Them on Us: Elk soup kitchen; Bo blasts Cheney; Wilson fire

Sunday, June 08, 2008

By Jake Nichols

Jackson Hole, Wyo.-A little ‘tough love’ is what our elk need, says Jeff Welsch, the new communications director for the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. Welsch is also a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News. He authored a piece recently on the sorry state of the National Elk Refuge in Jackson that was reprinted in the Salt Lake City Tribune on June 1.

“Isn’t Wyoming supposed to be the state where the federal government is as welcome as knapweed? Where, even in trendy Jackson, the fittest survive and the rest move back to Massachusetts?” Welsch wrote. “Yet, there on the snowy plains of Jackson Hole - as far as the eye could see - were thousands upon thousands of elk queued up at the public trough as if in a Great Depression bread line. Call it the National Elk Soup Kitchen.”
Welsch called for a little tough love to keep things more natural than the “zoo” the Refuge has become.

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Various crane collapses dominated the news last week. In New York City, a crane collapse on the Upper East Side in Manhattan killed two. A construction crane also crumbled in Las Vegas, crushing one man. Wyoming’s addition to the crane disasters happened in Campbell County, where two men were seriously injured after a crane fell over at the Black Thunder Mine east of Wright, Wyo.

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What can you say? Bo knows.
Wyoming writer Alexandra “Bo” Fuller laid it on the line when interviewed by New West. Pulling no punches, the author of “The Legend of Colton H. Bryant” (Penguin) gave brutally honest assessments of fellow Wyoming writers Annie Proulx and Gretel Erhlich, and ripped on Vice President Dick Cheney. She didn’t miss a chance to diss her adopted hometown, either.

“I live in Jackson Hole, in Teton County, which is completely dismissed by the rest of Wyoming as piece of fairyland,” Fuller said when asked by the interviewer, Jenny Shank, where she lived. Knowing her feelings on gas and oil exploration in Wyoming, Shank pressed the right button by asking if Cheney was trying to drill in Teton County. “Oh no, because Dick Cheney lives in Jackson Hole and he would never drill an oil well in his backyard. Jackson Hole is a small town, and it feels a whole lot smaller when he and I are both in it.”

But Fuller didn’t stop there. “What the hell’s Dick Cheney thinking? I know he’s seen it. I know he flies over that oil patch. He must be aware of what’s going on. He must be so blinded by the money. It makes me sick to my stomach to think that he is a Wyomingite, and he’s doing this.”
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With the escalating cost of fuel, pitching a Jackson Hole vacation is happening a little closer to home. A fluff piece appeared in the Denver Post travel section last weekend. It was the kind of gratuitous article that smelled like it was ‘placed’ or purchased by the Chamber of Commerce.

Kyle Wagner’s insider’s guide to Jackson included the usual. He mentioned the Bunnery as a place to be for breakfast, and Sweetwater for the local’s favorite dinner spot. Get pampered at the Rusty Parrot and have a cocktail at the Wort before heading over to the Cowboy for some all night dancing. Geez, it’s like the guy lives here.
He did have one bit of news that was news to us. The Cowboy is home to the state’s first post-prohibition era liquor license.

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News of the apparent murder-suicide-arson case on N. Fish Creek in Wilson was reverberating all week across the state. The sensational story played well on radio, where our reporters heard it on NPR, Cowboy State News Network and local radio as far away as Rawlins.

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For reasons we cannot fathom, Montanans are concerned with travel around the Gros Ventre River. KURL-TV aired a segment, complete with quotes from Grand Teton National Park’s Mary Gibson Scott, about the swollen Gros Ventre River. About 24 feet of the road to Kelly is threatened by the river jumping her banks. Park staff is keeping an eye on the spot and have currently designated the area with traffic cones.

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Them on Us: Elk soup kitchen; Bo blasts Cheney; Wilson fire | Planet JH News Article: General News

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