{"id":483522,"date":"2026-01-01T00:10:16","date_gmt":"2026-01-01T00:10:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/483522\/"},"modified":"2026-01-01T00:10:16","modified_gmt":"2026-01-01T00:10:16","slug":"the-year-in-wyoming-wildlife-fed-cuts-critters-cwd-cheatgrass-and-tensions-over-development","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/483522\/","title":{"rendered":"The year in Wyoming wildlife: Fed cuts, critters, CWD, cheatgrass and tensions over development"},"content":{"rendered":"

My 2025 reporting kicked off in Cheyenne, where lawmakers brought a slate of contentious proposals that kept me on my toes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve covered the Wyoming Legislature for 13 years, and more closely since joining WyoFile several years ago, but I\u2019d never seen such a concentration of bills that truly provoked people. There were controversies about letting landowners cash in<\/a> on special hunting tags (a fight that\u2019s ongoing<\/a>), stripping a protective state status for otters<\/a>, overriding Wyoming Game and Fish\u2019s authority to manage mountain lions<\/a>, hunting grizzly bears despite the Endangered Species Act<\/a> and a quarrel over a proposed ban on the Wyoming tradition of killing wildlife with snowmobiles<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s a partial list. Notably, the most divisive measures almost all died midstream in the lawmaking process. The fizzling of wildlife-related legislation freed me to cover the steady stream of headlines during the early days of the second Trump administration.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/Doe and fawn pronghorn that call the Golden Triangle region home stay vigilant while being photographed in September 2025. Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon is moving forward with a plan that forgoes protections for animals in the area. (Mike Koshmrl\/WyoFile)<\/p>\n

Former Wyoming Game and Fish Department Director Brian Nesvik was appointed to direct the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service<\/a>, overseeing wildlife issues nationally. (In a total coincidence, I happened to be in Washington, D.C. during one of his confirmation hearings, and we brought you that news<\/a> from the Capitol.) Around then, the federal government made more headlines with new logging<\/a> policy, grizzly bear management<\/a> and more.<\/p>\n

Otherwise, most Trump administration-spurred WyoFile headlines related to the doings of the now-defunct \u201cDepartment of Government Efficiency,\u201d then-led by the richest man in the world, Elon Musk. There were scores of Wyoming federal workers abruptly let go from their jobs<\/a> at a wide array of agencies with a big presence in a state that\u2019s half federal land. Federal offices were scheduled to close<\/a>, and at other facilities, small workforces were gutted, resulting in chaos<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"\/The entrance sign to the Saratoga National Fish Hatchery in February 2025. (Mike Koshmrl\/WyoFile)<\/p>\n

This was tricky reporting! The federal agency sources we\u2019ve cultivated over the years were mostly barred from communicating with the media \u2014 the policy, in most cases, amounted to secrecy. To report the facts about the layoffs and cuts, we had to get creative, and at times, offer sources anonymity<\/a>. Memorably, another outlet, the Columbia Journalism Review, even interviewed my colleague Angus Thuermer and me about what it was like having to report on the DOGE cuts<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

An icon of the American West \u2014 elk \u2014 also kept me occupied in the early months of 2025. Although it\u2019s no longer the case, for the vast majority of my time in Wyoming, I\u2019ve hung my hat in Teton and Sublette counties, where elk herds are congregated by the thousands on feedgrounds in the winter. But now those elk populations<\/a> and, by extension, elk hunting<\/a>, face an unprecedented threat, wildlife disease ecologists believe. Always-lethal chronic wasting disease started appearing last winter<\/a>, and by the end of the season, there had been four feedgrounds where it was verified, including one spot where CWD is gaining steam<\/a>. We\u2019ve reported recently that winter 2025-\u201926 will be an \u201cimportant\u201d harbinger<\/a> of what\u2019s to come.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/Elk feed on hay in March 2025 at the Dell Creek elk feedground near Bondurant, Wyoming. (Ryan Dorgan\/WyoFile)<\/p>\n

Broadly speaking, the tension between conservation and development is another wildlife issue that\u2019s emerged repeatedly on my beat. There\u2019s been controversy over the Wyoming State Shooting Complex\u2019s location in the wild Absaroka Range foothills<\/a>. And there have been many twists<\/a> and turns in the long-term effort<\/a> to protect Wyoming\u2019s first pronghorn migration corridor<\/a>. I\u2019ve also kept a close eye on the back and forth on the federal level over allowing oil and gas leasing<\/a> and drilling within two regions the migratory Sublette Pronghorn Herd depends on: the Red Desert and the Golden Triangle.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While these topics are destined to receive more ink in 2026, I had many one-of-a-kind stories in 2025: I photographed a goshawk<\/a>, and reported on others seeing cool critters like the southernmost great gray owl<\/a> in North America, out-of-place mammals like a swift fox<\/a> and \u201caccidental\u201d bird species<\/a> showing up in Wyoming.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"\/An adult male goshawk perched on an aspen branch in Pinedale during April 2025. The bird-eating raptor, the larger cousin of the sharp-shinned and cooper\u2019s hawks, appeared unperturbed by mobbing corvids gathered in the branches above. (Mike Koshmrl\/WyoFile)\u00a0<\/p>\n

Last, I\u2019d like to highlight some of the cool project stories that I\u2019m proud to have been a part of publishing in 2025. <\/p>\n

In January, I teamed with Amanda Eggert at the Montana Free Press for an oral history-style feature story, marking the 30th anniversary of wolf reintroduction<\/a> into the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. In October, WyoFile partnered with Western Confluence, a publication of the University of Wyoming\u2019s Ruckelshaus Institute, to produce another history-heavy feature story, this one about the stalemate over wild horse management in Wyoming\u2019s checkerboard region<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"\/Former U.S. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt signs the record of decision allowing for the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho in the mid-1990s. He\u2019s flanked by wolf activist Renee Askins, right, and Mollie Beattie, then director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. (Courtesy)<\/p>\n

Then, in November, WyoFile and the Mountain Journal hit publish on an investigative story co-written with Montana journalist Nick Mott. We explored what happens when wolves naive to hunting leave the protective confines of Yellowstone National Park<\/a>. For me, that story was years in the making. A tip about the fate of an individual wolf in May 2022 first got me thinking about how to constructively write about this loaded topic.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The final feature story I want to mention was also a long time in the making, though this one was a WyoFile production alone. I examined Wyoming\u2019s fight against nonnative cheatgrass<\/a>, which one scientist I interviewed called the \u201cmost existential, sweeping threat\u201d to western ecosystems. After learning a bunch, I tend to agree. So look for more reporting on efforts to prevent noxious annual grasses from overtaking Wyoming landscapes in 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019m always hunting for stories, and please reach out any time: mike@wyofile.com.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/A patch of cheatgrass, pictured here in January 2025, emerged from a mountainside along the east shore of Flaming Gorge Reservoir. Cheatgrass has steadily invaded the lower Green River Basin, about half of which \u201cneeds attention,\u201d according to the Sweetwater County Weed and Pest District. (Mike Koshmrl\/WyoFile)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"My 2025 reporting kicked off in Cheyenne, where lawmakers brought a slate of contentious proposals that kept me…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":483523,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[218774,159,67,132,68,837],"class_list":{"0":"post-483522","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-2025yearinreview","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us","13":"tag-wildlife"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115816944557524153","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483522\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/483523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}