He then directed Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to determine whether gray wolves and Mexican wolves should lose federal protection under the Endangered Species Act. Without waiting for an answer, he also directed Burgum to support Congressional removal of gray wolves from the endangered species list.

Wildlife defenders noted that Trump’s directives were in part meant to distract the public from the impact of the President’s decision to ease tariffs on imported beef, making life harder for American ranchers. The truth is that killing wolves won’t do a thing to lower meat prices or help the industry, as according to USDA data, just 1% of cattle and sheep losses are attributed to wolves in states with wolf populations. 

Research also shows that killing wolves doesn’t prevent conflict. When conflicts do occur, there are tools like range riding, carcass removal, scare devices and other deterrents. Senators Adam Schiff, D-California, and Steve Daines, R-Montana, recently introduced the Human-Wildlife Conflict Reduction Act, which would help ranchers by assisting with such livestock-protection strategies.

Beyond dramatically overstating wolves’ impact on the cattle industry, it was particularly troubling to see an American president repeat the absurd claim that federal protections for wolves should be eliminated because they put people’s lives at risk — that “innocent people can get in bad shape.”

Such misleading statements not only have serious consequences for wolf conservation and recovery, they also do a disservice to those living in wolf country by stoking unnecessary fear. It is already legal to kill a wolf, even a federally endangered one, in defense of human life.

More importantly, wolves want little to do with people and generally avoid us. Like bears and cougars, they share spaces with us in rural communities and areas in which human development and wild spaces overlap, where they can be curious. They can also be territorial toward domestic dogs and can sometimes follow us at a distance until we’re away from their pups. Wolves can sometimes approach hunters imitating animal calls, too, not realizing what’s making the noise.

But wolves are simply not out to get us.

I began tracking wolves — following their tracks through the woods — in my teens, sometimes with friends and family, sometimes solo, sometimes for fun, sometimes for work (always carrying bear spray). I’ve been close to a lot of wolves. If humans were on their menu, a short woman hiking alone should be like a free hot dog. But I’ve never once felt threatened.

One encounter now on video, where a wolf walked in my direction (not knowing I was there) and then retreated, was published by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife to educate people about wolf behavior. It has amassed over 23 million views: “What to Expect if You Encounter a Wolf” on YouTube. It’s worth watching.

Every year, millions of people live, hike, and hunt in wolf territory without incident. Since their populations began to recover in the 1980s, wolves have caused just one human injury in the Lower 48 states. In Canada and Alaska, where more wolves roam, only about 10 incidents— two fatal — have occurred since 2000. Almost all of these involved wolves conditioned to human food or garbage. Lightning killed more than 40 Canadians in that timespan. Mexican wolves, a smaller subspecies in the Southwest, have never attacked a human.

In a recent review of wolf-human conflicts, researchers stated that “the risks associated with a wolf attack are above zero, but far too low to calculate.”

Millions flock to Yellowstone National Park for the opportunity to see wolves. Sometimes hazing is required when wolves become too comfortable with people — for their safety more than ours. Yellowstone wolves are targeted by trophy hunters and recreational trappers when they cross the invisible park boundary. In Montana, Wyoming and Idaho, wolves are killed by the hundreds, demonstrating the deadly consequences for wolves when protection is removed.

The return of wolves is an opportunity for curiosity, wonder and respect, not scapegoating. Wolves deserve better than to be used as a distraction by the Trump administration, and those living alongside wolves deserve better than fearmongering.

Story Warren is a contributor to Writers on the Range, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. She is wildlife program manager with Humane World for Animals, formerly called the Humane Society of the United States.

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That they flourish is due to Yellowstone’s huge expanse of wildlands — you’d have to drive 1,000 miles to circle what’s called the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. 

But new policies from Washington, D.C., would dramatically reduce the size of these wildlands and threaten wildlife’s ability to survive.

Bigger is better for wildland ecosystems, a lesson learned soon after Yellowstone was established as the nation’s first national park in 1872.  When General Philip Sheridan explored the region, he realized even then that the park was far too small to contain its migrating wildlife; he urged expanding the park. I’m an ecologist who has studied the region, and we know even better today that climate, soils and food sources vary enormously from place to place, causing wildlife to sometimes seek new ground.

