A solar-powered computer and transmitting device beamed data to a satellite from six anemometers spinning on a 200-foot-tall meteorological tower at the Pathfinder Ranch on Monday.

Ranch owner Jeff Meyer has been collecting other data, too, for the most ambitious and what could - and he emphasizes "could" - become the state's largest wind energy program throughout central Wyoming.

"I wanted to bring the approach of master planning to renewable wind energy," Meyer said. "We don't have a wind project, we have a wind business."

Meyer, an Iowa farm boy and most recently a tree business entrepreneur in Florida, will speak about wind siting and development at the Wyoming Wind Symposium at the University of Wyoming this morning.

The conference, which has drawn more than 600 participants, will look at "what's in it for us" in Wyoming and how to craft strategies for a statewide approach, said Gov. Dave Freudenthal's spokeswoman, Cara Eastwood.

People generally like the idea of wind energy, but grow skeptical when it goes to the local level of regulations and the "not in my backyard" mentality, Eastwood said.

That, Meyer said, is why Wyoming needs a statewide strategy.

So far in Wyoming, companies have proposed and developed "wind projects" by leasing private land and/or using company-owned land to erect towers, he said.

While these wind farms are generating electricity, they're also generating conflicts about the proximity of towers - and transmission lines - to landowners, and a seeming helter-skelter approach to energy development, Meyer said.

As a "wind business," Pathfinder Renewable Energy LLC is not about building wind farms, but rather enabling landowners, Meyer said.

He likened his vision to a shopping mall, when a developer does the site work and permitting, then offers space to retailers, Meyer said. The retailers in this case would be wind energy companies that would take advantage of the work done by his company.

Meyer has enlisted financial assistance from Sammons Power Development LLC, an affiliate of the Dallas-based Sammons Enterprises, one of the largest privately owned companies in the world, according to its Web site.

He also has hired former Wyoming Pipeline Authority Director Mark Doelger as a consultant about transmission issues.

Doelger, a geologist and president of Barlow & Haun Inc., said transmission lines share some similarities with pipelines in terms of permitting, easements and other issues.

Ideally, the state would create a wind commission similar to the Oil and Gas Conservation Commission to establish uniform regulations and a database for the payment of royalties to those whose lands have wind generation, he said.

For the most part, those lands are owned by ranchers.

They've been squeezed for years with fluctuating commodities prices, drought, regulations, and the uncertainty that has pushed many of them to sell their property to usually out-of-state developers who carve the land into "ranchettes" to be bought by people with little if any interest in agriculture.

Some ranchers thought Meyer, with his purchase of the Pathfinder, intended to do the same thing. He has been able to quell that skepticism, he said.

A better way

Meanwhile, Meyer believes he has a better way for land use and wind energy that will preserve the ranching heritage and the open spaces admired by locals and tourists alike.

That better way will provide an additional revenue source for ranchers, too.

So for more than three years, Meyer has spoken to hundreds of ranchers in six counties, met with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, county commissioners and departments, state officials, wildlife experts, and representatives of companies with interests in wind energy.

That approach has impressed Rob Hurless, Freudenthal's energy and telecommunications policy adviser who has met with Meyer.

"What sets him apart is the time he's spent with local folks and community people," Hurless said.

As Meyer confers with ranchers and amasses information, he first looks at where not to put turbines, he said.

Some places with steep slopes won't work, and some places won't have sufficient wind, he said.

And a lot of places won't work because of wildlife migration corridors, sage grouse habitat, minerals, regulations, topography, water, easements, economics, and cultural and historical features such as the pioneer trails that crisscross his and other ranches, he said. "You don't build near the Oregon Trail."

Besides his own Pathfinder Ranch, Meyer has been soliciting other ranches in central Wyoming to sign agreements to participate in the business.

A participating ranch may or may not have turbines on it, but would contribute to the overall effort, such as enhanced wildlife habitat.

