CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article incorrectly spelled Kristin Combs’ last name. Combs is the executive director of Wyoming Wildlife Advocates. This article has been updated to reflect the changes.
by Claire Cella
The novel Once There Were Wolves is set in the remote Highlands of Scotland, where it’s greener and rains much more than in Greater Yellowstone, but contains a wild, rugged heart similar to Wyoming’s wilderness. Author Charlotte McConaghy centered the 2021 book’s plot on a biologist attempting to reintroduce gray wolves to Cairngorms National Park amid the agricultural tradition of sheep farming. When a farmer is found dead, the wolves are to blame.
In many ways, Once There Were Wolves echoes the American West’s decades-long relationship with wolves and other predatory species like coyotes and foxes, and their management—where efforts to maintain wildlife habitats and populations intersect with demons of the past.
The torture and killing of a wolf in Daniel, Wyoming, last year made international headlines and in 2025 the state Legislature made attempts to ensure the incident never happens again. Two bills were introduced to stave off wildlife torture in response to the incident, when Daniel resident Cody Roberts ran down a female wolf with his snowmobile, taped its muzzle and tortured it in a bar before killing it. One of these bills was among the 165 bills sent to Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon’s desk this year and signed into law.
House Bill 275, “Treatment of animals,” now called Enrolled Act No. 46, makes it a misdemeanor in the first offense, and a felony in the second offense, to “knowingly, and with intent to cause undue suffering, torture, torment or mutilate living wildlife, including predatory animals and predacious birds, after reducing the living wildlife to possession.”
“We still have a long way to go. This was the very, very lowest-hanging fruit. We are talking torture here.”
– Kristin Combs, Program Director, Wyoming Wildlife Advocates on House Bill 275
In theory, HB 275 puts the state one step closer to eliminating its current allowance for animal cruelty in its statutes, especially concerning predatory animals. Many, however, said the bill doesn’t go far enough.
“It’s something,” said Kristin Combs, executive director for Wyoming Wildlife Advocates, “but we still have a long way to go. This was the very, very lowest-hanging fruit. The most common denominator everyone could agree on.”
“We are,” she emphasized, “talking torture here.”
Despite the passage of HB 275, Combs still gets phone calls from her organization’s supporters about how hard it is to outlaw torture in Wyoming. After all, Wyomingites can still legally run down a predatory animal on a snowmobile.
Combs said her group put in a request with Rep. Karlee Provenza, D-Laramie, to have the issue further studied in the legislature’s upcoming interim session, and they’re still pushing for bills to outlaw this practice at the federal level. The Snowmobiles Aren’t Weapons Act, or SAW, which Combs’ group supported, was introduced in Congress’ last session, the 118th, but has yet to come back up.
Wyoming Wildlife Advocates is also working on drafting and finding a sponsor for a bill that would make animal cruelty against wildlife illegal — similar to what the Animal Welfare Act does for other specific species, including dogs, cats, monkeys, guinea pigs, hamsters, and rabbits. The AWA excludes birds, rats and mice bred for research, horses and other farm animals.
Those in favor of eliminating any form of wildlife cruelty in Wyoming also hope that during next year’s budget session, a bill like House Bill 331, “Taking of predators on public lands,” might have more luck if reintroduced. Championed by Rep. Mike Schmid, R-La Barge, HB 331 would have banned the practice of harassing, injuring or killing predatory animals with vehicles on public lands — though it would still permit the practice on private lands. HB 331, however, died in the Agriculture Committee in early March.
What surprised Schmid was that throughout the session it was the agriculture community voicing the most opposition to both bills, and included lobbyist groups representing the Farm Bureau and the Wyoming Stockgrowers Association.
“I found that interesting because agriculture folks I spoke with from within my district had no issue with [HB 331], especially once they understood that this bill would not stop them from managing predators as they saw fit on their deeded land, and they could still pursue predators on public land,” Schmid said. “They just could not use a vehicle as a weapon to intentionally maim or kill the predator in pursuit on public land.”
Most of the discussion centered on ranchers and landowners wanting the ability to kill predatory wildlife, including wolves, coyotes and foxes, to protect their livestock during vulnerable spring lambing and calving seasons, according to both Schmid and Combs.
“Our members and I would venture the sporting community in Wyoming does not support running over animals with vehicles. We do not consider that fair chase.”
– Sabrina King, lobbyist, Wyoming chapter of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers
But plenty of ranchers within the state feel differently, Combs said, and most would argue that they are doing just fine coexisting with predators.
Take Tara Miller, for instance. She and her husband have been ranching and raising cattle outside of Big Piney, Wyoming, for more than 50 years. “Most ranchers love animals,” Miller said. “All of them. We take care of them day and night. And you try to cause as little suffering as you can.”
Over the years, the Millers have had coyotes enter the upper reaches of their ranch where they run cattle. Usually the mother cows chase them away, she says, but when the packs have gotten too big and too brazen, they have had to shoot some of the coyotes.
“We never want to,” she said. “I can’t say we’re above protecting our livestock if we have to, but there is absolutely no justification for needing to use a snowmobile to do so. No animal deserves to be terrified going into death.”
Nature seems to keep them in control anyway, Miller added. “Jackrabbits were once a problem, and then they went away. And when there aren’t jackrabbits, there aren’t coyotes. It balances out how it does, if you let it.”
Schmid said he heard the same thing from his ranching constituents.
“Some of the landowners [and] ranchers I found don’t even allow coyotes [or] foxes to be taken on their property,” he said. “They believe these predators help to control ground squirrels and when the ground squirrel population is reduced that in turn reduces the chance of badgers coming in to dig up ground squirrels. So, to them, fewer badgers means fewer large holes being dug that can injure horses and cattle.”
Schmid is committed to running a bill similar to 331 in upcoming sessions in hopes of outlawing entirely the practice of running down predatory animals on public lands.
“When there aren’t jackrabbits, there aren’t coyotes. It balances out how it does, if you let it.”
– Tara Miller, rancher, Big Piney, Wyoming
If Wyoming is serious about being against animal torture, Combs says, then passing a bill like 331 should be a no-brainer. During public testimony on both bills this session, animal cruelty and torture was also denounced by the sportsmen community.
Jess Johnson, government affairs director of the Wyoming Wildlife Federation, testified in support of HB 275 in late January, saying Wyoming has a sportsmanship ethic that was not represented by the Daniel incident.
“We need to do something,” Johnson said. “From the sporting perspective, I want to make sure that I push that this is not just about the Daniel wolf incident. This is about so much more. This was a gap in statute that was overlooked.”
Sabrina King, representing the Wyoming chapter of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, said her organization’s membership supported both HB 275 and HB 331. “Our members and I would venture the sporting community in Wyoming does not support running over animals with vehicles,” she said during public testimony on February 6. “We do not consider that fair chase.”
King said HB 331 would have closed a final gap that the just-adopted House Bill 275 would not. “It will not end the issue,” she said.
Like the Highlands of Scotland, Wyoming prides itself on a certain characteristic of wildness, both in its landscapes and often in the heart of its people. A core concept of Once There Were Wolves is that the world is increasingly losing its wildness in the face of increasing human activity. A world “empty of wild creatures and places, overrun instead by people and their agriculture, is a dying world,” says one figure in the novel.
Both HB 275 and HB 331 posed questions that challenged Wyoming’s view of itself in the effort to confront and release anachronistic ideas that humans can and should have the right to control something as wild as nature, which inevitably includes birth, death, protection and predation.
Despite the outcome of this year’s legislative session, Combs believes the people of Wyoming want animal torture and cruelty to end. “It’s frustrating the legislators aren’t listening,” she said.
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