It’s bad enough that pine bark beetles are turning Wyoming forests rust brown. Now there’s a pesky little mollusk, the zebra mussel – originally from Russia, wouldn’t you know – that’s spreading through North America on the bottoms of boats, and threatening to enter Wyoming waters. The mussels tend to take over, clogging up pipes, cluttering lake bottoms, and cutting up the feet of anyone who tries to walk on them. They can also carry some serious avian disease.

The Wyoming Game & Fish Department and the Department of State Parks and Cultural Resources are trying to cut the zebras off at the boat ramp, at the cost of a few million to inspect watercraft, charge fees and put stickers on clean-bottomed boats.

There’s no guarantee, even with the $2.5 million that would be invested under House Bill 18, that they can stop the little invaders, said Parks and Cultural Resources Director Milward Simpson. And once the “aquatic invasive species” get a foothold, or a valve-hold, said Game & Fish’s Steve Ferrell, we would have to switch to a more expensive “containment program.”

Game and Fish contemplates watercraft inspection stations at Flaming Gorge Reservoir, Glendo Reservoir, Fremont Lake, Buffalo Bill Reservoir, Keyhole Reservoir, Jackson Lake Dam, and 17 other sites around the state.

Regionally, only Wyoming, Idaho and Montana remain free of the non-native mussels.

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Rodeo life for all the but the top tier riders is a tough life, not just in the saddle, but in cheap hotels and on long trailer-pulling road trips. And in today’s tough economy, it can only be tougher.

Butten cowboys from Wyoming will have it a little easier - well, a lot, actually - if an amendment to the budget to fund the “Cowboy Marketing Program” continues to move forward, as it did in the Senate this week. The program, run by Wyoming Travel & Tourism, will put these fellows under contract to go out there and compete at rodeos in riding, roping, and even clowning (bullfighting).

Apparently the state tourism department has been scraping together a budget to underwrite rodeoing for some time from leftovers in other programs. Now, though, it could be a line item in the biennium budget. At a cost of $261,900, we become “the first, and only, state to sponsor pro-rodeo athletes,” according to the tourism folks, who do the magic tourism math and come up with media coverage for the team bringing a “total ad value” to the state of $715,295.90.