"I may get paid to raise sage grouse," said Dennis Sun of the Sun Ranch.

"Jeff is looking at the big footprint," Sun said, adding he has not signed an agreement. "He's talked to a lot of ranchers. Who's signed? I don't know."

Rob Hendry, Natrona County Commission chairman and owner of the Clear Creek Cattle Co. east of Lysite, said he has signed an agreement with Pathfinder Renewable Energy.

"We're on the north end of his footprint," Hendry said.

Big footprint

Any project of this size - anything costing more than $173.2 million - needs the approval of the Industrial Siting Division of the Department of Environmental Quality, Director Todd Parfitt said.

Before applying, Pathfinder Renewable Energy first needs to have a well-defined plan before it meets with the Industrial Siting Council, which studies socio-economic and environmental impacts before receiving construction permits, Parfitt said.

Barbara Dobos of the Alliance for Historic Wyoming wondered about those impacts, because the possible footprint could affect cultural resources from Independence Rock to Martin's Cove to the Shirley Basin to Jeffrey City.

"I'm not opposed to wind energy; I'm opposed to where you put it," Dobos said. "We have great concern about what would be impacted."

The Biodiversity Conservation Alliance has answered some of those concerns with its own report - "Wind Power in Wyoming: Doing it Smart from the Start" - published last year.

"The good news is the solution is at hand," said Erik Molvar, executive director and wildlife biologist of the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance.

The simple solution is to place wind projects with the most wind and the least human and wildlife impact, Molvar said.

Through mapping techniques, the report found Wyoming has about 4 million acres available for wind power, he said. At 100 acres per turbine, that means the state could have 40,000 turbines with minimal impact, he added.

The Biodiversity Conservation Alliance's methodology has become a template for other states, he said.

Molvar, a participant in the symposium, said he's never met Meyer, even though the two have similar interests.

Meyer estimates he has several more years of work before any projects begin, and he remains averse to speculate to how many turbines or transmission towers will be erected through Pathfinder Renewable Energy.

In his application for transportation and utility systems and facilities on federal lands with the BLM, he wrote the Pathfinder Renewable Wind Energy LLC itself - with 250,000 acres just at the Pathfinder Ranch in southern Natrona County and northern Carbon County - would be capable of producing more than 4,000 megawatts of power.

If the project uses only 1.5-megawatt turbines, that would be about 2,700 turbines. One megawatt of wind energy can power about 300 homes. By way of comparison, Duke Energy's 66-turbine Campbell Hill Windpower Project in Converse County will produce 99 megawatts.

Meyer remains committed to a much bigger idea, he said.

"How many wind turbines are we going to put up? I don't know, but we're going to do it right."

Reach Tom Morton at (307) 266-0592, or at tom.morton@trib.com. Read his blog at tribtown.trib.com/TomMorton/blog.

New Wind

By Dan Cepeda

Star-Tribune videographer

A symposium sponsor

Pathfinder Renewable Energy LLC is one of eight sponsors of the now-full Wyoming Wind Symposium at the University of Wyoming today and Friday.

The company's manager, Jeff Meyer, will be one of the speakers.

More than 600 people are scheduled to attend the conference, which will look at wind energy from the perspectives of government regulators, landowners, developers and others.

Gov. Dave Freudenthal said the symposium will complement ongoing work by the state's Wind Energy Task Force - composed of state legislators and a wind energy representative - to study possible legislation about taxation, siting, regulation and environmental concerns.

The other sponsors are Holland & Hart LLC, Interwest Energy Alliance, Horizon Wind Energy, Iberdrola Renewables, BP Wind Energy, Invenergy LLC, and EnXco.

Registration has been closed because the facility cannot accommodate any more participants.

Those who cannot attend but are interested in the discussion should visit the conference Web site after the event to view video of the presentations. The conference Web site is: www.uwyo.edu/ENR/IENR/info.asp?p=12721.

