It's time to take a look at what's happening around Wyoming for Monday, November 3rd. Bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily news center, I'm Mac Watson. "Brought to you by the University of Wyoming Center on Aging. Did you know that 1 in 3 Wyoming adults have pre-diabetes, and most don't realize it? Are you tough enough to know your numbers? Take the quiz at: Find Out WY dot org."
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It's not a matter of "if", but "when" humans will start competing against robots in combat sports. Cowboy State Daily's David Madison reports that The Wyoming Combat Sports Commission is ready and has drafted the nation's first rules for "synthetic combat."
"Now this is already happening. If you drive past a jiu jitsu studio, there could be a robot in there that they're grappling with that is trained to test you and grow your skills. Now this is really science fiction like, right? But it's it, it's it's a logical next step that if fighters are training on robots, according to a fighter I spoke to in Cheyenne, the next step is competition, and Wyoming appears to be leading the way and coming with rules and trying to protect the human involved, of course, and that was emphasized by the folks we spoke to."
Bryan Pedersen, who is the chair of the Wyoming Combat Sports Commission and managing director at RBC Wealth Management in Cheyenne, tells Cowboy State Daily that because he is seeing more videos and discussions about 'fighting robots' that inspired him to draft the rules for "hybrid bouts" where humans would compete directly against machines, and creates licensing requirements for robot operators similar to those for trainers and referees.
Read the full story HERE.
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Nearly 50 years ago, a 20-year-old Casper woman named Celeste Hensley Greub vanished and was never found. Cowboy State Daily's Jen Kocher reports that today the son of one of those Wyoming searchers is on a mission to find her and has a theory of where to start his search.
"John now saw a post on Facebook about Celeste being missing, and there's more energy to finding her now……John is planning to search Misty Moon Lake, which is in the Big Horns, where the general consensus is that Celeste is in that lake, whether by foul play or whether she accidentally fell in….and the problem is it's very expensive to do so…local Search and Rescue have told him, 'Yes, we're we're interested in that tip. However, we don't have the funding to do it.' It's incredibly expensive to fly the boat and all the equipment necessary."
Celeste, her aunt, and a family friend went camping near Misty Moon Lake in the Cloud Peak Wilderness. Her two companions left Celeste alone to climb to the top of the peak because she had been too tired to join them. When the women came back to camp around 5PM that day, Celeste was gone and has never been seen since.
Read the full story HERE.
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A Buffalo, Wyoming-area elk hunter claims that he and others are denied hunting opportunities by a landowner hoarding the herd by deliberately driving elk away from public land. Cowboy State Daily's Mark Heinz reports whether this practice is illegal or just bad sport.
"I've heard all kinds of stories of people using horses, ATVs, even aircraft to push elk where they want them to go. In other words, the outfitter or the rancher who stands to gain money from keeping those animals on their land where they can be hunted for a fee, will deliberately push animals away from public land onto private land, which is ethically, questionable at best, and whether it's illegal, that that would boil down to whether it amounts to the actual harassing of wildlife."
Hunters routinely share stories having claimed to have seen landowners using horseback, vehicles, or even aircraft, to spook elk herds back away from crossing the boundaries onto public land.
Read the full story HERE.
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The Belvoir Ranch, which offers the public 12 miles of new public trails and other outdoor rec opportunities in Laramie County. Cowboy State Daily's Renee Jean reports the city of Cheyenne bought it for the water rights, which is becoming more of a trend, but when it opens in the spring, it'll be a world-class outdoor experience.
"It's a stunning landscape. It's not that far to connect the big hole, which was added to the Belvoir ranch in 2005 with 40 plus miles of stunning trails in Colorado. So you really have this potential to create a mountain biking and hiking Mecca. They're going to add equestrian trails. They're going to have a reservoir that could be stocked with trout. Eventually, they might have primitive a few primitive camping sites. None of this is going to interfere with the already existing hunting management area that's adjacent so it's just a really cool recreational gym."
Belvoir Ranch's project manager Dustin Humphreys was at first concerned when he learned that the city of Cheyenne was going to allow the building of 75 wind turbines but he says the way it's designed, the windmills are all but invisible.
