It's time to take a look at what's happening around Wyoming for Friday, January 2nd. I'm Mac Watson.

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Wyoming lawmakers and an industry watchdog are saying that America's arms race over artificial intelligence with China is about more than technology and gaining economic advantage. Cowboy State Daily's Greg Johnson reports that this technological race is about which nation's values will guide the rest of the world.

"The new cold war that's going on only this time it's America and China, kind of in a race for you know, who's going to develop first these AI platforms…it has a lot of military applications that are already in place. But the real race, here it is, and it is an arms race from, from what everybody is saying is to who develops these, these platforms that basically the rest of the world is going to use. Because, you know, we do something, the rest of the world adopts it. China does something, rest of the world adopts it. And the main question comes down to what, what? Which country's values do you want guiding the rest of the world from what the expert I talked to says."

American Edge Project CEO Doug Kelly tells Cowboy State Daily that when people ask should people be afraid of AI and its potential to take over our daily lives, or embrace it as the next technological evolution that can be as transformative to society? The answer is yes.

Read the full story HERE.

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Sublette County's top prosecutor argued in a Tuesday court filing that Wyoming's law allowing people to "capture" wolves doesn't excuse Cody Roberts. Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports that attorney Robert Piper is urging District Court Judge Richard Lavery to dismiss the felony animal cruelty charge Roberts is facing.

"You have the prosecutor saying, this conduct slips between the words in the exemption, it's apart from the things we're allowed to do with wild animals, and you have the defense attorney saying, No, this exemption is broad. It covers this conduct. And so what the prosecutor did Tuesday was he went ahead and filed his counter argument, pushing back on the defense attorney who had asked the judge to dismiss the case."

Roberts is accused of running over a gray wolf with a snowmobile and taping the injured animal's mouth shut with tape, then taking it into a bar before shooting it in late February 2024.

Read the full story HERE.

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The Carbon County sheriff announced Wednesday that human remains have been discovered near a well site. Cowboy State Daily's Andrew Rossi reports just who those remains are hasn't been determined,

"The remains were found on December 19, near a well site on BLM land. So it's a BLM investigation. The Carbon County Sheriff's Office is deferring to them. The thing that's interesting though, about Wyoming is that because we're such a sparse population, people remember these missing persons cases, there's a lot of anticipation about the identity of these remains, who did they belong to, and what was the cause of their death, because that could explain one of the multiple missing person cases in Carbon County."

An investigation is underway after remains were discovered near an oil and gas well site in an undisclosed area of Carbon County, Sheriff Alex Bakken announced Wednesday. A leading missing persons advocate wonders if it may be David Williams, who disappeared 45 years ago.

Read the full story HERE.

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I'll be back with more news from Cowboy State Daily right after this.

Cowboy State Daily news continues now…

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Sublette County opened its first hospital in September and has been "burning" through cash ever since. Cowboy State Daily's Kate Meadows reports that hospital officials are hoping to get some of the $205 million in federal health care money Wyoming was given this week.

"Because Sublette County Hospital is not considered a critical access hospital, yet it still has to go through a lot of permissions and inspections and applications. They're having to burn through cash because they're having to operate more as a general hospital, which means that their staffing is higher than it needs to be. So they're hoping to get a piece of this 205 million to help with their costs of keeping rural healthcare sustainable while they continue to work to get this critical access status."

The community celebrated in September when the almost $74 million dollar Sublette County Hospital complex opened in Pinedale nearly 100 years after the idea of building a medical facility was first broached.

Read the full story HERE.

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It's estimated 25% to 35% of Wyoming's forests are now dominated by "ghost forests" — standing dead timber from beetle epidemics and disease. Cowboy State Daily's David Madison reports that researchers say it's time to start paying attention to limber pine before it follows the whitebark into crisis.

"Some of the samples were taken from trees in Wyoming. And basically, they found that some limber pine have a genetic resistance. They have a gene that repels this rust fungus, this fungus that causes this, this rust condition, and but they've also found that there's some strains of this fungus that can overcome this genetic defense. And so it's just, it's a tough time to be a Limber pine…There's a couple of famous Limber pines, actually, in Wyoming. There was one near Grand Teton National Park that was iconic. And then there's one on the highway between Laramie and Cheyenne that is growing out of a rock there."

Limber pines can live 2,000 years or longer and survive where almost nothing else will, clinging to windswept ridges and rocky outcrops.

Read the full story HERE.

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People who shoot prairie dogs in Colorado should have to pick up the lead-riddled carcasses, says a group calling for more regulation of hunting the rodents. Cowboy State Daily's Mark Heinz reports that the group, Grasslands Colorado, is saying that hunting also leads to other wildlife getting lead poisoning, it says.

"As they see it, people are coming on there. It's public land, but people are coming on there and just just mowing the prairie dogs down. They think it's actually gotten to the point where it threatens the prairie dog population, number one and number two, they're worried about, you know, lead like, if, if bullets fragment inside prairie dogs and then a hawk or a coyote or whatever badger comes along and eats the carcass afterward, that animal's going to get get, you know, a secondary case of lead poisoning. So there's concern about that. What this group is calling for, is saying, if people are going to shoot prairie dogs, they should at least be obligated to go collect the carcasses afterwards. And that would be unprecedented, because the long standing tradition is you shoot prairie dogs, you just leave them out there."

The group claims that recreational shooters kill so many prairie dogs on the Comanche National Grassland in southeastern Colorado, they're pushing the animals' colonies to the verge of collapse.

Read the full story HERE.

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And that's today's news. Get your free digital subscription to Wyoming's only statewide newspaper by hitting the Daily Newsletter button on Cowboy State Daily Dot Com - and you can watch this newscast every day by clicking Subscribe on our YouTube channel, or listen to us on your favorite podcast app. Thanks for watching - I'm Mac Watson, for Cowboy State Daily.