Through the years Congress has understood this pattern and acted. Federally protected lands around Yellowstone have been steadily enlarged, with national forests created in the late 1800s, designated wilderness areas created in the 1960s, along with wilderness study areas from the 1970s to 1980s, and inventoried roadless areas in the 1990s.

The Yellowstone ecosystem now has as much — or more — lands protected for wildlife than anywhere else in the lower 48 states. These lands are needed to keep intact what makes Yellowstone unique.

Protected federal lands have been the most important buffer against fragmented and developed private lands. In an Ecosphere paper, I reported that on privately owned land, vital signs of ecological health across greater Yellowstone had mostly deteriorated since 1970. But it was the opposite on protected federal lands, with most remaining stable or improving.

As this disparity became widely known, conservation collaboratives have formed to maintain or restore wildlife habitat on large private ranches, while also helping rural homeowners and recreationists learn how to reduce their impacts on wildlife. 

For example, the Greater Yellowstone Coalition is using wildlife-friendly fencing to contain cattle while still allowing wildlife to migrate. The coalition also supports range rider programs to reduce predator impacts on cattle. And the Teton Conservation District provides The Mountain Neighbor Handbook: A Local’s Guide to Stewardship in the Tetons to new residents around Jackson, Wyoming. 

Now, this administration is promoting policies that harm rather than help the Yellowstone area. If enacted, these policies would:

• Accelerate logging in national forests and expand access for motorized vehicles.
• Open inventoried roadless areas to roadbuilding, logging and mining.
• Roll back protections for wilderness study areas.
• Open the habitats of endangered species to development.

The Trump administration is telling us that these policy changes are needed to reduce fuels and protect communities from severe wildfires. The science shows otherwise. An analysis published in the International Journal of Wildland Fire in 2014 found that people’s lives and property are best protected by reducing fuels immediately around homes — not in remote wildlands that are critical for wildlife.

Stripping federal land protections would deliver a knife to the heart of what makes Yellowstone special. Unfortunately, the other great natural ecosystems across the country face the same loss of protections.

What can we do? Comment on the Roadless Rule before October 6. We can also speak loudly and tell our elected representatives to halt the administration’s destructive policies. We can vote wisely in November to stop proposed rollbacks of federal land protections.

If we can block these threats, we can return to working collaboratively across ranchland associations, land trusts, conservation groups, local and tribal governments, recreationists, residents, and visitors. We all know how precious wild country and wild animals are to this nation, and we’ve learned what it takes to keep wildlife thriving.

We have to fight harder than ever now to keep intact the wild places we have left.

Andrew Hansen is a contributor to Writers on the Range, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He is professor emeritus of ecology at Montana State University and lives in Bozeman, Montana.

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In 2024, Cody Roberts of Daniel, Wyoming mowed down a wolf with a snowmobile, dragged her into a bar, tormented her in front of patrons while she was still alive, and later killed her. The public reaction to this brutality—across the United States and abroad—was overwhelming shock, especially after learning that the wolf’s torment carried only a small fine.

But the state Legislature declined to act to make wolf-killing-by-snowmobile illegal. In Wyoming, one can still run over some animals so long as the stunned animal is “quickly” killed.

Sublette County Attorney Clayton Melinkovich, however, convened a grand jury in August 2025 to take up the case. Though this was an unusual move in the Cowboy State, he secured an indictment against Roberts for felony animal cruelty, which included a maximum sentence of up to two years in prison and a $5,000 fine.

By accepting a plea deal in February, Roberts avoided a trial, and last week, on March 5, he appeared before Sweetwater County Judge Richard Lavery in Sublette County District Court to change his plea to “guilty.” Judge Lavery did not immediately sentence Roberts; instead, he is waiting for a pre-sentence investigation report from a probation and parole officer, who must first conduct a substance abuse assessment of Roberts.

If the plea deal is accepted by the court, the prison sentence is suspended and fine reduced to $1,000. Roberts would also be prohibited from hunting, fishing, consuming alcohol, or entering bars or liquor establishments, and would need to complete a substance-abuse treatment plan.

Animal cruelty does not occur in a vacuum. Decades of research show strong correlations between the abuse of animals and various forms of interpersonal violence. By insisting on a felony charge, mandated treatment and strict conditions, the County Attorney has affirmed that cruelty to wildlife is wrong on its own terms and has implications to the health and safety of the human community as well.

