Willow Belden

April is sexual assault awareness month, and Becca Fisher from SAFE Project, a group that provides services to victims, joins us to talk about the problem. She says nearly half of Wyoming women are sexually assaulted at some point in their lives. The incidents can range from unwanted touching to all-out rape, and Fisher says common scenarios are a little different than you might expect.

A team of UW engineering students recently traveled to Alabama to compete in NASA’s annual moon buggy race. The race is for high school and college students who have designed and built non-motorized vehicles that resemble lunar rovers. Teams from all over the world participated, on a race course meant to resemble the surface of the moon. The winning moon buggies aren’t actually going to space, but as Wyoming Public Radio’s Willow Belden reports, the project is a major learning experience for the students.

April is sexual assault awareness month and Becca Fisher of the Albany County SAFE Project, which assists victims, says many people have misperceptions about rape.

“A lot of us are taught to believe that it’s going to be a stranger jumping out from the bushes, or someone on a dark street when we’re alone walking at night. And that’s not typically how it happens.”

Fisher says in about 90 percent of sexual assault cases, the victim and the perpetrator know each other, sometimes very well.

The Wyoming Game and Fish Department is planning to make most of northeast Wyoming off limits to sage grouse hunting. Tom Christiansen, the agency’s sage grouse coordinator, says that’s because of public concern about declining populations in the area.

“We do hear concerns about, ‘Well, why are you continuing to hunt when sage grouse populations, especially in some parts of the state, like northeast Wyoming, are declining and are proposed for listing?” Christiansen said.

A recent UW masters student named Mark Pedri is producing a documentary aimed at evaluating which types of energy production are best, in terms of cost, environmental impact and other factors.

Pedri visited energy-producing facilities across Wyoming, including coal-fired power plants, wind farms, oil rigs and solar installations, and interviewed workers and managers. He traveled by bicycle, to make the project more exciting for himself and for his audience.

Four UW students are heading to Alabama this weekend for the annual NASA moonbuggy race. They’ll be racing a contraption they designed and built, which is meant to resemble a lunar rover. The racecourse mimics the moon, with craters and other obstacles. Team member Davis Fay says UW’s moonbuggies in past years have had some spectacular crashes, so his team’s goal this year is to finish the course upright – at least for the first round of racing. “You get two runs, and our strategy for the first one is just … finish the course and don’t break anything,” Fay said.

The National Elk Refuge has put GPS collars on additional elk in the past few weeks.

Lori Iverson with the Refuge says that sofar, 88 elk have been collared, so that researchers can track the animals’ movement and habitat usethroughout the region.

“That information can design hunting seasons to meet objectives,” Iverson said. “In this corner of northwestern Wyoming, it can monitor the effects of wolves on elk density, and just evaluate the effects of elk density on potential disease transmission as well.”

The Bureau of Land Management is proposing to keep hundreds of wild horses at a private ranch near Laramie. The BLM removes hundreds of horses from public lands each year to prevent the range from getting over-crowded, and they usually send the horses to long-term pastures in the mid-west.

Dennis Carpenter is the BLM’s Field Manager in Rawlins. He says keeping the horses here should be slightly cheaper, because the ranch will be open to tourists – for a fee.

Wyoming received a “D” letter-grade for its laws pertaining to charter schools. That’s according to a new report by the Center for Educational Reform.

Charter schools are publicly funded but privately-run and often have a specific focus, like science or the arts.

The study ranked states based on how they regulate and fund charter schools, and Wyoming came out as number 35.

The University of Wyoming is getting access to a portion of the supercomputer that the National Center for Atmospheric Research is building in Cheyenne, but it’s also building it’s own smaller supercomputer on campus.

Bryan Shader is the special assistant to the vice president of research and economic development at UW. He says the campus supercomputer will be faster and more powerful than the computing systems the university has now.

Climb Wyoming has received recognition as one of the country’s top ten programs helping to move people out of poverty. The honor came from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Administration for Children and Families, among other agencies.

The nonprofit Climb Wyoming helps struggling single mothers find work by providing job training, parenting advice and professional counseling.

Wyoming has experienced record high temperatures this month – in some cases more than 20 degrees above average. The National Weather Service says that’s because winter storms coming in from the west have been following slightly different tracks than usual.

“The lows that have developed have either gone way to our south or have gone to our north,” said Chuck Baker, a lead forecaster in Riverton.

A doctoral student at the University of Wyoming has developed a new method for producing and selling vegetables. The student’s name is Nate Storey, and he’s designed a growing system in one of the university’s greenhouses that requires no fertilizer, produces virtually no waste and yields four times as much produce as traditional greenhouse setups. Wyoming Public Radio’s Willow Belden reports.

