In December 2020, Thomas Tull, a billionaire entrepreneur from Pittsburgh, bought the roughly 4,000-acre Teton Ridge Ranch, previously owned by the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, for what real-estate agents estimate was around $35 million. Since then, Mr. Tull, through various LLCs, has amassed over 3,000 additional acres by buying up adjoining properties, including several houses, parcels of land and a property zoned as a subdivision, according to public records. Real-estate agents estimate he spent a total of around $30 million to acquire the parcels.
Billionaire news mogul Rupert Murdoch and his wife, Jerry Hall Murdoch, confirmed Thursday that they had purchased the sprawling Beaverhead Ranch in Beaverhead County from Matador Cattle Co., an indirect subsidiary of Koch Industries. Both the Wall Street Journal and CNBC reported that the sale price was $200 million. A spokeswoman for Murdoch confirmed the sale but not the sale price in communication with CNBC. The Beaverhead Ranch, a working cattle ranch, covers about 345,000 acres and stretches along a 90-mile road from Dillon to the Idaho border and east to Yellowstone National Park.
At a $65 million asking price, “Camp Teton” was the most expensive listing in Wyoming when it came on the market in September, eclipsing Kanye West’s ranch near Cody, which is on the market for $11 million. Teton Board of Realtors President Des Jennings said it’s one of, if not the most, expensive single-family home sales ever recorded in Jackson Hole.
One of the last available addresses for a large, undeveloped property in the Strawberry Park area north of Steamboat Springs has been acquired by a holding company owned by billionaire venture capitalist Mark Stevens.
It’s one thing to mount a decades-long conservation campaign on a continental scale like the Yellowstone to Yukon, or Y2Y. It’s another to prove anything about it worked. When you look at a place as big as Argentina but you don’t have gross domestic product or number of high school graduates to use as statistics, what do you measure to declare success? A team of U.S. and Canadian researchers tackled that question for the Y2Y in a new paper published this month in the Journal of Conservation Science and Practice. Led by University of Montana wildlife biologist Mark Hebblewhite, they verified progress toward saving one of the world’s most biodiverse places through highway projects, television screenplays and grizzly bear home ranges.
“At the time, this seemed really audacious like an unachievable goal and pipe dream and pie in the sky thinking. But here we are 25 years later,” Hebblewhite said. The approach “is really a blueprint for biodiversity conservation around the world.”
Despite Montana’s decades-long campaign to rid landmarks of the word ‘squaw,’ two remain as Interior Secretary creates task force to remove the offensive word from federal place names.
“This goes to show that there is nothing we cannot achieve if we think with our own hearts and always remember who we are doing this for,” Teanna Limpy, director of the Northern Cheyenne Tribal Historic Preservation Office, wrote in a press release from the Mestaa’ehehe Coalition.
Idaho has some catching up to do when it comes to the removal of the “s-word” from place names. A simple search of the USGS Geographic Names Information System online shows 70 places in Idaho with the word “squaw” next to it.
The term is used as a sexual slur for Native American women. Across the state, over 50 geographic features bear the derogatory name, including Squaw Peak in Provo, Squaw Canyon on Pine Valley Mountain and Squaw Creek in Cedar City.
In April, President Joe Biden signed an executive order that will set the minimum wage for federal contractors at $15 an hour, more than double the current federal minimum wage of $7.25. Biden’s order also applies to an estimated 40,000 private companies that hold permits to operate on federal public land managed by the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Forest Service and other federal agencies.
Seasonal outdoor work seems idyllic, but it isn’t an easy lifestyle. Guides are starting to open up about the challenges of constant transitions, and new research offers insight into their unique situation.
In November, temperatures were between 6 degrees and 9 degrees Fahrenheit above average across a huge swath of the West, from the northern Plains through the Rockies and into the desert Southwest, according to the November 2021 federal monthly climate report.
The West has had bouts of “snow drought” before. But they look set to become more common. Researchers suggest that California could experience persistent “low-to-no snow” by the 2050s with the Rocky Mountain states following in the 2070s.
With the crucial holiday break drawing near for resorts, Colorado skiers and snowboarders are bemoaning meager snowfall so far this season. Tourists have been shocked to find bare ground at resort base areas and in nearby ski towns, with limited terrain offerings on the slopes above. And most of that is on manmade snow.
