Locals are furious with Wyoming legislators after they refused to outright ban people from purposely running over wildlife with snowmobiles and other vehicles.
State politicians are attempting to respond to global outrage over photos that emerged last year of a Wyoming man torturing a wolf after he hit it with his snowmobile.
In February 2024, Cody Roberts paraded the injured wolf around a bar in Daniel, a small town near Bridger-Teton National Forest.
A smiling Roberts even posed for a picture alongside the miserable animal, seen with duct tape wrapped around its snout, before he took it out behind the bar and killed it.
Further outrage ensued when it came to light that Roberts was only fined $250 for the offense, which was deemed the illegal possession of a live, warm-blooded animal.
An online petition demanding Roberts face harsher punishment has more than 26,000 signatures. A separate petition calling for the strengthening of Wyoming’s wildlife abuse laws has more than 25,000 signatures.
Wyoming Wildlife Federation spokeswoman Jess Johnson said what Roberts did ‘came up over and over and over and over again’ during a conference on wolves she recently attended in Arizona nearly a year after the incident.
‘So we need to do something,’ Johnson told Cowboy State Daily on Tuesday.
In February 2024, Cody Roberts captured an injured wolf after hitting it with his snowmobile. He then paraded the animal around a local bar before killing it
This week, certain members of the state House of Representatives unanimously voted to advance House Bill 275 to the floor.
In its current form, the measure bans the deliberate prolonging of an animal’s suffering but does not explicitly prohibit people from running animals down with vehicles – a practice commonly known as ‘whacking’ or ‘mashing.’
‘Why can we not put something in a bill that stops the use of motorized, over-the-ground vehicles and over-the-snow vehicles to be used as a weapon to kill any wildlife, including predators?’ Republican Representative Mike Schmid said on Tuesday to the House Travel, Recreation, Wildlife & Cultural Resources Committee.
Sylvia Bagdonas of Laramie, a city near the Colorado border, also testified in front of the committee.
Bagdonas, too, thinks running down predators with snowmobiles is by definition cruel, which is why it should be banned.
An earlier form of the bill written by the committee made it a felony to allow a predatory animal to suffer, even on the first offense.
The committee was reportedly talked out of this by Wyoming Game and Fish Department Chief of Wildlife Dan Smith.
Smith said it would be better to give game wardens, law enforcement officers who protect wildlife, the power to treat each offense on a case-by-case basis.
And there are those that believe an out-and-out moratorium on using vehicles to pursue predators would go too far.
Executives representing ranchers say snowmobiles are a crucial tool of predator control so animals like wolves don’t prey on their livestock (Pictured: Tourists ride snowmobiles on a trail in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming)
A gray male wolf is seen stalking prey in Yellowstone National Park
Among them is Jim Magagna, the executive vice president of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association.
He explained that ranchers rely on vehicles to clear predators, especially coyotes, out of their land before they move their livestock in.
And while Magagna condemned what happened to the wolf in Daniel, he pointed out that wolves themselves can be quite cruel to cattle and sheep on farms.
‘They torment, they molest them, they leave them half dead and half alive,’ Magagna said.
Alison Crane, executive director of the Wyoming Wool Growers Association, shared similar sentiments, saying that a ban could unintentionally put a chilling effect on ranchers’ predator control.
Committee member Liz Storer, a Democrat, proposed an amendment to the bill that would have mandated predators be killed in a ‘humane’ manner, regardless of how they are killed.
Other committee members said even that was too vague, with Republican Representative Robert Wharff saying it would be difficult to enforce and could lead to charges against people who didn’t intend to make animals suffer.
Representative Karlee Provenza, a Democrat, said she got calls from hundreds of her constituents regarding the wolf incident in Daniel last year.
She said she understood why some believe the bill doesn’t go far enough, even saying she herself was ‘torn’ on how to proceed.
But she ultimately voted ‘aye’ to send the measure to the House floor, reasoning that it is better to do something than nothing at all.
