Wyoming is getting a boost in tourism thanks to “Brokeback Mountain,” even though the stunning romantic scenery displayed in the movie is actually Canadian. According to the AP, movie-related tourism can be big business:

“Tourism officials have long known that a good movie can attract tourists. Store owners in Livingston, Mont., say customers still come to see the area where ‘A River Runs Through It’ was filmed, said Sten Iverson of the Montana Film Office; New Zealand is banking on ‘Lord of the Rings’ tours; ‘Sideways’ didn’t just create a demand for wine tours around Santa Barbara, Calif., it boosted sales of certain wines.”

Even though all of “Brokeback’s” scenery is located in the wrong country, the movie’s success still creates an opportunity to give filmgoers a taste of a more authentic Wyoming. After all, even if Wyoming can’t provide the right mountains for Ang Lee, it can provide a stunning backdrop of gas wells and drill rigs for the “Brokeback” sequel. I’m seeing a heartwarming story of love, crystal meth and hard labor in the Upper Green River Basin, something along the lines of “Brokeback Drill Rig” or “Brokeback Mountain 2: Roughnecking.”

With a little media-nurtured tourism, well pads don’t have to be the icons of a boom-bust industry. They could be the foundation of sustainable economic development.

A ten-cow murder spree in Utah. According to ranchers, they get a few cows killed each year.

The Tooele Transcript Bulletin quotes a rancher: “Everybody loses some every year,” Mitchell said. “I had two for sure [killed] and two others that were suspicious, but we never had anybody dig into the carcasses to verify the cause of death” … “It goes on all the time, it’s like we live in the Wild West,” she said. “You can’t hire enough patrol people to drive out here all the time because it’s such vast areas and that’s why people get away with things like this.”

According to the article one proposed solution is “sensitivity” training in hunter’s safety classes (Killing with kindness?). In the meantime there’s a $10,000 reward for the ten-cow binge killers.
Read the article at: The Tooele Transcript Bulletin

This found on Wired News: Folks in upstate New York are fighting wind power proposals. Shades of Cape Cod? As one of our Writer’s On the Range columnists once commented, we’d be happy to swap: We’ll take the East’s windmills, and the East can have one of the West’s nuclear waste repositories instead.

According to the Denver Post, real estate developer and land exchange artist Tom Chapman is working on a new deal. In the past he has threatened to build on wilderness inholdings in order to facilitate land swap deals, but he’s using a new pressure tactic with the Yankee Girl Mine property in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains. The Post writes: “Tom Chapman sent an e-mail to the Forest Service and conservation groups this week stating that the Yankee Girl’s new owners have decided to burn the historic structure… so it can be safely used for a ‘dream summer home’ with the ‘best panoramic views in the San Juans.’”

This is not the first time Chapman has made news for his tactics. Click for Tom Chapman’s past exploits as collected in HCN’s archives.

House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo had a great day as his huggably named “Threatened and Endangered Species Recovery Act of 2005″ passed the House on a largely party line vote. If you never heard of the man before, or his new act, check out our profile of Richard Pombo from earlier this year, also we’ve got coverage of some of the task force hearings he used to demonstrate “support” for his act. The Seattle Times has a good line-up of the act’s highlights.