By Peter O'Dowd

Laramie, WY – Last weekend, an Arizona girl was killed when she drove her off-road vehicle into an abandoned mine. A state official says the same thing could happen here.

From Rock Springs to Sheridan, Marcia Murdoch says abandoned mines are spread across Wyoming. Murdoch works for the state's department of environmental quality. She says hundreds of sites need to be addressed. Some are 50-foot century-old coal mines. Others like uranium pits in the Gas Hills are much deeper.

Laramie, WY – A Wyoming Highway Patrol trooper and two others were injured when a patrol car hit a car head-on while passing a tractor-trailer south of Gillette.

The Highway Patrol says 27-year-old Trooper Joshua Gebauer was driving with 19-year-old Darryl Bower, of Wright, in the patrol car.

As the patrol car was passing a tractor-trailer, it hit a 1993 Mercury Tracer driven by 51-year-old John Harvey, of Gillette. Harvey was hospitalized with serious but non-life-threatening injuries. Gebauer and Bower were treated and released.

By AP

By Peter O'Dowd

Laramie, WY – A snowmobile advocacy group says it's not concerned that so few of its supporters wrote to the National Park Service regarding snowmobiles in Yellowstone. Nearly three-quarters of the 120-thousand comments on the park service's winter-use plan for Yellowstone and Grand Teton parks say they favor eliminating snowmobiles completely. The Blue Ribbon Coalition's Jack Welch, who promotes snowmobiles, says environmental groups with more power and resources bombarded the park service with comments.

By Elsa Heidorn

Laramie, WY – Wyoming increases child support collections every year, but this year it did particularly well. The Department of Family Services' Brenda Lyttle says she thinks the big jump is partly due to the redoubled efforts of her staff. Also, the legislature increased pay for her staff in the last session, and Lyttle says that has helped reduce turnover, making them more effective. Lyttle says the legislature was receptive to another request, too.

Laramie, Wy – University of Wyoming President Tom Buchanan says he is supportive of efforts by Community Colleges to get more funding to train more students for Wyoming's workforce. Buchanan says U-W is working closely with the colleges across the state and says their efforts are closely tied together. In fact, most transfers to UW come from Community Colleges. Buchanan stresses that they don't compete with each other for students.

Cheyenne, Wy – Workers in Wyoming are seeing both longer
hours and more pay as their employers struggle to get the job done
without enough employees.
The average monthly wage in Wyoming for the third quarter of
2007 was $3,289 - up nearly 12 percent from the same quarter of
last year. That's the biggest third-quarter increase since at least
1993.
Tom Gallagher is manager of research and planning for the
Wyoming Department of Employment. He says the statewide payroll was

Yellowstone National Park – Nearly three-quarters of the people who
commented on the National Park Service's winter-use plan for Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks say they favor
eliminating snowmobiles from the parks entirely.
But Yellowstone spokesman Al Nash says the agency doesn't intend
to base its decisions on the future of snowmobiling in the parks
just on public opinion.
The Park Service says it collected just over 122,000 comments on
its proposed management plan from March to June. Nearly 89,000

Laramie, Wy – The U.S. Forest Service plans work on 15,000 acres
this year to manage the bark beetle infestation in northern
Colorado and southeastern Wyoming. That's twice as much land as was
treated last year thanks to an extra $2 million in funding from
Congress.
The planned work includes removing infected trees in time for
their timber to be sold and removing dead and dying trees from
along roads and trails. That reduces the risk of wildfires and
falling trees.
A portion of the work is also aimed at stopping the beetles from

Laramie, Wy – Preliminary figures indicate enrollment at
the University of Wyoming is 2.8 percent higher than it was last
year at the same time.
A headcount after the first day of classes August 27th showed
that UW's total enrollment was 11,787. That's an increase of 326
students enrolled on the first day of classes last year.
Enrollment on the Laramie campus was 9,860, an increase of 109
students compared to the same time last year.