It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming! I’m Wendy Corr, bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily newsroom, for Monday, April 29th.
Most people would like to think they’d act as Ryan Pasborg did Feb. 1st of 2022, when he rushed into a burning Green River home to save a mother and her child stuck inside, but it’s impossible to know until faced with that situation.
Pasborg’s life has changed a lot since that fateful day, receiving a Carnegie Medal — the nation’s highest civilian honor for heroism — and a new job and career as a result of his heroic actions that day, according to Cowboy State Daily’s Leo Wolfson.
“The home was on fire and he saw it as he was driving by and he stopped immediately got in the house, crawled on his hands and knees and saved the mother and her young child. So fast forward two years and Pasborg is getting awarded this medal from Governor Mark Gordon on Saturday night. But what's really remarkable and how his life has really changed since then, is that when Pasborg found out that he was going to be awarded this medal back in December, he was actually unemployed at the time. And gaming company Pace-O-Matic, which runs Cowboy Skills Games - and they had honored Pasborg in the past at Cheyenne Frontier Days - found that he was the perfect fit for a job that they were trying to fill in Wyoming. But I spoke to Paul Goldean, the owner and CEO of the company, and he said it came down to the character and the courage and heroism that showed that they were looking for the exact right fit in their next employee to represent the company in Wyoming.”
Pasborg said it’s a job that’s changed his life. He now plans to retire with the company.
The Pinedale, Wyoming, mom who was slapped with $400 in citations for setting up a stand for her daughter to sell Girl Scouts cookies wants out of the international spotlight.
In fact, after telling her story to Cowboy State Daily’s Pat Maio on Monday, she’s turned down offers from people wanting to show support for her daughter’s effort to sell 1,200 boxes of cookies. Pat says he has personally fielded nearly 100 emails about the story.
“Everybody wants to know, where do you send money to buy cookies for the Girl Scout? … I even had one person offer to pay the legal bill of $508. You know, buy 100 cookies, buy 29 cookies, or whatever, you know, boxes of cookies. But the mom told me, which I think speaks very highly of her, she says it's not about the money. It's about abuse of power.”
City officials are standing by their legal account of the dust-up, and say that the citations were justified.
A man calling himself Lee The Horselogger has lived on the road in a horse-drawn wagon for 18 years, and he's making his way across Wyoming again.
Cowboy State Daily’s Mark Heinz caught up with him near Hanna, on his fifth trip across America.
“He's made his living as a professional horse driver. In other words, doing things like driving those horse carriages in the big cities. … in 2006, he started out on a journey that really hasn't stopped since then. He's taken breaks here and there. He's on, technically, his fifth crossing of the United States. This time, he's going from Nevada, to Boston. But he doesn't see those as separate crossings, he sees them as all part of this same continuous journey he's been on since 2006 in a horse drawn wagon.”
Horselogger has a network of friends he’s made along the way who help him with such things as making grocery runs or delivering sacks of grain for his horse, a Suffolk punch gelding named Jesse, who weighs 2,250 pounds and consumes about $1,000 worth of feed a month.
Saratoga cowboy J.B. Zielke has traveled all around the globe, taking ranch jobs where he can and learning how the world does Western.
Cowboy State Daily’s Jake Nichols interviewed the world-traveling jetsetter, who has - quite by accident and much to his content - traded a short-lived, adrenaline-fueled bull riding career for something just as treacherous — ranch work in some of the remotest places on earth.
“He trailed cattle on every continent, except one. He's been all around the world. His passport is filled up and he's got a book out. He's just a fascinating guy to talk to - from Argentina to Mexico to Sweden to South Africa, to Mongolia where he rode a reindeer. J.B. Zielke has punched cattle everywhere on this planet.”
His self- published book, “The Lost Cowboy,” has won two 2024 Spur Awards. In it, Zielke chronicles his adventures on six of the worlds’ seven continents, places that offer the last of the Old West.
If returning the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem’s native species is truly a priority, the nation’s first national park would be teeming with more than grizzly bears, wolves and huge bison with prehistoric genes. There also would be a thriving population of giant mammoths calling the ecosystem home.
And if a group of ambitious genetic scientists have anything to say about it, Yellowstone tourists could one day have to navigate mammoth jams on their trips through the park along with its majestic bison and bears. That’s according to Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi.
“The company Colossal Biosciences has committed to resurrecting the woolly mammoth through a mammoth-elephant hybrid by the year 2028. And they want to introduce these genetically resurrected mammoths into modern environments and make them essentially wild animals, restoring animals that had been extinct for at least 10,000 years and maybe longer.”
When facing the question of a hypothetical future with mammoths in Yellowstone, many scientists believe the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem could absorb their return without much trouble. But the gigantic creatures could wreak havoc on tourist vehicles, as well as modern day buildings.
And that’s today’s news. Get your free digital subscription to Wyoming’s only statewide newspaper by hitting the subscribe button on cowboystatedaily.com. I’m Wendy Corr, for Cowboy State Daily.
Radio Stations
The following radio stations are airing Cowboy State Daily Radio on weekday mornings, afternoons and evenings. More radio stations will be added soon.
KYDT 103.1 FM – Sundance
KBFS 1450 AM — Sundance
KYCN 1340 AM / 92.7 FM — Wheatland
KZEW 101.7 FM — Wheatland
KANT 104.1 FM — Guernsey
KZQL 105.5 FM — Casper
KMXW 92.5 FM — Casper
KBDY 102.1 FM — Saratoga
KTGA 99.3 FM — Saratoga
KJAX 93.5 FM — Jackson
KZWY 106.3 FM — Sheridan
KROE 930 AM / 103.9 FM — Sheridan
KWYO 1410 AM / 106.9 FM — Sheridan
KYOY 92.3 FM Hillsdale-Cheyenne / 106.9 FM Cheyenne
KRAE 1480 AM — Cheyenne
KDLY 97.5 FM — Lander
KOVE 1330 AM — Lander
KZMQ 100.3/102.3 FM — Cody, Powell, Medicine Wheel, Greybull, Basin, Meeteetse
KKLX 96.1 FM — Worland, Thermopolis, Ten Sleep, Greybull
KCGL 104.1 FM — Cody, Powell, Basin, Lovell, Clark, Red Lodge, MT
KTAG 97.9 FM — Cody, Powell, Basin
KCWB 92.1 FM — Cody, Powell, Basin
KVGL 105.7 FM — Worland, Thermopolis, Basin, Ten Sleep
KODI 1400 AM / 96.7 FM — Cody, Powell, Lovell, Basin, Clark, Red Lodge
KWOR 1340 AM / 104.7 FM — Worland, Thermopolis, Ten Sleep
KREO 93.5 FM — Sweetwater and Sublette Counties
KGOS 1490 AM — Goshen County
KERM 98.3 FM — Goshen County
Check with individual radio stations for airtime of the newscasts.