Wyoming is one step closer to adding roadkill to the dinner menu. The Wyoming Game and Fish Commission voted unanimously last month to adopt regulations that will allow motorists to collect certain species of dead wildlife from the road starting next year. Wild bison, deer, elk, pronghorn, moose and wild turkey could be on the menu for residents.
Idaho’s most controversial predator could play a role in managing the spread of a deadly deer and elk disease, according to a leading research scientist.
Conservation groups are offering a $42,977 reward for information that leads to a conviction after at least eight wolves were poisoned in eastern Oregon earlier this year.
The Center for Biological Diversity and others in the lawsuit filed against Idaho Gov. Brad Little and state wildlife officials said the new regulations violate the Endangered Species Act because federally protected grizzly bears and lynx could be killed.
After dedicating nearly four decades to grizzly bear management and conflict resolution in Northwest Montana, Tim Manley is set to retire from Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks as more bears and people roam the landscape.
The Interior Department is wasting money and man-hours sifting through paperwork on massive amounts of public lands acreage proposed for potential oil drilling that will never be sold at auction, a new Government Accountability Office report found. The watchdog said the BLM should consider charging oil and gas speculators to nominate public lands for oil sales. That practice may help depress speculation and cut the time and cost burden on BLM staff to weigh offering proposed lands for lease, according to the report released yesterday. The GAO report also found that BLM is behind in updating its guidance and fees, despite going through overhauls in how it holds oil lease sales, like the switch to online auctions in 2016. It recommends that BLM perform regular reviews of its fee structure.
Aethon Energy found pollution in discharges from the Moneta Divide oil and gas field that exceeded limits set by the state, leading Wyoming regulators to consider eliminating some waste flow limits.
Colorado regulators kicked off a series of hearings Wednesday that could determine how the state’s largest utility generates its energy in the coming decades—and how much it will contribute to global warming.
A major Xcel Energy power project could put up new transmission lines within view of the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site, sparking concerns among tribal leaders and park advocates that it could mar the site’s cultural and aesthetic character.
TransWest Express has agreed to sell Power Company of Wyoming 1,500 MW of capacity on a transmission line slated to run from Wyoming to southern Nevada, where power can reach California markets, according to a Friday filing at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
The Rock Creek project would install around 114 turbines on 32,600 acres of land northwest of Laramie. The project would stretch over into Carbon County, where another 15 turbines have already been approved by the county commissioners there.
The BLM dealt a new setback to energy developers who have long vied to build a wind farm in the Mojave Desert, designating the project “low priority” status. The project would overlap with the footprint of a 380,000-acre site that Native Americans and conservation groups are pressing the Biden administration to designate as the Avi Kwa Ame National Monument.
There’s $555 billion for clean energy in the White House’s Build Back Better plan, and Montana energy stakeholders see opportunities for renewable development big and small.
As Western lands are consolidated, so too are the rights to use the water that flows under and over those lands. As the Pacific Northwest gets warmer and drier, water is becoming a hot commodity that’s attracting investors—whether it’s the Latter-day Saints, large agricultural interests or New York investors. And while state laws across the region regulate how, when and why water rights are sold, some worry it won’t be enough to hold back the tide.
Nearly half of tribal homes across the country don’t have steady access to clean water. Many in the Southwest rely on aging wells with polluted water, or truck in bottles from far away. In To'hajiilee, New Mexico, a Navajo community hopes a new pipeline from Albuquerque will remedy decades of struggle to get clean water.
Wyoming’s Department of Environmental Quality, which oversees the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act and many other environmental laws that guide mining, landfills, refineries and other industrial activities, suffers from increasing staff turnover and vacancy rates.
The Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance dares to say the two words that often make land protectionists run for the hills: “planning” and “zoning.” But they’re crucial to saving the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.
The legislation authorized the production, research, and processing of industrial hemp by those licensed in Idaho, and allowed for the legal possession and transportation of hemp products by removing hemp from Idaho’s list of Schedule I drugs.
Rockies Today is edited by Matthew Frank, fellow in regional journalism at the O’Connor Center for the Rocky Mountain West at the University of Montana.
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