JACKSON, Wyo. (AP) — A 30-year-old professional skier severely injured last March in fall down a northwest Wyoming mountain has died.

The Jackson Hole News & Guide reports that family members say Bryce Newcomb died Friday at a long-term care facility in Boise, Idaho, after his feeding and water tubes were removed.

Authorities say they believe Newcomb hadn’t yet buckled his helmet to ski Cody Peak on March 27 when a cornice gave way and he fell nearly 1,000 feet.

Newcomb remained in a critical state with a severe head injury during the nearly three months he spent in hospitals.

Newcomb grew up in Sun Valley, Idaho, and had been a Jackson resident for the last few years, doing promotional work for Jackson Hole Mountain Resort.

A GoFundMe site said a memorial service is tentatively planned for next week in Ketchum, Idaho.

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Information from: Jackson Hole (Wyo.) News And Guide, http://www.jhnewsandguide.com

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — The U.S. Forest Service proposed changes Wednesday to sage grouse protections in six Western states that call for eliminating special designations for crucial habitat as well as keeping areas open for mining.

The agency also said restrictions on water development for livestock will be removed as will other requirements that could limit some livestock grazing.

The plan, detailed in documents, covers 9,500 square miles of greater sage grouse habitat in Idaho, Colorado, Nevada, Wyoming, Utah and Montana.

“The objective of what we’re doing right now is to be, on the whole, neutral to positive for the grouse,” said Forest Service spokesman John Shivik.

The Obama administration in 2015 opted not to list the chicken-sized, ground-dwelling bird as needing federal protections under the Endangered Species Act and instead imposed land-use restrictions leading to multiple lawsuits from industry and environmentalists.

In one of those lawsuits, a U.S. court agreed with mining companies that the Forest Service created some safeguards in Nevada after failing to give the public enough information to participate in a meaningful way. In response, the Forest Service said those same safeguards exist in other states, so it decided to review plans outside of Nevada as well.

Greta Anderson of Western Watersheds Project, an environmental group, blasted the Forest Service proposals.

“What it’s doing is making it easier for industry to work around the conservation measures that were intended in the 2015 plans,” she said. “The greater sage grouse continues to decline in the West. These revisions aren’t changing that trajectory.”

Between 200,000 and 500,000 sage grouse remain in 11 Western states, down from a peak population of about 16 million. Experts generally attribute the decline to road construction, development and oil and gas leasing.

Researchers say sage grouse once occupied about 463,000 square miles, but that’s now down to about 260,000 square miles.

The males are known for performing an elaborate ritual that includes making balloon-like sounds with two air sacks on their necks.

Sage grouse didn’t receive federal protection in 2015, but officials are expected to review that decision in 2020.

A key component of the 2015 plan included establishing key sage grouse habitat called focal areas that restricted development. The move is considered part of the reason sage grouse didn’t receive federal protections.

Under the Forest Service’s latest proposal, focal areas would be eliminated.

Shivik said the elimination of the areas doesn’t mean protections for sage grouse will be removed. He said the land will still be designated priority sage grouse habitat with restrictions on surface development.

The Forest Service only has jurisdiction over about 8 percent of sage grouse habitat, with most of the rest on U.S. Bureau of Land Management property. The Forest Service has been working with the BLM, which also is reviewing its plans for the struggling bird following an order by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.

John Freemuth, a Boise State University environmental policy professor and public lands expert, said there’s significant pessimism among conservationists on how the Trump administration ultimately handles sage grouse.

“The seeming promotion of oil and gas over every other value — there are reasons for people to be concerned about this,” he said. “But in defense of the administration, let’s just see how it all plays out.”

The revision process started in November with the Forest Service seeking public comments. Those remarks — some 55,000 — led to the current proposals, with new comments being taken through July 20. The agency will use the comments to create an Environmental Impact Statement for sage grouse habitat.

An Eastern Idaho couple has sued the U.S. government a year after a predator-killing trap that federal workers mistakenly placed near their home doused their 14-year-old son, Canyon, with cyanide and killed their dog.

Mark and Theresa Mansfield, of the Pocatello area, filed the lawsuit Monday in U.S. District Court in Idaho.

“We’re filing it because we want justice and we want to continue to make people aware of this (issue),” Theresa said.

The Mansfields are seeking more than $75,000 in economic damages and more than $75,000 for pain and suffering.

In the months following the incident, Theresa said they spent thousands of dollars for medical tests and treatments to determine if their son was OK, and they lost wages in the process.

They’ve never received any reimbursement from those responsible, she said. In addition, they lost their hunting dog, a 3-year-old Labrador, who was worth about $8,000, but was considered priceless to them, she said.

