Wyoming Drone Laws 2026: The Complete Pilot's Guide

In August 2014, a tourist lost control of his drone over Yellowstone and watched it drop into Grand Prismatic Spring — the largest hot spring in the country, more than 120 feet deep, and one of the most photographed natural features on earth. Rangers never recovered the aircraft. The operator was fined and ordered to pay restitution, and the story traveled because it captured something true about flying a drone in Wyoming: the most spectacular places to point a camera are exactly the places you are not allowed to fly. The crash landed just weeks after the National Park Service banned drones across the entire park system, and a decade later the bans at Yellowstone and Grand Teton are still the first rule that matters here.

Wyoming is the least populous state in the country, and for years it had almost no drone-specific law of its own. That changed in 2025, and the change is the thing most online guides still get wrong. What Wyoming has now is not a tidy single drone act but a handful of scattered provisions across different parts of the code: an enacted critical-infrastructure law passed over the governor's veto, an aeronautics rule on low flight and landing, a prison-drone statute, a hunting regulation that treats a drone as an aircraft, and the data-trespass laws that a federal court partly struck down. A pipeline inspection in the Powder River Basin, a herd check over a ranch outside Buffalo, a real-estate clip near Jackson, and a Sunday hobby flight in a Casper park all sit inside the same layered system. This guide walks through it with citations to wyoleg.gov, the Game and Fish Department, WYDOT, and the FAA, so a Wyoming flight stays legal from pre-takeoff to landing.

What governs drone flight in Wyoming?

Three layers, in this order:

The rest of this article works through each layer in that order.

Federal baseline: what applies everywhere

Before any Wyoming rule kicks in, you are bound by FAA rules. Here is the short version.

• Part 107Covers commercial operation. If you fly for anything that benefits a business — energy-site surveys, powerline inspection, real-estate listings, wedding videography, ranch imagery, paid social content — you need the FAA Remote Pilot Certificate.
• TRUSTThe Recreational UAS Safety Test covers non-commercial flight. Free, online, and you cannot fail it. Carry the completion certificate when you fly. No Wyoming drone license exists on top of it.
• FAA registrationFive dollars, every drone heavier than 0.55 lb (250 g). The registration number has to be visible on the aircraft.
• Remote IDMandatory since March 16, 2024 — Standard Remote ID, a broadcast module, or operation inside a FRIA.
• Altitude cap400 ft AGL for most flights.
• Visual Line of SightDaylight or civil twilight unless waivered.
• Controlled airspaceThe Class D rings at Cheyenne, Casper, and Jackson Hole — plus the national-defense airspace around F.E. Warren — require LAANC or specific FAA authorization before launch.

In Wyoming the controlled-airspace problem is concentrated: Class D rings around Cheyenne, Casper, and Jackson Hole, and the national-defense airspace around F.E. Warren Air Force Base, where much of Cheyenne reads as a no-fly zone for anyone without specific FAA approval. Everything that follows is what Wyoming layers on top.

Wyoming state-level drone laws

The 2025 critical-infrastructure law (SF0132 / W.S. 19-13-503)

This is the one to know, and it is the one most guides miss. After a wave of unexplained "mystery drone" sightings over Wyoming infrastructure in late 2024, the Legislature passed Senate File 132 in the 2025 session. Governor Mark Gordon vetoed it, arguing that federal law preempts states from regulating the airspace and that letting local officers take down drones would put them in a "Catch 22" with federal law. The Legislature overrode the veto on March 4, 2025 — the Senate 23-8 and the House 47-13 — so the bill became law over the governor's objection, and it took effect immediately.

The new section, W.S. 19-13-503, makes it an offense to operate a drone over or near critical infrastructure or a "critical system" to intentionally photograph it, to intentionally loiter over or near it, or in furtherance of any other crime. A separate provision bars flying a drone carrying an explosive device near those facilities. The list of covered "critical systems" is long: refineries, chemical plants, water and wastewater treatment, dams, power generation and substations, high-voltage transmission lines, communication towers, natural-gas facilities, railroads, courts, jails, military installations, hospitals with air-ambulance service, and mining infrastructure, among others. A first offense is a misdemeanor carrying up to six months and a $2,500 fine; a second or later offense is a felony carrying up to two years and a $5,000 fine.