This was a disturbing case, and the victim was a wild wolf—an animal deemed a “predator” under state law, and one frequently vilified by Wyoming lawmakers. Yet despite the heated rhetoric surrounding wolves, several polls show that Wyomingites did not approve of Roberts’ actions. We also know from newer surveys that hunters, ranchers, rural Wyoming residents and people calling themselves conservatives all hold a broad reverence for both wolves and grizzly bears.

The attitudes of Wyoming’s wildlife authorities appear to be shifting as well. In another, more recent case, three Wyoming men were charged with tormenting a moose by trying to ride it.

These and other developments make this a moment of reckoning for lawmakers and wildlife officials who have repeatedly resisted outlawing vehicular killing of wildlife, or who have shied away from strengthening anti-cruelty laws.

For too long, Wyoming has been an outlier in tolerating extreme cruelty toward its wild carnivores. But the disposition of the Roberts case shows that the state does have tools and even the willpower to protect animals. This case began with the malicious use of a snowmobile to run down an animal. Now, several polls show that Wyomingites oppose killing wildlife with vehicles, which gives public officials in the next Legislative session an opening to prohibit this debased practice.

When Cody Roberts proudly showed off his maimed wolf on social media, he made more news than he anticipated, spotlighting Wyoming’s heartless “predator-zone” policies, where wolves and other animals can be killed cruelly by almost any means.

It’s up to state legislators now to strengthen existing legal frameworks, close exemptions for animals labeled as “predators,” and do away with the “predator zone” encompassing over 80% of the state.

The plea deal does not undo the suffering inflicted on the wolf, but it does create legal precedent and moral momentum. Prosecutor Melinkovich has shown what principled enforcement of animal cruelty law can look like. Lawmakers can do their part by prohibiting intentional vehicular killing of wildlife, which would go a long way toward creating a legacy of just and compassionate wildlife stewardship.

Wendy Keefover is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. She works as a wild carnivore advocate for Humane World for Animals.

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Still, the Wyoming state Legislature failed to make illegal what Cody Roberts did. After running over the young female wolf with his snowmobile, Roberts paraded the dazed animal—its mouth taped shut—through a bar in Daniel, Wyoming. Then he shot the wolf dead.

In reaction, the Wyoming’s governor and legislature passed a bill with no substance, HB 275, blandly labeled “The treatment of animals.” In passing it, Wyoming lawmakers sanctioned killing wildlife with vehicles.

At a hearing before the vote, representatives of Wyoming’s agricultural community defended the practice. One argued that without access to M-44 sodium-cyanide bombs that are now virtually prohibited, they needed to run over wolves and other wildlife with vehicles to protect their livestock.

For a while it seemed that the old ways of the Cowboy State would persist without question. But over a year later, an attorney for Sublette County convened a grand jury to examine Cody Roberts’ actions, and last week it indicted Roberts on “felony animal cruelty,” an offense punishable by up to 2 years in prison, a fine of $5,000, or both.

Wyoming’s decision leaders may not realize it, but this indictment means that they face a new landscape, which increasingly demands responsible, nuanced responses, as well as humane policies involving animals. This ethic has already emerged in the West. For the most part, Wyoming leaders seem to be taking bad advice from the wrong people and find themselves badly out of step with the rest of the nation.

In a better world, those who work with animals—whether wild or domestic—would use ingenuity to prevent negative interactions with wildlife. Using the blunt force of a snowmobile to “manage” wildlife isn’t wildlife management at all: It is state-sanctioned cruelty.

Roberts needs to be punished. But what’s really at stake is achieving a changed relationship with wildlife in Wyoming. Ethics, not indifference, and a responsible attitude should prevail. And the state’s politicians and leaders need to be at the head of the parade on passing and enforcing laws that reflect the values of their fellow citizens.

In two separate polls, an overwhelming majority of Wyoming residents—including 74% of sportsmen—agreed that running over animals with vehicles is neither ethical nor “fair chase.” Our poll showed 71% of Wyoming residents do not approve of animal cruelty.

The coming years could pose a rare opportunity for sportsmen, conservationists—and also the agricultural community— to find common ground, building a future where humane wildlife stewardship is the norm.

I believe this can happen because precedents exist. Simultaneously with the passage of its HB275 wolf bill this year, another nightmare had been brewing: Two legislators proposed a bill to allow year-round hunting and trapping of mountain lions. But hunters and wildlife advocates stood together and shouted a collective “No!”

