a freshman, was the main sponsor of House Bill 32, “What is a woman act,” which defines “male” and “female” based on sex assigned at birth and applies these definitions across all Wyoming statutes. 

While Gordon let the bill become law without his signature, he said it “oversteps legislative authority and encroaches upon the role of the courts” in a letter explaining his decision on the bill. 

Gordon also pointed to “issues of practical administration” and said he suspected the bill “was not drafted with keen legal objectives in mind as much as it was to scratch a welcome national political itch.” 

Lien pushed back in a news release. 

“What is a Woman Act provides clear directive for the judicial branch when defining male and female in more than 250 state statutes already in existence. Each piece of the Wyoming statutes that address ‘male,’ ‘female,’ ‘man,’ ‘woman,’ ‘boy,’ ‘girl’ now will have an undeviating definition to allow for uniform application in any litigation,” Lien wrote. 

Meanwhile, arguably Wyoming’s most high-profile litigation involving transgender issues — a case involving a transgender student and a University of Wyoming sorority — was dismissed in federal district court not on account of the definition of a woman, but rather based on a private, voluntary organization’s constitutional right to determine its own membership. 

Waiting game

While advocates wait to see if a legal challenge presents itself, Hinkle said they’re particularly concerned about what the new laws will mean for transgender youth. Hinkle grew up in Casper and now works as a consultant teaching best practices for supporting LGBTQ+ families and youth, among other topics. 

“I feel really worried, honestly, for kids at schools. I talk with some trans youth here [in Casper,] one youth in particular, who’s being bullied for using the boys’ restroom, being bullied by other boys,” Hinkle said. 

Over half of Wyoming’s LGBTQ+ young people seriously considered suicide in the past year, including 60% of transgender and nonbinary young people, according to The Trevor Project’s 2024 state-by-state survey. 

The report also found that 59% of respondents said that they or their family have considered leaving Wyoming for another state because of LGBTQ+ related politics and laws, including 72% of transgender and nonbinary young people. 

When considering those realities, Hinkle said, it’s important to remember “there are people in Wyoming that care about queer, trans people. We want you to have privacy just as much as, like, respect and dignity. You deserve to be here and take up space.”

“The fight is not over,” Hinkle said. 

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The Bureau of Land Management’s contentious plans to remove all free-roaming horses from vast reaches of southwest Wyoming’s “checkerboard” region could begin as soon as this summer, although a legal appeal to stop roundups remains in limbo. 

On Monday, the federal agency released a 47-page environmental assessment outlining plans to gather and permanently remove several thousand wild horses from 2,105 square miles — an area nearly the size of Delaware — managed by BLM’s Rock Springs and Rawlins field offices. Horses would come off an additional 1,124 square miles of private land within the checkerboard. A public review period is underway with comments due by April 30. If the BLM greenlights the round-ups, they could begin within the next three months and continue for a couple of years, possibly longer. 

First to go would be the estimated 1,125 free-roaming horses in the Salt Wells Creek herd and 736 animals in the northwestern portion of Adobe Town, according to BLM Rock Springs Field Office Manager Kimberlee Foster. Then in 2026, horse-removal crews would move on to eliminating an estimated 894 horses in the Great Divide Basin herd. 

“Additional gathers may be needed in future years to remove all wild horses to get to the zero-population goal, as some may be missed during the scheduled gathers,” Foster told WyoFile in response to emailed questions. 

Free-roaming horses, a nonnative species that faces scant predation, increase in population by about 20% annually. Reproduction, combined with missed animals during surveys, make estimating precise herd numbers difficult. The expectation is that 3,371 wild horses would be removed, but the ultimate number could range from 2,500 up to 5,000, according to the BLM. 

The push to rid southwest Wyoming’s checkerboard region of free-roaming horses traces back 15 years. The Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act directs the BLM to “to remove stray wild horses from private lands as soon as practicable upon receipt of a written request,” the environmental assessment states. In 2010, the cattle and sheep-centric Rock Springs Grazing Association, which owns and leases about 1.1 million acres of private land in the checkerboard, revoked consent to allow horses to roam on its property. 

There’s been a legal battle ever since. Lawsuits from both the Rock Springs Grazing Association and wild horse advocacy groups have targeted the BLM’s planned actions, but U.S. District Court of Wyoming Judge Kelly Rankin, a Biden appointee, ruled in the federal government’s favor in both lawsuits last August. 

Soon thereafter, a coalition of pro-horse petitioners — the American Wild Horse Campaign, Animal Welfare Institute, Western Watersheds Project, Carol Walker, Kimerlee Curyl and Chad Hanson — appealed. 

“This is just the latest lawsuit in a 12 or more year battle to save these horses,” American Wild Horse Executive Director Suzanne Roy told WyoFile. “We’ve litigated four or five times about this issue.” 

Attorneys for the federal government and horse advocacy groups exchanged arguments before the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in March. A decision is pending, but horse advocates are optimistic about their chances. 

“We have prevailed in the 10th Circuit previously on this issue,” Roy said. 

The BLM, she contended, has never before fully eliminated a herd of free-roaming horses without having demonstrated there are ecological reasons for doing so. 

“This would be the first time in the 54-year history of the Wild Horse and Burros Act that the BLM eliminated a herd management area and eradicated entire wild horse herds — two of them — when the agency itself concedes that the area has sufficient habitat for the horses,” Roy said. “It has implications for wild horse protection across the West, because if private landowners that have land adjacent to or within herd management areas are allowed to dictate the presence of wild horses on the public land, that’s a very dangerous precedent. So we are anxiously awaiting the court’s ruling.” 

Meanwhile, the BLM is staging resources necessary to move forward with its plans. The Adobe Town/Salt Wells Creek herd roundup is the largest on the BLM’s tentative wild horse and burro gather schedule for 2025. It’s scheduled to take place from July 15 through Sept. 15. In regions of the Adobe Town herd area where horses are being allowed to persist, there are related plans to remove 2,179 free-roaming horses — numbers that exceed the “appropriate management level.”

It’s unclear how or if the Trump administration’s slashing of the federal government workforce will impact the horse gather operations. Asked by WyoFile if the BLM-Wyoming’s horse and burro program is fully staffed right now, Foster, the field office manager, wrote “BLM is prepared to conduct the planned gathers with current staffing.”

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