MONTANA

Man mauled by grizzly bear doing well but faces long recovery

A Montana man who was mauled by a grizzly bear that bit off his lower jaw is doing well at a hospital in Salt Lake City but has a long recovery ahead, his family said on Sept. 11.

Rudy Noorlander, the owner of a snowmobile and all-terrain vehicle rental business in Big Sky, “is projected to be in the hospital for surgeries until October” after the Sept. 8 attack, his daughter KateLynn Davis said via Facebook.

Noorlander was helping two hunters who rented ATVs from his business as they tried to find a deer they had shot in southwestern Montana, according to Davis.

They tracked a deer that wasn’t the one the hunters shot, and Noorlander spotted a smaller grizzly. He was pulling out his gun to try to scare it away when a larger bear attacked him, Davis wrote.

Noorlander’s gun misfired and he didn’t have time to grab his bear spray from his backpack, so he tried to punch the animal “in hopes of slowing it down,” according to Davis.

“The grizzly left a large scratch down his right chest, bit his arms, legs, and to top it all off, gave him as what Rudy describes as the most disgusting French kiss of his life before biting down and tearing off his lower jaw,” Davis wrote on a GoFundMe page.

One of the two hunters shot at the bear and it left the area, said Morgan Jacobsen, a spokesperson for Montana’s wildlife department.

Gallatin County Sheriff Search and Rescue team members airlifted Noorlander out of the area and a medical helicopter flew him to the hospital in nearby Bozeman. After being stabilized, Noorlander was flown to the University of Utah Hospital for further treatment.

The grizzly had not been found as of Sept. 11, and no bears at all had been located in the area, according to Jacobsen.

The agency believed the grizzly bear was protecting an animal carcass it had cached nearby.

KANSAS

Judge says officials don’t have to change trans people’s birth certificates

TOPEKA – A federal judge ruled on Aug. 31 that Kansas officials are no longer required to change transgender people’s birth certificates so the documents reflect their gender identities, a loss for those who fought for that ability and leaves questions on how the state will respond.

Since 2019, a federal consent agreement required Kansas officials to change a person’s gender identity on their birth certificate when asked. But Republican Attorney General Kris Kobach asked the court to stop enforcing that agreement because of a new state law that defines male and female as the sex assigned at birth.

Judge Daniel Crabtree granted Kobach’s request and changed the federal agreement to remove the requirement. However, Crabtree said it will ultimately be up to a state court to decide whether the new law is constitutional. The new law, which took effect July 1, is among efforts nationwide to roll back trans rights.

Luc Bensimon, a Topeka trans man who was one of the original plaintiffs who fought to change their birth certificates, said he was having trouble making sense of the ruling and wonders whether the state will try to forcefully reverse the gender change on his birth certificate.

His lawyer, Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, said he doesn’t think the ruling will have any effect on birth certificates that were already changed – only new ones.

The Kansas law defines male and female based on a person’s “biological reproductive system,” applying those definitions to any other state law or regulation. The Republican-controlled Legislature enacted it over Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto, but she announced shortly before it took effect that birth certificate changes would continue, citing opinions from attorneys in her administration.

Gonzalez-Pagan said he believes the state agency could continue changing genders on birth certificates unless Kobach goes back to court and gets a separate order telling officials to stop making those changes.

NEW MEXICO

Governor seeks federal agents to combat gun violence

SANTA FE – The governor of New Mexico is asking the U.S. Justice Department to deploy more federal agents to the state in the aftermath of the shooting death of an 11-year-old boy outside a minor league baseball stadium.

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham on Sept. 7 sent a letter U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland requesting aid in efforts to stem gun violence and human trafficking. The governor says she has repeatedly requested federal law enforcement deployments since June 2022.

An 11-year-old was killed and a woman critically injured on Sept. 6 as their vehicle was peppered with bullets in an apparent road-rage incident, as crowds departed an evening baseball game, Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina said.

The governor said federal resources are needed to help curb “escalating violence and drug and human-trafficking activity that is ravaging our great state.” She also issued an emergency health order that taps into $750,000 to shore up public safety.

In 2020, Democratic New Mexico officials expressed concerns about federal overreach and the potential for civil rights abuses as then-President Donald Trump deployed a surge of federal agents to Albuquerque, Chicago and other U.S. cities in attempts to contain violent crime.

Vandalism damages monument to frontiersman ‘Kit’ Carson

SANTA FE – Police on Sept. 1 were investigating the partial destruction of a public monument to a 19th century frontiersman and U.S. soldier who had a leading role in the death of hundreds of Native Americans during Anglo-American settlement of the American West.

The monument to Christopher “Kit” Carson has been encircled by a plywood barrier for its own protection since 2020, when Santa Fe was swept by the movement to remove depictions of historical figures who mistreated Native Americans amid a national reckoning over racial injustice.

The monument’s upper spire was toppled in the evening on Aug. 31. Photos showed an abandoned pickup truck and cable that may have been used to inflict the damage. Last year, the monument was splattered with red paint by activists on Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

Carson carried out military orders to force the surrender of the Navajo people by destroying crops, livestock and homes. Many Navajos died during a forced relocation known as the Long Walk, starting in 1863, and during a yearslong detention in eastern New Mexico.

Santa Fe Mayor Alan Webber issued a statement that described the latest damage to the monument as a “cowardly act.”

Activists in 2020 toppled a monument on Santa Fe’s central square to U.S. soldiers who fought not only for the Union in the Civil War but also in armed campaigns against Native Americans who were described as “savage” in engraved letters that were chiseled from the landmark decades ago.

ARIZONA

20 rattlesnakes found inside homeowner’s garage

MESA – An Arizona man called a snake removal company after seeing what he thought were three rattlesnakes lurking in the garage of his Mesa home. He was wrong.

There actually were 20 snakes – five adult western diamondback rattlers and 15 babies. One of the adult snakes also was pregnant.

Snake wrangler Marissa Maki found most of the rattlers coiled around the base of a hot water heater in the unidentified homeowner’s cluttered garage on Sept. 12.

The western diamondbacks, with their distinctive triangular-shaped heads, are found throughout the Southwest. And though their venom is far less toxic than other rattlesnake species, they still require care when being handled.

Maki used tongs to pick up each snake before dropping them into large plastic buckets and relocating them to a natural habitat in a desert area.

Rattlesnake Solutions owner Bryan Hughes said it was a record for the most rattlesnakes caught in one call.

The number could have been higher. Hughes said several shedded skins were found in the garage, indicating as many as 40 snakes may have lived there at some point.