The Legislature listened. That moment proved something important. When we rise above division and focus on fairness and respect for wildlife, we can protect what makes Wyoming wild and wonderful, and we can do it together.

By dragging that muzzled wolf into a bar, Roberts also dragged Wyoming’s outdated treatment of wildlife into broader public view. In the harsh glare of what became a global spotlight, he may end up having done Wyoming a strange kind of favor. His grotesque actions exposed to the world what many here already knew—that cruelty to wildlife is not tolerated by most

Wyoming residents, even if it happens to be protected by law. Those who might think the state should ignore such cruelty grow ever fewer in number.

If there’s any justice to be found in the matter, it rests with the prospect that Roberts’ brutality could spark real change for the better for wolves and other wildlife, for ethics and for Wyoming’s future.

Wendy Keefover is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. She works as an advocate for native carnivores for Humane World for Animals.

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At the county seat in Jackson, town council member and economic consultant Jonathan Schechter made the “wealthiest” calculation in his “cothrive” newsletter. He’d crunched the latest U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis estimates from 3,244 counties, parishes and boroughs nationwide.

Schechter’s analysis made a small group of us—social critics with more than 100 collective years of Jackson Hole living—consider our new status in what Schechter called “the wealthiest county in the wealthiest country in the history of the world.” Our group of aging ski-bum, bicycle-riding gadflies wondered how the other 99.7% of America lived.

We needed to find out. We would start down the social ladder at a community that struggles to flop into second place. It’s Pitkin County, Colorado, site of the town of Aspen, a village about which we had only vague notions.

We would visit by bicycle over six days, observing Aspenites who would, we thought, represent more of the nation’s hoi polloi. Off we pedaled to cross the Income Gulf of America.

As we cycled up Colorado’s Roaring Fork Valley toward Aspen, we ran into the first of the locals. He was a 70-year-old impresario with all the bona fides of a longtime resident—greying braided ponytail, tank top, beater rig and a long resume as a roadie with the Grateful Dead.

He elaborated on his curriculum vitae, which included pre-concert street deals. “Detroit was easy,” he said. “They used to give me $500. That was a lot of money in those days.”

We parried. “We’re from the wealthiest community in the country.”

“Aspen is the most expensive,” he replied.

Pitkin’s annual per-capita income is $255,839, we riposted, as we headed up-valley. How spendy could this place be, we wondered, if it names a top hotel after a Nabisco cracker?

We were somewhere around Basalt on the edge of Aspen when the prices started to kick up. Numbers on the tap-insert-swipe thingies increased alarmingly. Finally arriving in Aspen, we rattled to a stop at a downtown bar, where beer came in $9 pints.

“Martini?” the menu suggested. Coming from the wealthiest county, we were practiced.

“I’ll take two.” Federal data said we could afford it. “And a burger.”

Twenty-five bucks for a Saphire gin cocktail. Thirty bucks for a dead-cow patty so tall a mule would have to stretch its lips to take a bite of the towering brioche bun.

Perhaps we missed some of Schechter’s small print. A few billionaires must have skewed our lofty per-capita income figure. In fact, the median annual Teton County income is just $141,500, but still more than anyone in our peloton was making. And second-hand Ralph Lauren button-downs at Jackson’s Browse ’n’ Buy are up to $7.

We read local papers to dig deeper into the customs and culture of our Colorado subject. The papers said the sheriff was taking a trespasser to court who’d lived in a tree for 10 years. A humanitarian nonprofit was running out of money. The Chamber of Commerce was bragging about the coming tourist season.

The ads in glossy local magazines showed a population of the young, tan, fit and wealthy. Aspenites are polyglots, we realized, naming their stores in Italian —Gucci and Prada. In Jackson Hole we are glad to have Shirt off my Back and Lee’s Tees.

In Aspen, Louis Vuitton, which we deduced was French for “handbag,” offered the Aspen Platform Clog for $1,690. “We’ll take two!” we dreamed.

We went to a liquor store. A sharpie had marked $1,000 on one bottle of wine. We passed that up for a six pack—about what four dirtbags who fell out of the back pages of a 1980s Patagonia catalog could afford.

A ragged sign taped to the counter at the tap-insert-swipe thingie suggested that our communities were much more similar than we thought. We learned the sign had been there a year and a half but was still relevant.

“Jason needs a place to live,” it read.