The Mansfields son, Canyon, then 14, was playing with the dog last year when he triggered the trap that the U.S. Department of Agriculture placed to kill coyotes. The dog started convulsing and then died.

Canyon had trouble sleeping for a month after the event and experienced vomiting and headaches. And the memory of watching his dog die has stayed with him over the past year.

“Whenever I think of that hill or hear the word ‘cyanide’ I think of that moment when (the dog) was freaking out and didn’t know what was going on,” Canyon told the Journal earlier this year. “That will probably stay with me my entire life. Every time I hear the word ‘cyanide’ it will trigger that memory and will be something I’ll never really get rid of.”

The devices, called M-44s, are embedded in the ground and look like lawn sprinklers but spray cyanide when they are set off. They are meant to protect livestock but sometimes kill pets and injure people. They killed about 12,500 coyotes in 2016, mostly in the U.S. West.

The traps drew increased scrutiny after The Associated Press reported that the teen was injured months after the government decided to stop using the devices on federal lands in Idaho. U.S. officials have said the cyanide trap was placed in error.

They said several months after the incident that they would expand a review of the traps, which are still used in other states. They also issued guidelines requiring federal workers to notify nearby residents of the devices’ placement.

Todd Grimm, Idaho director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services, didn’t return a call Tuesday seeking comment on the lawsuit.

“While playing and throwing a toy for his dog,” the lawsuit said, the boy “noticed a pipe protruding from the ground that he thought looked like a sprinkler pipe. When he reached down and touched the pipe, it exploded with a loud bang.”

The lawsuit says an orange substance covered the boy’s clothing and got in his left eye and that he used snow to wipe off the substance. The boy then saw his dog convulsing and foaming at the mouth.

He ran home to get his mother, but when they returned the dog had died.

Since the incident, the Mansfields and others have been pushing for change through lawsuits and proposed legislation. Many of them would like to see M-44s banned.

But Theresa is frustrated that few changes have occurred over the last year. She says they still don’t know what the long-term effects will be for their son and she worries that the next child won’t be so lucky.

She hopes the lawsuit they filed Monday will not only lead to some compensation for her family, but also continue to shed light on an important issue.

“(We want to) continue to bring awareness to cyanide bombs,” Theresa said, adding that she wants people to keep fighting for change. “If we don’t keep fighting, (they may put them) back behind all of our houses.”

In a separate lawsuit by environmental and animal-welfare groups, U.S. officials in March agreed to complete a study on how two predator-killing poisons could be affecting federally protected species.

The settlement requires the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to complete consultations with the Environmental Protection Agency by the end of 2021 on the poisons that federal workers use to protect livestock on rural lands. One of the poisons is the cyanide used in M-44s.

Local search and rescue volunteers recovered the body of a 35-year-old Logan, Utah, man who drowned in Newton Dam on Saturday.

According to Cache County Sheriff Lt. Brian Locke, Austin Nsegiyumva was recovered from the reservoir early Tuesday morning.

Nsegiyumva was swimming in Newton Reservoir on Saturday night when he reportedly went under and was not seen again.

An extensive search for the man’s body was scaled back on Monday with the intent to have Search and Rescue volunteers remain in the area throughout the week. However, the man’s body began to surface on Tuesday, allowing volunteers to locate and recover him.

Locke said Nsegiyumva’s body will be transported to the Utah State Medical Examiner’s office for autopsy to rule out causes of death.

Newton Reservoir is located approximately 9 miles south of the Idaho/Utah border. 

BOISE — Idaho is as prepared as possible for the approaching wildfire season, with fire crews and air resources strategically placed, more ranchers signing up to help fight fires and two state-owned drones that can be deployed, officials said Tuesday.

Idaho Department of Lands workers provided the details to the Idaho Land Board, which also received a report from a federal expert predicting what appears to be a typical wildfire year for Idaho.

There are “not a lot of abnormalities, but certainly fire activity will exist,” Jeremy Sullens of the National Interagency Fire Center told the board of statewide elected officials.

The five-member board had only four members participating as Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter was traveling.

Sullens predicted that rangeland wildfires will begin occurring more often in southern Idaho in the next several weeks, with wildfires expected in forested lands farther north later in the summer and fall.

He said there’s a dividing line across the top third of the state. Above it is thick snowpack and below it is an area where concern is growing as temperatures increase.

“Everyone is expecting a warm and dry summer,” Sullens said.

Rick Finis of the Idaho Department of Lands said 35 more people have signed up to participate in Rangeland Fire Protection Associations, a program that trains ranchers to fight wildfires on private and public land.

Ranchers can often respond quickly to new wildfires and are especially needed if state and federal firefighters are tied up on fires elsewhere.

