Wyoming Public Radio & Media

11/01/2025

This fall, Georgia and Dave Rowswell went on a 10-day road trip and set up shop at four state parks around Wyoming.

The couple were part of an artists in residence program through the Arts in the Parks initiative, put on by the Wyoming Arts Council and the Wyoming State Parks Department. Over the course of the trip, the two visited​​ Curt Gowdy, Guernsey, Glendo and Seminoe State Parks, making art outside and sharing their work with other visitors.

Georgia’s a self-employed studio artist who specializes in fibers, and Dave’s a retired high school art teacher with a passion for crafting rawhide jewelry and colorful bolo-ties. The couple also run a jewelry business called Rawhide Studio and just opened a new gallery in downtown Cheyenne called Blue Door Arts.

Wyoming Public Radio’s Hannah Habermann chatted with the couple about their travels, what they made during the residency and how they first got together.

Read more at the link in our bio.

This fall, artists Georgia and Dave Rowswell went on a 10-day road trip and set up shop at four state parks around Wyoming. The two visited Curt...

10/31/2025

Families in Wyoming are having fewer children, partly because of the high cost of housing.

That includes Cheyenne resident Grace Moreno, who decided to get her tubes tied after having her first child.

“I was kind of like, ‘Oh my gosh, my mom was right. This is too expensive.’”

Only having one kid means Moreno’s family can save a couple hundred dollars a month for a mortgage, so their son can someday have a backyard.

Others are making similar decisions.

University of Utah demographer Emily Harris says, with housing prices, it’s getting harder to have a “nuclear family” where you get married, buy a home and have children.

“Really over the last decade or two, that kind of timeline has been halted and kind of rearranged,” she said.

Some people are forgoing having children altogether.

Photo credit: Hanna Merzbach

There’s been an especially steep drop in fertility rates in western states, including Wyoming, which has also seen a big jump in the cost of housing.

10/31/2025

Gov. Mark Gordon declared a public welfare emergency on Oct. 31 in an email release. He authorized the state to spend up to $10 million to make sure Wyomingites continue to have access to food when federal funding for SNAP benefits runs out at the start of November. That’s because of the government shutdown.

A federal judge also ordered the Trump administration to pay SNAP benefits on Oct. 31, but how much or when those funds will be provided is unclear.

“Food insecurity doesn’t care about political parties,” said Gordon. “Wyoming will not allow its citizens to go hungry because Washington can’t do its job.”

The program, previously known as food stamps, supports low-income people and serves roughly one in every eight Americans nationwide.

The Wyoming Department of Family Services (DFS) will work with the state budget director to distribute the money to organizations and churches running food banks and food pantries across the state.

Photo credit: Food Bank of Wyoming

The money will go to organizations and churches running food banks and food pantries across the state.

10/31/2025

Sheridan County ranchers and the Sheridan Community Land Trust are partnering to try out a technology called virtual fencing. The land trust is also hosting a hands-on field day on Monday, Nov. 3, to give people a chance to test-drive the tech in real time.

Virtual fencing for livestock is a bit like invisible fences for dogs. Producers set up pastures by drawing boundaries on an app on their phone and livestock wear collars, which are connected to the app via satellite or cell towers. The collars then beep or buzz when the critters get too close to those digitally-drawn barriers.

John Graves is the director of conservation at the Sheridan Community Land Trust. He said virtual fencing is a tool that gives producers “infinite possibilities” of how they can manage their land: they can direct herds toward priority areas, to do things like munch on invasive cheat grass, or limit their access to overgrazed plots or more environmentally sensitive spots like wetlands.

Photo credit: Halter

The local land trust is hosting an event to give community members a chance to test-drive the technology in real time. It’s also partnering with...

10/31/2025

Misinformation and confusion fueled a recent Wyoming legislative meeting on how to stop chemtrails, a debunked conspiracy that claims the government is controlling our health with airborne chemicals.

The Joint Agriculture, State and Public Lands & Water Resources interim meeting quickly slipped from its scheduled two hours into the eighth hour on Monday, Oct. 27.

“We at some point probably should take a break either for lunch or bathroom,” said Sen. Barry Crago (R-Buffalo).

The 13 lawmakers went around and around on how to stop chemtrails in Wyoming’s skies. They narrowed in on three different bills. But legislating something that isn’t proven to exist was pretty tricky.

“Yeah, I'm getting kind of confused here a little bit,” said Sen. Bob Ide (R-Casper).

Dozens and dozens of suggestions blended into each other.

“What are we voting on?,” Rep. Pepper Ottman (R-Riverton) whispered to a colleague.

Lawmakers were lost in the flurry of sometimes contradictory and legally murky amendments.

“I don't know, I don't even know how I voted,” said Sen. Laura Pearson (R-Kemmerer).

Some even retroactively changed votes.

Photo credit: Salata Institute

Misinformation and confusion steered lawmakers as they passed legislation to ban chemtrails, a debunked conspiracy that claims the government is...

10/31/2025

The season premiere of Discovery Channel’s show, Ghost Adventures, spotlights the supernatural tales in Casper. The season kicked off with a two-hour, two-part special, “Mountain of Madness,” on Oct. 15 on Discovery+ and will be streaming starting in November on HBO Max and Disney+.