Angus M. Thuermer Jr. is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He is a reporter who has lived and worked as a journalist in Jackson, Wyoming for more than four decades.

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His statement saddened me, since in all the time I spent on Four Corners high points, a persistent haze always limited my visibility to maybe 50 or 60 miles, blurring Shiprock’s sharp spires into a fuzzy silhouette. That’s because a fleet of massive coal-fired power plants in the region churned out haze-producing pollutants, harming humans and the ecology and blotting out vistas from the San Juans to the Sandias. It seemed as if I’d never get a view as clear as Norm’s.

But over the last decade, the failing economics of coal shuttered those power plants. That means the air on the Colorado Plateau—when not sullied by the ever-lengthening wildfire season—has become cleaner as the coal industry faded away.

The shuttered plants include Mojave, Navajo, Nucla, Escalante, San Juan and, most recently, Cholla. The closures certainly sharpened the view of folks all over the region. But more importantly, they kept tens of millions of tons of greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere and oodles of harmful pollutants (arsenic, mercury, sulfur dioxide and soot) out of the lungs of nearby residents, many of them on the Navajo Nation.

Yet in defiance of the free market that has boosted renewables, the Trump administration is acting to undo those positive changes and make the air dirty again by throwing multiple lifelines to the flagging coal industry.

It has eviscerated environmental protections limiting mercury and other toxic air emissions, ended Obama-and Biden-era freezes on new federal coal leases, and rescinded limits on carbon dioxide emissions. The administration has also blocked utilities from shutting down plants that are old, dirty and more costly than other power sources.

Trump purports to do this in the name of “unleashing” coal from regulatory constraints so it can be mined and burned to achieve American “energy dominance.” Yet it’s unlikely that unleashing the industry will reverse its decline.

It’s true that delaying implementation of the mercury rule will enable the Colstrip coal plant in Montana—one of the nation’s dirtiest facilities—to continue operating without expensive new pollution control equipment. Generally, though, utilities such as Xcel Energy, Intermountain Power Agency and Tri-State Generation & Transmission are moving forward with plans to retire their coal plants, namely because the aging facilities are dirty, inefficient, inflexible and, most of all, no longer profitable. They just can’t compete with natural gas, solar, wind, and other, cleaner energy sources.

When signing one of his fossil-fuel-friendly orders, Trump said he would “save” the Cholla coal plant near Holbrook, Arizona, from destruction, adding, “We’re going to have that plant opening and burning the clean coal, beautiful clean coal, in a very short period of time.”

But its operator, Arizona Public Service, said it had already procured cleaner, cheaper generation for the plant, and had no desire to keep burning coal at Cholla. There was no save needed.

If Trump were truly interested in energy dominance and abundance, he would have supported the fastest-growing energy sources—wind and solar power. Instead, his administration is doing all it can to stifle them, from eliminating production tax credits for renewable energy in his “big, beautiful” budget bill, to slowing down permits for clean energy developments on public lands. Both utility-scale and rooftop solar will be affected, boosting the prospects of oil and gas, coal and nuclear.

U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, in an Economist column, revealed the philosophy behind the administration’s fossil-fuel fetishization. He wrote that climate change is “not an existential crisis,” merely a “byproduct of progress.” He said he was willing to take the “modest negative trade-off” of climate change—along, presumably, with ever more devastating heat waves, wildfires and floods—”for this legacy of human advancement.”

He is probably correct in saying that climate change and the sullied air over the Colorado Plateau are byproducts of so-called progress. But they are also nasty, deadly and avoidable. Ultimately, going backward toward coal will not only wreck progress, but perhaps life on earth as we know it.

Jonathan Thompson is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He has long covered the West’s natural resources.

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Writers on the Range has a simple two-part mission. One is to engage Westerners in talking to each other about issues important to the region. The other aim is to entice readers to look forward to these fact-based opinions, with the hope they’ll then want to keep their local journalism outlet alive and flourishing.

Our opinions this year covered a wide range: avalanche deaths that might have been prevented, by Molly Absolon; Ben Long’s profile of Diane K. Boyd, whose innovative career studying wolves in the wild covered four decades; Zak Podmore’s description of how dead pool is a strong possibility for Lake Powell. We’re happy to report that Megan Schrader of the Denver Post said that Long’s and Podmore’s opinions were among the paper’s most-viewed columns.