Finis said there are now 450 members with firefighting training in associations that cover 2,800 square miles of private rangeland and 11,000 square miles of federal and state land. He said the state has supplied seven fire engines to the associations.

Elsewhere, the state has helicopters and airplanes available in Coeur d’Alene, Grangeville and McCall, areas within striking distance of timberland.

The Idaho Land Board manages state endowment lands to make money that benefits mostly public schools. Endowment lands that produce timber are a significant source of revenue.

Idaho last year tried using a drone on an experimental basis and this year has two with five certified pilots and two more in training.

Acting Idaho Department of Lands Director David Groeschl said the drones have turned out to be especially helpful in getting information on a fire that has just started, and locating hot spots in established fires that crews can then attack.

“You can find the fire start and be very efficient on what resources you send in and how many,” he said. “You can spend quite a bit of time trying to locate a fire with typical aviation resources, which are much more expensive than a drone.”

HELENA, Mont. (AP) — The mystery is over: Wildlife officials have confirmed that an unusual-looking animal shot in central Montana was a gray wolf.

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks officials initially weren’t certain what the creature was when a rancher shot it in May. They noted the legs, front claws and canine teeth were shorter and its ears were bigger than normally seen on wolves.

The agency said Monday that an inspection of the animal at its laboratory revealed it to be a relatively normal-looking wolf. DNA tests confirmed that it was a gray wolf.

Officials say the wolf was a 2- or 3-year-old female with unique physical features.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service geneticist Mary Curtis says it’s not unusual for there to be physical variations of animals within a species.

One question Fish and Game is frequently asked is “why does it take so long to get controlled hunt drawing results?” Here’s a brief synopsis of what occurs between the close of the application period on June 7 and the date we commit to providing results on July 10.

First, not everyone applies for controlled hunts at a vendor or online; we also accept mail-in applications. Because these applications could be postmarked through June 7, we’re often still receiving and processing mail applications in mid-June. Mailed applications are entered as quickly as possible.

Although the licensing system catches some ineligible applicants, it doesn’t catch all of them, so Fish and Game staff must verify the validity of all applications and applicants. In 2017, about 166,000 people submitted applications for controlled hunts.

There are several steps to the drawing process. It’s a complex system, but it has been certified as random.

• Fish and Game loads the controlled hunt applications into the controlled hunt draw system, which is hosted by the State Controller’s office on its computer mainframe.
• The system then assigns a random six-digit number to each controlled hunt application.
• The system scrambles the sequence of each application number, and then scrambles the order in which each number appears on the list.
• The drawing takes place on a computer system hosted by the State Controller’s office.

Following the drawing, the draw results are then downloaded to a Fish and Game database, where it is cross-checked by staff to ensure that the original draw results from the controlled hunt system match the downloaded data. This download is used to update the licensing system where hunters can check their results: https://idfg.huntfishidaho.net/login. During this same time, Fish and Game staffers prepare postcards to notify applicants who have drawn a hunt.

While it can be frustrating to wait a month to learn of your draw status, it’s important to ensure that everyone who applied is eligible and correctly entered in the draw. We often beat our July 10 commitment by several days because we always want to give hunters as much time as possible to plan their hunts.

POCATELLO — The Portneuf Animal Welfare Society is offering a $5,000 reward to anyone with information on who wrapped a leash around a deer’s neck, which resulted in its death recently in the Gibson Jack area near Pocatello.

“The reward is going to be offered to the person who helps us locate the person who did this horrible thing,” Jo Lynn Anderson, founder of PAWS, said on Saturday.

On Wednesday, Gibson Jack resident Steve Leaman received a call from a neighbor about the dead yearling buck. When he went down to investigate, he discovered the leash.

“When I got down there, I walked over to it and saw this harness around its neck,” Leaman said. “When walking, the deer had stepped through the loop of the leash, so every time it tried to walk it would pull its head down. It was one of the craziest cases I’ve seen with wildlife.”

Leaman, who has watched over and fed deer for nearly 40 years, mentioned that he’d heard of a deer around the area with an object around its neck this past winter.

He kept on high alert, as did officials with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, who managed to find it and attempted to tranquilize it on several occasions. However, they were unsuccessful due to difficult circumstances.

Anderson hopes that the reward will give incentive to the community so they can find out more about the situation regarding the dead deer.

“We just want to find out who did this,” Anderson said.

Anyone with information regarding who leashed the deer is asked to contact the Portneuf Animal Welfare Society at 208-406-3904.

The Idaho Department of Fish and Game responded to a call Wednesday morning, June 13, from a Gibson Jack resident (south side of Pocatello) about a dead deer in their yard.