The law carves out the operators you would expect: anyone authorized by the FAA who is flying within that authorization, government agencies using their own drones, the infrastructure owner or its agent, emergency and law-enforcement agencies, and a private landowner flying over land they own. It also authorizes police to take "reasonable actions" — including disabling, damaging, or removing a drone — and lets the governor deploy the National Guard against a violating drone, with the attorney general directed to defend officers who do so. That takedown language is exactly what the governor flagged: physically disabling an aircraft can run into federal law, so this part of the statute sits under a real preemption cloud even though it is enacted Wyoming law. For an ordinary commercial or hobby pilot the practical rule is simpler. Do not loiter over or photograph a refinery, a substation, a dam, a prison, or a military site, and keep FAA authorization in hand when you have a legitimate inspection job near those assets.

Aeronautics: low flight and landing (W.S. 10-4-303)

Wyoming's aeronautics code treats a drone like any other aircraft for the basics of where it may fly. Under W.S. 10-4-303, flight over the lands and waters of the state is lawful unless it is flown so low that it interferes with the existing use of the land below, flown so as to be imminently dangerous to people or property, or flown in violation of federal air-commerce rules. Landing a drone on someone else's land or water without their consent is unlawful, except for a forced landing. You are free to operate over your own property. The 2025 bill added a penalty to this section: operating a drone in a way that is unlawful under the low-or-dangerous-flight rule is a misdemeanor carrying up to six months and a $750 fine.

What this section does not do is create a blanket "a drone over private property is trespass" crime. Lawmakers tried to add exactly that in 2025 with House Bill 251, which would have made flying at 200 feet or lower over another person's land without permission a misdemeanor. It passed the House Agriculture, State and Public Lands and Water Resources Committee on a 6-3 vote and then stalled on the calendar, and it did not become law. So as of this review Wyoming has no general low-altitude drone-trespass statute — only the no-landing rule above and ordinary trespass and nuisance law.

The Aeronautics Commission and the airspace line

WYDOT's Aeronautics division administers Wyoming's state-side drone guidance and runs operator pages for recreational, commercial, and government flyers. By statute the Wyoming Aeronautics Commission can make reasonable rules about where drones take off and land, in coordination with industry and local governments, but it cannot regulate drone operation in the navigable airspace. WYDOT says it plainly on its own site: the FAA has exclusive authority over the airspace, including the airspace drones use, while the state handles state-law drone questions. That division — federal airspace, state-and-local ground — is the through-line of every layer here.

Prisons and jails (W.S. 6-5-214)

Wyoming has a dedicated statute on drones and correctional institutions, W.S. 6-5-214, which makes it an offense to operate a drone over or on the grounds of a penal institution to photograph, surveil, record, or convey contraband, with the most serious conduct — using a drone to deliver a deadly weapon — punishable as a felony. It is the same kind of prison-drone law many states passed in the last decade, and the 2025 critical-infrastructure act borrows its definition of "unmanned aircraft system" (W.S. 6-5-214(a)(iii)). Treat any prison or jail as off-limits.

Privacy and data trespass (W.S. 6-3-414 / 40-27-101)

Wyoming has no clean "drone peeping" statute. What it has is the 2015 pair of "trespass to unlawfully collect resource data" laws — one criminal, one civil — that reach a drone because the statutory definition of collecting data includes photographing and recording a location. The laws make it a trespass to enter private land without permission to collect resource data, meaning data about agriculture, minerals, geology, habitat, water, soil, and the like. They are best known for what happened next: in a First Amendment lawsuit (Western Watersheds Project v. Michael), the Tenth Circuit held that collecting data, including taking photographs, is protected speech, and on remand the federal district court struck down the subsection that reached crossing private land to collect resource data on adjacent or proximate (public) land. The two core private-land provisions — entering private land to collect, and entering and collecting, resource data without permission — survive and remain on the books. The practical takeaway is narrow but real: do not use a drone to gather resource data off private land you do not have permission to be on, and remember that ordinary trespass, harassment, and tort law still apply to a camera in the sky.