But it was what happened to wildlife in the state of Wyoming that garnered the most response from readers, who wrote letters of outrage or made our opinion go viral on social media. Wendy Keefover of the Humane Society of the USA was involved in both.

Her first opinion column, published in April, revealed that in Wyoming coyotes can be legally killed—though in this case the animal run over by a snowmobiler was a wolf.

We know a wolf suffered this assault because the snowmobiler showed off the dazed and muzzled animal at a bar, where it was photographed splayed out on the floor. Many readers were appalled, especially as the penalty for what amounted to torture was a minor fine.

The second column by Keefover was written with Kristin Combs of Wyoming Wildlife Advocates, and it covered the sudden death of grizzly bear 399, Wyoming’s most famous bruin.

Starting in 2004, this prolific mother bear raised 18 cubs amidst the millions of visitors and residents of Jackson Hole and Grand Teton National Park. Her death, after colliding with a car, resulted in an outpouring of grief. The writers’ opinion calling for greater protection for grizzlies was shared on social media by more than 20,000 readers who visited our website on the first day it appeared.

We’re also pleased to report that a Writers on the Range column helped quash the state of Utah’s plan to allow a 460-foot telecommunications tower in the heart of Bears Ears National Monument. In his opinion, Mark Maryboy, former delegate to the Navajo Nation Council, blasted the state’s proposed tower as “a spear in the heart of the monument.” The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance told us that Maryboy’s column, which ran widely in the state, was a “major component” in the tower’s defeat.

A more recent column, by Jennifer Rokala, head of the Center for Western Priorities, was shared by many readers. Rokala insisted that no matter what exploitation the Trump administration planned for public lands, conservationists would fight back. As a reader put it in a letter to the editor of the Aspen Daily News: “You’re providing factual and great journalism that inspires and gives hope.”

We were inspired by several columns about Westerners trying to change the world, including Katie Klingsporn’s profile of a Wyoming principal, Katie Law, who never gives up on students at Arapaho Charter High School. Law was rewarded by seeing 14 students graduate this year, the largest class in the school’s history. Why did she work so hard? “I want to see these students succeed, and I’m going to do what it takes.”

There were other columns about extraordinary people or the novel ways writers understand the West, including Dave Marston’s piece about Amory Lovins, who insists that the energy gap can be closed, and others by Rebecca Clarren, Shaun Ketchum Jr., Rick Knight, Jacob Richards and Laura Pritchett.  Marston, the publisher of Writers on the Range, also revealed his struggle with bipolar mental illness.

Each of our writers—who are paid—is eager to start a conversation because they care about the West, and in particular, the public land that makes this region unique. And we suggest never skipping a column by Grand Canyon educator Marjorie “Slim” Woodruff, who can’t help noting the many foibles of tourists.

For example, whenever a hiker asks her on the trail: “Was the hike worth it?” Woodruff confesses she’d love to answer: “No, turn around now!”

Betsy Marston is the editor of Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, the independent nonprofit opinion service that seeks to spur lively conversations about the West. She lives in Paonia, Colorado.

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From its headquarters in Washington, D.C., the National Mining Association predicted “a severe economic blow to mining states and communities,” while the industry’s political allies likened the move to declaring “war” on coal communities.

The truth is that coal has been steadily falling from its past dominance as energy king for nearly two decades. Domestic coal consumption dropped to 512 million tons in 2022, down 55 percent since its 2007 peak.

With the downward trajectory expected to continue, the Biden administration’s decision to end coal leasing in the Powder River Basin—the nation’s largest coal-producing region—reflects clear market trends. And far from killing coal, the administration’s plan allows mining to continue as the market transitions. 

Billions of tons of previously leased federal coal remain available for mining from 270 tracts across the nation, which combined cover an area larger than Rocky Mountain National Park. One Montana mine has enough coal to keep operating until 2060. Taken together, economic effects related to ending new coal leasing in the Powder River Basin may not be felt until the 2040s and beyond.

Coal companies are well aware that U.S. energy markets have rapidly changed, a fact they soberly tell investors: “Over the last few years, customers have shifted to long-term supply agreements with shorter durations, driven by the reduced utilization of (coal) plants and plant retirements, fluidity of natural gas pricing and the increased use of renewable energy sources,” Wyoming’s largest coal producer, Peabody Energy, disclosed in its 2023 financial filing.