Last year, Visit Casper Film Liaison Kelly Eastes received a call from the show’s producers, who were searching for a new location for paranormal stories. After discovering all the haunting sites and stories in Casper, Zak Bagans came to the Cowboy State to film for season 30 of Ghost Adventures.

“Love having these experiences because you get to work with really creative people, and they're here because they love what you have, no matter what the show might be,” said Eastes.

The Ghost Adventures crew, led by host Bagans, spent six days filming in different locations. They uncovered a dozen ghost stories, and six will be featured in the new season.

Photo credit: Visit Casper

The season premiere of Discovery Channel’s show, Ghost Adventures, spotlights the supernatural tales in Casper.

10/31/2025

🎙️ Episode 1 of the Modern West is out now: The Reluctant Pioneers

You’ve probably seen viral videos on social media about how quaint it is to live an off-grid life. But these videos belie something more problematic going on beneath the surface. An affordable housing crisis that’s affecting the working and middle class more all the time. Eight of the ten states with the least affordable housing are in the American West. And that’s causing lots of resilient westerners to get creative about their living situations. Including Host Melodie Edwards who shares her own story of living off grid in a canvas dome in a no man’s land in northern Arizona.

Listen wherever you stream your podcasts.

10/30/2025

Wyoming is poised to protect the world’s biggest pronghorn herd – it has one of the longest landbased migration routes in the lower 48 states. It’s been years in the making.

But the migration corridor also moves through one of the nation’s top producing natural gas fields.

This is causing friction between state and federal managers over what to do with land that holds potential for multiple interests.

Wyoming Public Radio’s Caitlin Tan brings us to a largely undeveloped, critical wildlife nexus in southwest Wyoming.

Photo credit: Caitlin Tan

Wyoming is faced with a tale as old as time: balancing multiple interests on public land. The state is poised to protect a threatened pronghorn...

10/30/2025

Something Changed in the Room documentary film interview.

Grady Kirkpatrick spoke with film producer David Stubbs and music therapist Hilary Camino about Something Changed in the Room. The documentary film will be presented November 20th at the Center for the Arts in Jackson and is also available at www.wyomingpbs.org

https://ow.ly/NlST50Xky56

10/30/2025

The Teton County Sexual and Reproductive Health Clinic was started in 2014 by St. John’s Health and the Teton County Health Department. Despite St. John’s recently withdrawing from the partnership, the health department has worked with its remaining providers to keep the clinic going.

It provides services like birth control consultations, preventative care and Sexually Transmitted Infection (STI) testing – all regardless of insurance status.

During the partnership, the health department covered overhead and nursing staff, while St. John’s paid for one nurse practitioner (NP) already employed by the hospital to work at the clinic for 16 hours split between two days a week. The rest of the clinic’s 24 available hours a week were covered by three NPs paid by the health department.

But, shortly after the hospital’s clinician moved in August, St. John’s informed the health department it would not be rehiring someone for her position.

“At that time, because she was no longer going to be our employee, the contract with her at public health also ended,” said Karen Connelly, the Chief Communications Officer for St. John’s.

Photo credit: Jennifer Morrow from San Francisco, CC BY 2.0

Despite St. John’s Health and the Teton County Health Department ending their collaboration on the clinic, it carries on as a community resource.

10/30/2025

Members of the Joint Transportation, Highways and Military Affairs Interim Committee met last week to debate a draft bill that would penalize commercial vehicle drivers in Wyoming who are not proficient in English.

“Up until now, we put them out of service and that’s it – per law, we can do that. What this bill is going to do is allow us to penalize the driver $1,000, and then if you do it again, another $1,000, plus you’ve got potential jail time,” said Wyoming Department of Transportation (WYDOT) director Darin Westby.

The proposed bill comes alongside nationwide movement on truck driver English proficiency. President Donald Trump issued an executive order focused on the issue in April, which was followed by new regulations from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA). The FMCSA rescinded a 2016 policy guideline that removed requirements on inspectors to place drivers not proficient in English out of service.

Wyoming Congressional Rep. Harriet Hagerman (R-WY) introduced Connor’s Law this year, a bill being debated in the U.S. House that would codify Trump’s executive order. Wyoming Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) introduced a version of the same bill in the Senate.

Photo credit: Will Walkey

The proposed bill would fine drivers $1,000 in addition to putting them out of service until they can demonstrate proficiency.

10/30/2025

A judge has issued a preliminary injunction blocking layoffs of some federal workers during the shutdown. That includes about 2,000 Interior Department employees.

District Court Judge Susan Illston opened an Oct. 28 hearing by sharing anecdotes of some of the people being affected, such as an Air Force veteran who just got a kidney transplant and is terrified of losing health insurance.

"It's important to remember that there are human faces on all the actions that we are discussing this morning,” Illston continued, “and that they're having tremendous impacts on people.”

At least about 1 in 5 of the Interior workers targeted by layoffs could be in the Mountain West. Those 395 employees work for science centers or in regional land and water management.

That’s according to documents Illston ordered the federal government to file. They detail proposed cuts to offices, but only those with union members since unions filed the suit, saying members could suffer “irreparable harm.”

Photo credit: Rumble Press

At least 1 in 5 Interior cuts could be in the Mountain West.