Calls like this one come to Idaho Fish and Game occasionally throughout the year—sometimes deer are hit by vehicles or otherwise injured and are found dead on peoples’ properties.

Unique to this situation was the fact that the yearling buck was found with a leash wrapped around its neck, with one of its back legs through the loop of the leash’s hand grip. It was obvious that the leash had been intentionally strapped around the deer’s neck—either in an attempt to make it a pet or to otherwise harass the animal.

“This deer experienced a long, slow death,” says Regional Habitat Manager, Anna Owsiak, who had participated in the numerous attempts to find and help this deer since March. “The condition of the animal was poor—it was obviously malnourished and its velvety antlers had been chewed off at some point. This deer has had to do its best to keep up with its herd, move through brush, escape dogs and other predators, and try to feed– with a strap impeding its every move.”

In the end, the deer had managed to step through the loop of the leash’s handgrip so that each time it tried to take a step, its head and neck were likely pulled down to the ground. Ultimately the animal died, a harsh consequence of someone’s actions.

Several calls regarding the yearling deer came to the office in March. Fish and Game personnel responded each time to help without any success. Either the animal had moved by the time personnel arrived on scene, or, if the animal was present, circumstances made darting impossible without risking public safety or other wildlife.

“We tried at least 4 times to dart the deer,” Owsiak says, “but we were thwarted by circumstances such as the deer’s location, windy weather, other deer standing too close to the intended target, or other factors.”

To successfully dart an animal like a deer, a shooter must be able to get a clear shot within 30 feet, not an easy task with a wary, mobile animal. Furthermore, too much wind can reduce the accuracy of dart placement.

Lethal removal was also considered at one point because the deer was apparently suffering and becoming malnourished, however, proximity to houses and roads made such a prospect unsafe for the public.

Idaho Fish and Game continued to search for many weeks, even asking some residents along Bannock Highway and Mink Creek Road to assist with locating the yearling, but until Wednesday, the deer had not been observed.

How this deer was lassoed and by whom remains a mystery. However, Idaho Fish and Game encourages anyone with any information regarding this deer to contact the regional office in Pocatello at 208-232-4703 or to contact Citizens Against Poaching at 1-800-632-5999. Callers can remain anonymous.

“It’s against the law to keep wildlife as pets or to harass a deer in such a manner as this one was,” says Jennifer Jackson, Regional Conservation Educator. “Even if the intent was not to keep the animal as a pet, the end result is the same—last year’s spotted fawn is this spring’s saddest story. I can’t imagine the stress this yearling went through before it finally succumbed to its situation. It’s heartbreaking.”

POCATELLO — Wildlife officials are investigating after a deer was found dead with a leash wrapped around its neck.

The yearling buck was found on Wednesday in the back yard of a Gibson Jack residence south of Pocatello.

Officials with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game said it is not uncommon to find dead wildlife on people’s properties. However, Wednesday’s incident was unique because officials said the leash had been intentionally strapped around the deer’s neck, “either in an attempt to make it a pet or to otherwise harass the animal.”

“The deer experienced a long, slow death,” said Anna Owsiak, regional habitat manager for Fish and Game, in a news release. “The condition of the animal was poor — it was obviously malnourished and its velvety antlers had been chewed off at some point. This deer has had to do its best to keep up with its herd, move through the brush, escape dogs and other predators, and try to feed — with a strap impeding its every move.”

When the deer was found, one of its back legs was in the loop of the leash’s hand grip. Officials believe that each time the deer had to take a step, its head and neck were pulled to the ground in a painful fashion.

“Ultimately, the animal died, a harsh consequence of someone’s actions,” a Fish and Game news release said.

Fish and Game received numerous calls about the deer in March, but attempts to help the animal were unsuccessful.

“We tried at least four times to dart the deer, Owsiak said. “But we were thwarted by circumstances such as the deer’s location, windy weather, other deer standing to close to the intended target, or other factors.”

Fish and Game continued to look for the yearling, even asking some residents along Bannock Highway and Mink Creek Road to assist in the search. The deer was later found dead on Wednesday.

“How this deer was lassoed and by whom remains a mystery,” a Fish and Game news release said.

Anyone with information on this case is asked to contact Fish and Game’s regional office in Pocatello at 208-232-4703 or Citizens Against Poaching at 1-800-632-5999. Callers can remain anonymous.

“It’s against the law to keep wildlife as pets or to harass a deer in such a manner as this one was,” said Jennifer Jackson, regional conservation educator, in a news release. “Even if the intent was not to keep the animal as a pet, the end result is the same — last year’s spotted fawn is this spring’s saddest story. I can’t imagine the stress this yearling went through before it finally succumbed to its situation. It’s heartbreaking.”