Wildlife and hunting (Game and Fish Chapter 2)

Wyoming's hunting regulations close a door that surprises out-of-state hunters. The Game and Fish Commission's General Hunting Regulation (Chapter 2, Section 12) prohibits using any aircraft with the intent to spot, locate, and aid in the taking of any big game animal from August 1 through January 31, and prohibits it for any trophy game animal during any open season. The Department has stated that "aircraft" includes a drone explicitly — any machine capable of atmospheric flight, including a UAV — and a companion provision (Section 20) separately bars real-time video and transmitting imaging devices used to aid in taking big or trophy game. So scouting elk, mule deer, or antelope with a drone during that long window is illegal, even if you never carry a weapon. Harassing wildlife with a drone is independently a problem, and inside the national parks it is separately and aggressively enforced. Wyoming Game and Fish does use drones for its own wildlife-management work — the ban is on using aircraft to scout and take game, not a blanket prohibition on agency drones.

Commercial versus recreational operation

Wyoming does not require a state-level drone license, registration, or business permit beyond what the FAA already requires. Commercial operators need FAA registration and Part 107. Recreational operators need FAA registration and TRUST. Ordinary Wyoming business and tax rules apply to a commercial drone operator the same way they apply to any other business. The only state paperwork that comes up is the prior written permission a state park superintendent may require, covered below.

Penalties at a glance

Local ordinances to watch in Wyoming

Wyoming has no broad state law preempting local drone rules, but in practice Wyoming cities have enacted very little standalone civilian drone regulation. The constraints that actually shape a flight here are federal and geographic — the parks, the missile base, and the airspace — far more than any city ordinance. Always check the local code and the airspace before flying somewhere new.

Where to fly legally in Wyoming

Wyoming is more than 48 percent federal land, and most of it that is not a national park is more permissive than the parks.

• Private property with the owner's written permission, outside controlled-airspace rings unless you have LAANC.
• BLM land and the national forests — Bridger-Teton, Shoshone, and Medicine Bow among them — under Forest Service and BLM rules, which generally allow drones away from wilderness areas, active fire or closure orders, and the park boundaries.
• AMA-recognized club fields listed at modelaircraft.org. Membership includes insurance and a vetted list of fields.
• FAA-Recognized Identification Areas (FRIAs), updated at faa.gov.
• The B4UFLY app before every flight. In Wyoming it is essential — it surfaces the controlled rings, the national-defense exclusion around F.E. Warren, the park boundaries, and active TFRs in real time.

Two reminders that trip people up here. The national parks and monuments — Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Devils Tower, Fossil Butte, and the rest — are off the list entirely. And during hunting season, the Game and Fish aircraft rule applies to wide-open public land, not just to private ground.

Who enforces drone laws in Wyoming?

Federal rules are enforced by the FAA, with civil-penalty ceilings that can reach five figures for serious safety or airspace violations. State criminal charges under the critical-infrastructure law, the aeronautics statute, and the correctional-facility statute are filed by county and district attorneys after investigation by local police, sheriffs, or the Wyoming Highway Patrol. Game and Fish wardens enforce the aircraft-scouting rule. State park staff enforce park conduct rules. National Park Service rangers enforce the drone ban at Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Devils Tower, and the other Wyoming units, with citations filed in federal court — the 2014 Grand Prismatic case ran exactly that way. Civil liability for trespass or privacy intrusions runs in parallel with any criminal exposure.

How to fly legally in Wyoming — quick checklist

Commercial drone work in Wyoming

Wyoming's commercial drone demand is built on energy and land. Oil and gas fields, the Powder River Basin coal complex, and a growing wind sector use drones for pad and site surveys, flare and tank inspection, stockpile volumetrics, and turbine-blade work. Utilities and pipeline operators fly long, remote transmission and right-of-way corridors — the same assets the 2025 critical-infrastructure law now protects, which makes FAA authorization and clean documentation part of the job. Ranching and agriculture lean on drones for herd checks, fence and water-infrastructure inspection, and rangeland monitoring across enormous private acreage. Around Jackson and the parks there is steady tourism, film, and real-estate demand, bounded hard by the NPS rules. And county sheriffs, search-and-rescue teams, and Game and Fish itself run drones across the state's mountainous terrain. The through-line is the same in every one of these: the entry credential is the FAA Part 107 Remote Pilot Certificate.

How USI helps you fly legally

Knowing the rules is half the work. The other half is the credential — and the path looks different depending on who you are. Three audiences, three doors.

Wyoming drone law FAQ