For the second year in a row, the Higher Ground Fair is set to celebrate the Rocky Mountain region’s unique lifestyle. Organizer Gayle Woodsum said this year’s events will be even bigger than last year’s with music and dance on three stages both days of the fair, including the Patti Fiasco, Whiskey Slaps, The Hazel Miller Band, and J Shogren Shanghai’d.

There will also be more than 70 vendors and presentations, including one by the Black American West Museum about African American history in the West.

The Wilderness Society, a national conservation group, has designated the northern Red Desert as one of 15 wildland areas most at-risk of energy development on public lands. The Red Desert in southern Wyoming is home to several hundred wildlife species and numerous wilderness study areas, and up till now, has avoided significant energy development.  

But the Bureau of Land Management is reconsidering its management plan, which could result in renewed oil and gas drilling.

The Wyoming Game and Fish Department is partnering with the National Elk Refuge and several other outdoor and hunting organizations to distribute 100 cans of bear spray to hunters and anglers in Jackson.

Dusty Lasseter, the Bear Wise Wyoming Coordinator for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, said, as bears prepare for winter, human-bear conflicts become more likely.

“Because [the bears] are really bold and they’re trying to do whatever they can to get on some needed calories before they go into hibernation,” said Lasseter.

The University of Wyoming student government has helped set up an emergency fund for DACA students.

After Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program would be rescinded, the Department of Homeland Security stopped accepting new applications. But those who already have DACA status still have an opportunity to re-apply, and the application has a fee.

As the University of Wyoming works to right its course after budget cuts and restructuring, President Laurie Nichols has been busy. Dan Maxey has come on board to help run the ship as the president’s chief of staff. This is a new position at the university.

Maxey comes to Wyoming from Santa Clara University — a private Jesuit college in California’s Silicon Valley — where he worked in the provost’s office on academic policy and communications. He said he was also part of a major STEM initiative at the university and in the region.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is allowing a reclassification of nearly 80 percent of Wyoming’s waterways as secondary contact recreation. That means those streams are no longer recommended sites for swimming, tubing, fishing, or recreation in general — unlike the primary contact recreation status.

The DEQ’s Lindsey Paterson said these waters don’t make sense for recreation anyway. They’re shallow with little flow and are in remote areas. The change also means those waterways are allowed to hold five times the level of e. coli, an indicator for pathogens.