A new report by researchers at the University of Montana warns that unless energy development slows down, sage grouse populations in the Powder River Basin could die out. The study, which was commissioned by the BLM, was meant to determine whether the sage grouse population there can survive, given current oil and gas drilling activities, and what would happen to the birds if more drilling occurred or if there were new West Nile Virus outbreaks. Wyoming Public Radio’s Willow Belden spoke with Dave Naugle, who co-authored the report. He says the sage grouse population in the Powder River Basin has already declined by 82 percent as a result of energy development.

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A new report commissioned by the BLM warns that unless energy development in the Powder River Basin slows down, sage grouse populations there could die out.

Dave Naugle of the University of Montana co-authored the report. He says the sage grouse population in the Powder River Basin has already declined by 82 percent as a result of oil and gas drilling, and he says a disease outbreak similar to recent West Nile Virus occurrences could mean that fewer than 100 males would be left. That, Naugle says, “would functionally mean that that population could go extinct. ”

Several of Wyoming’s streams are considered “impaired” by the EPA because rain and snowmelt have washed sediments and pollutants into the water. Now, the Teton Conservation District is hoping to educate people about what they can do to mitigate the problem.

The group’s natural resources specialist, Rachel Daluge, says materials from construction sites– as well as sand from roads– often ends up in waterways, which can harm fish and aquatic plants.

A new public art project will be coming to Casper this summer. It will resemble a giant sun dial and will incorporate depictions of Wyoming’s landscape and history.

The piece will be situated outside of an affordable housing complex, across the street from the Nicolaysen Art Museum.

Curator Lisa Hatchadoorian says she hopes this work will become a gathering place for residents from all over town.

“It adds so much to the community experience to have different types of art out there … interacting with weather and nature and life,” Hatchedoorian said.

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The National Center for Atmospheric Research is building a supercomputing center in Cheyenne, which will house one of the most powerful computers in the world. Scientists are looking forward to the machine’s arrival … and many in Wyoming say its presence here will put the state on the map. The facility where the computer will be located is finished … and the machine itself is set to arrive in May. Wyoming Public Radio’s Willow Belden toured the building … and filed this report.

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Starting next week, the group Trout Unlimited will be screening its new film “Green with Envy” in towns across Wyoming and Colorado. The film focuses on the proposed Flaming Gorge Pipeline, which would transport 81 billion gallons of water per year from the Flaming Gorge reservoir to the Colorado front range. Recently the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission rejected the proposal for lack of sufficient information … but the developer plans to re-apply and move forward with the project.  Colorado has rights to some of the water that flows through the river … but various agencies and environmental groups in Wyoming are adamantly opposed to the plan. I spoke with Charles Card of Trout Unlimited about the film his group will be showing. He says they oppose the pipeline project because it would lower the water level in the reservoir by about 120 feet.

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There’s a new nonprofit in Wyoming called “3-0-7 First,” which is aimed at making it easier for people to support local businesses. I spoke with President Bob Moberly about how it works – and why he thinks people should support Wyoming businesses, even if it’s a little more expensive or less convenient than shopping out-of-state or online. Moberly says the 307 First website will include a directory of Wyoming businesses, so that shoppers can search for products they want, and see if those products are available from stores within the state.

Gov. Matt Mead has signed a bill creating a wolf management plan for Wyoming.

The new law allows the state to manage wolf populations with hunting seasons in northwest Wyoming, and lets hunters shoot the animals on sight in the rest of the state.

Mead says he’s pleased.

“After 18 years of struggle, I think we’re well on our way to giving the state management of wolves," Mead said. "While all plans – none of them are perfect, a lot of thought and effort went into this.”

A Casper resident has launched a new website aimed at making it easier to support locally-owned businesses and buy Wyoming products. The site, which is called “307 First,” will include a directory of Wyoming businesses, which will let shoppers find out whether the product they’re looking for is available within the state.

President Bob Moberly says buying local is good for the state because it keeps tax revenue and jobs here.

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Mule deer have been dying off in parts of Wyoming for some time. But until recently, it was unclear how acute the problem was. That’s because the Game and Fish Department wasn’t getting an accurate count of how many deer there were. Now, the agency is trying out a new method for estimating deer populations. It’s much more expensive … but officials say it’s worth the cost because it will help them maintain a healthy deer population. Wyoming Public Radio’s Willow Belden reports.

Film maker Daniel Junge, who grew up in Cheyenne, won an Oscar this week for his film “Saving Face.” It’s a documentary about the disturbing trend of Pakistani men throwing acid in the faces of women.

The film follows several victims, and even though some of them face ongoing threats from their attackers, Junge says they were eager to be filmed.

“These women want to be heard,” Junge said. “They’ve had this awful thing happen to them, and I think they saw the chance to tell their stories with our cameras.”

The Jackson Hole Wildlife Foundation is launching an initiative to keep moose safe along Highway 390. Five moose have died in car crashes there in the past two months – more than any other road in Teton County outside of the national park.