Even with declining markets, the Biden administration did not come to the decision on its own. Arguing that BLM’s past reviews of coal’s contributions to climate change were inadequate, a coalition of environmental groups sued the government and won. That forced the agency to revisit whether more coal leasing was warranted.

“For decades, mining has affected public health, our local land, air, and water, and the global climate,” said Lynne Huskinson, a retired coal miner. She’s a member of the Powder River Basin Resource Council, a Wyoming landowners’ group that was among the plaintiffs.

Now, she said, “we look forward to BLM working with state and local partners to ensure a just economic transition for the Powder River Basin as we move toward a clean energy future.”

Huskinson lives in Gillette, Wyoming, where a dozen highly mechanized strip mines sprawl across the grasslands of the Powder River Basin. The Wyoming mines alone produce 40 percent of U.S. coal while employing less than 10 percent of the nation’s 44,000 coal workers.

The Basin’s mines have leased 8 billion tons of federal coal since the 1990s, a cheap and plentiful supply for the industry. The leasing process allows companies to nominate desired tracts, and then bid with little or no competition. Winning bidders often pay less than $1 a ton for coal, plus a nominal annual rent and a royalty after final sale.

There is little question that leasing helped launch and sustain the region’s energy boom. But in his 2022 decision, Judge Brian Morris of the Federal District Court of Montana cast his eye toward the future. Morris wrote that federal law required BLM to consider “long-term needs of future generations” that included “recreation, range, timber, minerals, watershed, wildlife and fish, and natural scenic, scientific, and historical values.”

The judge also gave the federal agency an out: “Coal mining represents a potentially allowable use of public lands, but BLM is not required to lease public lands.”

Morris’ words cleared the way for BLM to stop leasing, a decision that dovetails with a Colorado College poll that found most residents in eight Rocky Mountain states—including Wyoming and Montana—want Congress to prioritize conservation over energy development on public lands.

The legal wrangling will likely continue, with the BLM reviewing protests from the coal industry and its political allies that lay the groundwork for more lawsuits. For now, though, it seems the Biden administration’s decision to keep coal in the ground not only follows the market and the law, but public opinion, too.

Peter Gartrell is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He is a consultant in Washington, D.C., and covered coal leasing issues as a journalist and congressional staffer.

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Maybe it was the fatigue of the trip. Maybe it was the years she spent herding this class to the finish line. The hours answering their phone calls, figuring out plan Bs, worrying about them at every setback.

As she addressed the crowd, Law was nearly overcome with emotion. She paused before regaining control. There was so much to celebrate. 

On this day, 14 students donned caps and gowns, the largest graduating class in the school’s history. Among them were a record four students who graduated at least a semester early and three who were dual enrolled in a community college. Eight were headed to college or Job Corps. 

For a tiny school that lags far behind conventional performance measures, these were significant wins. 

The school, which serves majority Native American students, reports higher-than-average rates of foster care, homelessness and involvement in the criminal justice system. Some 70% of students live in single-parent households or have a deceased parent. In 2018, the on-time graduation rate was 0%. 

I spent four months visiting the school during the semester before graduation this year. Data points can’t capture the hurdles they faced—lost loved ones and an education system that’s historically failed Indigenous students. 

But what the seniors had to their advantage was an advocate and a reliable source of support: Principal Katie Law. An athletic white woman, Law often engaged in tasks that went beyond traditional principal duties. She made sure to learn the personal lives, history and family dynamics of all her students. 

Well before Law was recently awarded Principal of the Year by the Wyoming Association of Secondary Schools in a surprise ceremony, it was clear she had a rare level of commitment. 

“You’re not going to find another principal or educator that puts as much time in as she does in the evenings, on the weekends,” District Superintendent Curt Mayer said.

Law helps students get their driver’s licenses, chaperones college visits and makes calls when kids get arrested. Students have gone to Law with news that they are pregnant, and she has later cared for their infants in her office while they attend class. 

The motivation is simple. “I want to see these students succeed, and I’m going to do what it takes,” she said.

Law grew up in Colstrip, Montana—30 miles from the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation. She was the daughter of educators, and never thought she would enter that world. 

But she wanted to help people, and education ultimately became the vehicle for that. During her first year of teaching in Nebraska, she found a distraught student crying in the bathroom one day and sat comforting her for an hour. When Law saw her years later, the student told her she was a pivotal teacher. It dawned on Law then that she’s different.