Read the full story HERE.
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I'll be back with more news, after this….
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The Wyoming Attorney General's Office is urging the state Supreme Court to give legislators more time to tweak school funding before being forced by a court order. Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports that legislators are now in recalibration, which they must undertake every five years to develop appropriate block grants for school districts.
"They're undertaking this process also under the pressure of a court order from February where the judge said you've got to supply one computer for every student. You got to supply school resources officers, you got to furnish mental health counselors in elementary schools. You got to do all these things…Even though they're under court order, they're like…we'd like to look into the mental health and computer things going into the next interim. So not right now, so there's this kind of pushback from the legislature, and meanwhile, the executive branch is trying to come to the legislature's aid, saying, 'Can the Wyoming Supreme Court pause this court order to give these recalibrators some breathing room while they assess what the school system costs?'
The order might not survive the state's appeal of it, which is scheduled for a Nov. 12 oral argument in the high court. The motion claims the state is likely to win its challenge and in so doing, win back more legislative autonomy on how to fund schools.
Read the full story HERE.
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Wildlife experts and advocates say you can't quantify the value of Yellowstone's famous grizzly bears because they're "priceless." But Cowboy State Daily's Andrew Rossi explains how two researchers from the National Park Service and the U.S. Geological Survey put the value of a grizzly at about the price tag of a new car.
"If a grizzly bear is worth $46,000 then maybe there are a lot of people who decide we can afford to lose $46,000 in our local economy through hunting, and then that number can just continue to grow from there…So this is too early to say what anyone's going to do with the numbers that they've compiled, but it does open that door that's…there's a people can look at the monetary value of a grizzly…And that could be an interesting discussion, in and of itself, because the last time grizzly hunting tags, that last time that discussion came up in Wyoming, it was around $6,000 per tag. And $46,000 is quite a bit more than that."
The study says the total annual value of Yellowstone bear sightings at roughly $9 million dollars for grizzlies and about $7 million for black bears.
Read the full story HERE.
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It's been 7 months since a tractor trailer truck plowed through an Upton storage building and a rental home. But Cowboy State Daily's Scott Schwebke reports that the owner says she's trapped in insurance hell.
"Her name is Mickey Remington, and she has a diner in Upton called Remi's Diner, and back in March, a truck, a tractor trailer plowed through a storage building and a house that she rents out demolishing it, and ever since the debris is still there, still an eyesore for the city, she's filed claims with the insurers, but she says they're not willing to make her whole, and they're low balling her, and she's unable to move forward. I think one of the buildings was uninsured, so she's been battling with the insurance thinks they should pay her more."
Remington tells Cowboy State Daily that her 2,000-square-foot shop, which was rented to an electrical repair business, was appraised for $250,000 but only garnered a $58,000 offer and offered $180,000 dollars for the 12-hundred square-foot house which was appraised at $187,000 dollars.
Read the full story HERE.
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Wyoming ranchers face a cross-roads when wanting to retire. Sell to the highest bidder? Conservation easement? One ranch couple from Montana have taken one option that is slowly gaining ground as an alternative to selling and it's got Wyoming ranchers curious. Cowboy State Daily's David Madison reports that Dale and Janet Veseth are donating the family's 38,000-acre, $21 million-dollar ranch to the Ranchers Stewardship Alliance.
"Like ranchers in Wyoming nearing retirement, a ranch family outside of Malta Montana, you know, faced a crossroads. How can they keep their ranch continuing as a working agricultural operation when there is pressure to sell to a conservation group locally that is collecting ranches to create more bison range, or perhaps to a hunting outfit that wanted it for private clients, the ranch sits right next to the CM Russell Wildlife Refuge, and so in facing that that crossroads, they decided to donate the ranch to a nonprofit they helped found as a way to preserve a way of life, a way to preserve it as an agricultural operation, and really to experiment with a new option, or at least not a widely used option."
The couple tells Cowboy State Daily that their donation ensures it will remain a working cattle operation supporting local ranchers rather than being sold off or converted to other uses. The gift represents the largest recorded working ranch donation in Montana history, according to the RSA.
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.