History of Pathfinder Ranch

The ranch at the center of Jeff Meyer's Pathfinder Renewable Energy LLC began as small homesteads, became known as the Bothwell place because of its founder A.J. Bothwell, and became infamous for the only hanging of a woman in Wyoming history.

On July 20, 1889, a group of major ranchers hanged Ellen Watson - better known as Cattle Kate - and store owner and postmaster Jim Averill in the Spring Creek canyon, according to newspaper accounts furnished by Kevin Anderson of Casper College's library.

Watson allegedly either rustled cattle and/or traded sexual favors for unbranded calves. Averill denounced the ranchers for their greed along the Sweetwater River in letters he wrote to a Casper newspaper.

A coroner's jury found the ranchers - Bothwell, Tom Sun, John Durbin, R.M. Galbraith, Bob Connor, E. McLain and probably George E. Henderson - hanged Watson and Averill.

The ranchers were arrested and posted $500 bonds. Judge Samuel T. Corn in Rawlins dismissed the case for lack of witnesses, in part because some of the witnesses tended to die or vanish.

A century later, Watson's descendants posted a marker to remember the two with the statement: "These innocent homesteaders were hanged by cattle ranchers for their land and water rights."

Over time, especially during the operations by the Sanford family - brothers Wayne, Bud, Stan and Gordon - the ranch grew to about 26 miles long and averages 16 miles wide along Pathfinder Reservoir.

The ranch is about 50 miles southwest of Casper along Wyoming Highway 220 with the Ferris Mountains to the south, the Granite Mountains to the west and the Shirley and Pedro mountains to the east.

The ranch was sold in 1989 to St. Louis businessman John Berra, whose company sold it to Meyer last year.

Meyer also has acquired neighboring ranches.

According to a transportation and utility systems application with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, the total area of Pathfinder Renewable Wind Energy LLC will be about 250,000 acres of deeded property, and leased state and federal lands.

Who is Jeff Meyer?

The manager of Pathfinder Renewable Energy LLC started on a farm, and agriculture stands at the heart of his plan to develop a wind energy strategy for ranches in central Wyoming, he said this week.

As Jeff Meyer put it, his life has gone from "pig poop to power grids."

He spoke while seated in his "I cannot tell a lie room" in the Pathfinder Ranch house where he has a table crafted from 300-year-old wood from a tree that fell down at George Washington's home at Mount Vernon, Va.

Meyer grew up on one of the largest family farms in Iowa in Amana, population 150.

He went to Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., where he earned a degree in business and history in 1980, and met his wife Anne.

Meyer moved to Jacksonville, Fla., where he started a tree business relocating trees instead of leaving them to be cut down by developers. He delivered trees throughout Florida and the southeastern United States.

In 1984, the Meyers' young son, Forest, collected acorns from the Jacksonville Treaty Oak Park, and Jeff germinated and planted one of the seedlings in his yard. From that family episode, Jeff Meyer started the Famous & Historic Trees Project of the nonprofit American Forests organization.

He has traveled worldwide, and has appeared on TV shows with David Letterman, World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, Martha Stewart, and the PBS documentary, "Silent Witnesses: America's Historic Trees." With co-author Sharon Linnea, he wrote "America's Famous and Historic Trees: From George Washington's Tulip Poplar to Elvis Presley's Pin Oak."

Through his work with and love of trees, Meyer gained experience with planning and permitting projects in Florida, and began developing the link between forestry and carbon sequestration, he said. "I've always been interested in the environment."

One of his best friends lives in Dubois, and he had visited Wyoming numerous times to hunt elk.

In 2005, Meyer began meeting with ranchers in central Wyoming to discuss how they could preserve their way of life and add a revenue stream with the developing wind energy industry.

Meyer wanted to combine his expertise with natural and cultural resources, agriculture, regulations of all sorts, and the prospects of wind energy. He found the perfect base of operations at the Pathfinder Ranch, which he bought last year from its St. Louis-based owner.