CASPER, Wyo. (AP) - Gov. Jim Geringer has asked the attorney general to investigate state land payments to a Meeteetse rancher, whom he said was sentenced lightly for slaughtering nine elk last year.
Geringer said he is "as outraged as anybody about the blatant act of poaching of that many wildlife."
"If there's any way we can get a remedy here, even to the point of hauling him in and reviewing his lease all over again, I think there has to be some way where we could give some public outlet to this ... offense," he said.
Thomas struck a plea bargain last month in which he agreed to plead no contest to nine counts of taking wildlife without a license. He was sentenced to a $2,720 fine, a year of probation and two years without hunting privileges.
Thomas maintains he shot the elk because they ate his cattle's winter feed and risked infecting his cattle with brucellosis. He claims the state Game and Fish Department failed to take responsibility for the elk herd.
Last month Thomas received $1,584 from the Office of State Lands and Investments as a share of fees paid by a company that conducted seismic testing on state lands he leases.
The Land Board knew nothing about Thomas's then-pending sentence and might have refused to pay his share last month had they known about the sentence, Geringer said.
State land rules do not require a rancher to pass a criminal background check or receive the blessing of the Game and Fish Department to be eligible for the money, he said.
The board has considered voiding leasing if a lessee broke state law, but board members worried that trivial offenses like speeding tickets might disqualify a lessee, he said.
"The board still has the discretion to single out (a lessee) and say, 'We're not going to pay this, it just sticks in our craw, and if he wants the money, he'd better go through a legal process to get it,"' he said.
Critics have assailed the practice of allowing ranchers to lease state land for a few dollars per animal-unit-month, then receive sometimes thousands of times more in surface damage payments. The practice is unique to Wyoming and South Dakota.
"The whole aspect of receiving more in surface damage payments for a small area of disturbance, that ends up being more of a benefit than the entire annual lease payment - you wonder about that," Geringer said. "I'd like to find a way to deal with this that we can make it more fair."