“I get a lot of, ‘That’s not your job,’” she says. “I’m like, ‘I know, but whose job is it?’”

She was hired to teach in the Arapaho school’s district 18 years ago, at age 23. The school was rough. Drug use and gang violence were common. She kept her head down, helped where she could. Slowly, she started building relationships. 

The work can be devastating, and many fixes don’t last. Law is stubborn. “I think my biggest asset is, I won’t give up.”

Law doesn’t pretend to share a background with her reservation students, but she uses her own experiences to build empathy. School didn’t come easily to her. Her brother died young from diabetes. And she witnessed a murder at age 14. These are experiences her students can relate to.

It seems to work. At graduation, the seniors handed out roses to people who were meaningful. Law received six roses, and six heartfelt hugs.  

It’s not realistic to expect all struggling schools to find administrators like Law, who live and breathe their jobs and don’t burn out. Still, parents and educators can take this to heart: One caring adult can make an enormous difference in a student’s life.

Katie Klingsporn is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring conversation about Western issues. She lives in central Wyoming, where she reports on education and outdoor recreation for WyoFile.com.

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Commuters include nurses, teachers, police, waiters, cooks, motel housekeepers, construction workers, landscapers, fishing and mountain guides, and salespeople. All are Jackson Hole’s economic lifeline.

On June 8, the highway over Teton Pass failed catastrophically, part of it collapsing into an impassable cliff of rubble. The failure made national news, and now you can spend hours on Facebook reading everyone’s opinions about what should be done. Calls for building a tunnel through the mountain are resurfacing, although the tunnel that was previously proposed would not have bypassed the section of road that failed. 

The Teton Pass highway is vital to Jackson’s functioning as a tourist mecca. In good conditions, driving the 24 miles from Victor to Jackson over Teton Pass takes about 35 minutes. Now, a detour means that workers have to drive roughly 85 miles to get to their jobs, adding about two hours to the daily commute.

Jackson town councilor and economist Jonathan Schechter estimates the road closure is costing the local economy roughly $600,000 a day, and he says that’s a conservative figure. Using IRS numbers for mileage reimbursement, the cost for drivers is $88 a day, while the mean hourly wage in Jackson is $40. Not only has the commute become nearly four times longer, but workers also have to put in an extra two hours to cover the cost of that drive time.

Jackson residents have responded to the crisis with compassion and financial aid. Homeowners have opened their houses in Jackson, and many are allowing people to pitch tents in their yards. Businesses are offering parking lot space for RVs. Teton County, Wyoming, eased its temporary shelter regulations, and the daily commuter bus altered its schedule and waived its fees until June 30 to accommodate riders.  The Teton Valley Community Foundation set up a fund that accepts donations for affected workers. I am sure there are many other services and resources as well.

But camping in Jackson means you aren’t going home after work. It means you may not see your children, partner or friends for days on end. It means you need to get someone to feed your dog or check in on your cat, horses, gardens or plants. It means you cannot enjoy the natural world—why most of us live here—because you’re driving a car.

Most of us have a love-hate relationship with Teton Pass. There’s an Instagram page called TetonPassholes, dedicated to showing people doing stupid things on the road. Most of the time it’s video clips of truckers ignoring the winter trailer ban; sometimes it’s pictures of people driving recklessly. We snarl and complain, but we still drive the road because it gets us where we need to go.

The average list price for a single-family home in Jackson reached $7.6 million at the end of 2022, according to the Jackson Hole Report. In the first months of 2024, 56 homes were on the market, with only three listed for less than $2 million.

In Victor, Idaho, the median price for homes was $537,000, an asking price that’s not reasonable for most working people. Housing is in short supply in Victor, too.

For years, affordable housing has been a hot-button topic on both sides of the pass, as well as an hour south of Jackson in booming Star Valley. Now that the funnel that allows Jackson to prosper has been blocked, we can see more clearly than ever that our current model—housing the rich in one town, workers in another—is not sustainable.

Wyoming Department of Transportation has indicated that it hopes to open a temporary bypass around the landslide in as little as two weeks. A long-term solution will undoubtedly take months, if not years. 

In the meantime, I hope our community leaders take this as a wake-up call and address the absolute need for workforce housing. A temporary patch will not address the crisis that this road failure has dramatized.

Molly Absolon is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit spurring lively conversation about the West. She is a writer in Idaho.

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