Here’s a roundup of news from Colorado’s neighbor states.

Iconic Dodge City moves its only polling place outside town

WICHITA, Kansas – Access to the ballot box in November will be more difficult for some people in Dodge City, where Hispanics now make up 60 percent of its population and have remade an iconic Wild West town that once was the destination of cowboys and buffalo hunters who frequented the Long Branch Saloon.

At a time when many rural towns are slowly dying, the arrival of two massive meatpacking plants boosted Dodge City’s economy and transformed its demographics as immigrants from Mexico and other countries flooded in to fill those jobs.

But the city has only one polling site for its 27,000 residents. Since 2002, the lone site was at the civic center just blocks from the local country club – in the wealthy, mostly white part of town. For this November’s election, local officials have moved it outside the city limits to a facility more than a mile from the nearest bus stop, citing road construction that blocked the previous site.

Hispanic voters tend to vote Democratic and could be a factor in Kansas’ tight governor’s race featuring a champion of immigration restrictions, Republican Kris Kobach, against Democratic state Sen. Laura Kelly.

Some local voters and the American Civil Liberties Union have long criticized the use of a lone Dodge City polling site even before its move just weeks before the midterm election.

That single polling site services more than 13,000 voters in the Dodge City area, compared to an average of 1,200 voters per polling site at other locations, said Micah Kubic, executive director of the ACLU in Kansas.

Dodge City voters sometimes have to wait more than an hour in line to vote, and freight trains frequently block intersections at railroad tracks that split the town, Dunlap said.

State’s message for tourists? ‘It’s not for everyone’

LINCOLN, Nebraska – Nebraska’s no longer nice, at least in its next tourism campaign. The new sales pitch has a decidedly self-deprecating bent: “Nebraska. Honestly, it’s not for everyone.”

The slogan, which the Nebraska Tourism Commission unveiled in mid-October, will replace the current “Through My Eyes” campaign this spring, the commission said.

State tourism director John Ricks told the Omaha World-Herald that because Nebraska consistently ranks as the least likely state tourists plan to visit, the marketing campaign needed to be different.

“To make people listen, you have to hook them somehow,” Ricks said. “We had to shake people up.”

Nebraska has used several slogans in its efforts to entice tourists, including, “America’s Frontier,” “My Choice, Nebraska” and “Nebraska … the good life.”

The slogan that debuted in 2014 was: “Visit Nebraska. Visit nice.”

One of the new video ads that will begin running next spring opens with a boy peering through oversized glasses into the camera. The background music is quirky.

Then comes a voice: “Nebraska is kind of like that odd kid. Didn’t say much in school. Slightly peculiar maybe. But when you took the time to get to know him, turned out he was pretty interesting.”

Ricks said that “the perception of a place to visit in people’s heads is more important than the things to see and do when you get there.”

Wildlife official resigns after killing baboon family

BOISE – A top Idaho wildlife official has resigned amid outrage over a photo of him posing with a baboon family he killed during a hunting trip to Africa, ending days of turmoil for a state where big game hunting is popular but critics said the photo was seen as unsportsmanlike by hunting enthusiasts.

Idaho Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter said in a statement that he asked for and accepted Idaho Fish and Game Commissioner Blake Fischer’s resignation on Oct. 22, three days after the Idaho Statesman newspaper published the first report about a photo of Fischer smiling with four dead baboons propped in front of him.

The photo and others of Fischer and his wife shooting at least 14 animals in Namibia were accompanied by descriptions in an email that Fischer sent to more than 100 recipients.

Fischer has said he did nothing illegal, unethical or immoral. He didn’t apologize for killing the baboons but said in his resignation to Otter that he “recently made some poor judgments that resulted in sharing photos of a hunt in which I did not display an appropriate level of sportsmanship and respect for the animals I harvested.”

The photo drew condemnation from longtime Idaho hunters, including Otter, 76, who said it hurts Idaho’s reputation as a hunting and fishing paradise.

Fischer and his wife during their Africa trip also killed a giraffe, a leopard, an impala, a sable antelope, a waterbuck, a kudu, a warthog, a gemsbok and an eland.

The commission Fischer served on makes policy decisions about Idaho’s wildlife, and it often manages game populations through hunting and fishing regulations.

Grizzly attacks hunter in mountains north of Yellowstone

HELENA, Montana – A grizzly bear attacked an elk hunter who surprised the sow and her cub north of Yellowstone National Park, with the bear sinking her teeth into his arm and clawing his eye before another hunter drove her off, the victim recounted.

The mauling of Bob Legasa, 57, in the Gallatin National Forest on Oct. 13 was at least the seventh bear attack on a human since May in the Northern Rocky Mountains.

Legasa, awaiting his second surgery, said in a phone interview from his hospital room in Bozeman, Montana, that he and his hunting partner were moving toward some elk when he heard a growl.

It was a 2-year-old cub and its mother about 12 yards away from the tree that he had just stepped away from. After the cub growled and moved aside, its mother charged, Legasa said.

“I was hoping it was going to be a bluff charge, and halfway through I realized it was going to be the real deal,” he said.

The bow hunter from Hayden, Idaho, didn’t have time to reach for his bear spray; he barely had time to raise his arms in front of his face.

The grizzly bit his hand, leaving puncture wounds and breaking a bone in his forearm. The sow clawed at his eye, leaving a bloody gash across the bridge of his nose.

His partner and hunting guide, Greg Gibson, discharged bear spray and the grizzly let go. Legasa pulled out his own spray, but inadvertently sprayed himself with the Mace-like mist.

Less than three weeks earlier, the two men made a bear spray safety video for Gibson’s Montana Guide Service, Legasa said. Now, both were on the ground, blinded by bear spray.

The men were eventually able to get back to their truck and drove to a hospital.

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks officials said in a statement that the bear’s response was normal for a sow with a cub encountering a human at close range.

It was the most recent in a spate of bear encounters in Wyoming and Montana, several of which have happened during hunting season when hunters look for deer and elk in bear habitat.

University of New Mexico professor pay among nation’s lowest

ALBUQUERQUE – Salaries for professors at New Mexico’s largest university rank among the lowest in the nation and school officials have said that is hurting the college’s efforts to retain professors and attract new ones.

More than half of the engineering faculty at the University of New Mexico would need raises to reach the 25th percentile for pay nationally, the Albuquerque Journal reports.

And 80 percent of professors in the university’s College of Fine Arts earn less than 25 percent of the national average, according to data from the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources.

University of New Mexico President Garnett Stokes said the salary disparities leave the school vulnerable to professor poaching.

“Our faculty who are at the junior level are often picked off before we can even get them into the tenure process,” the president said.

Records show the school’s assistant professor ranks have fallen by 26 percent since fiscal year 2015.

Stokes attributed that to financial conservatism in lean budget years.