It’s challenging to find a silver lining to the situation unfolding in Sublette County after a man allegedly tortured and paraded a wolf in public before finally killing it.

The allegations are gut-wrenching. As more information slowly comes to the surface, the circumstances appear all the more damning.

For those unfamiliar, Daniel resident Cody Roberts has been accused, with allegations reported and repeated in many outlets, of chasing down a wolf with a snowmobile, taping its mouth shut, bringing it to his home, then into a local bar, before finally shooting it out back.

Information through public channels has moved slowly and failed dramatically at keeping up with the pace of this story’s international legs, as it ballooned into an internet sensation in the absence of hard, on-the-record information from official sources.

The incident happened Feb. 29 and until video surfaced Wednesday night, showing a wolf lying in clear discomfort with its mouth restrained while chatter is heard in the background, Wyoming Game and Fish had essentially confirmed only that Roberts had been investigated for bringing a wolf to his residence and a local business, then cited for a wildlife possession violation, according to various news outlets on top of this story.

His punishment was a slight $250 fine.

Now we could focus on the brutality of the act, its inhumanity and how antithetical every detail of it is to the Wyoming ethos of outdoor recreation, sportsmanship and culture.

To some extent, that should be, and rightfully is, the focus.

It’s important to acknowledge the cruelty of what happened to the animal pictured in those images and videos publicized this week, and to understand the emotional fire it’s sparked not just throughout this state, but upon the world stage.

Public agencies do not bear responsibility for anyone who would mistreat an animal the way this wolf appears to have been mistreated. However, they do bear responsibility to aid, and not impede, the public’s right to information, especially when situations of this grotesque magnitude arise.

There’s no excuse for the slow response from public agencies caught flat-footed by the scale and worldwide appeal of this story. To the credit of the Sublette County Sheriff’s Office, which has stated that it found out about the story through media like the rest of us, it’s opened an investigation into the matter. If the allegations are proven true, there’s hope that something more closely resembling justice may occur.

Unfortunately, too many public agencies haven’t learned of the degrees and scale of information, and misinformation, that can arise when government agencies take a tight-lipped approach. We see this time and again, but when controversial and hard-to-stomach events unfold, the impulse of the ones in power is to conceal rather than to responsibly inform.

Of course, there are reasonable limitations when investigations are ongoing. But in this case, if not for a local reporter in Jackson, this story may have never come to light.

Focus should deservedly stay on the incident itself, and seeking firm consequences for the person who put that animal through misery. But from a media perspective, it’s also becoming a case study in what captures people’s attention in this age of the internet, and the consequences of public agencies taking overly restrictive interpretations of their control of public information.

There’s no real silver lining here. Wyoming remains under close scrutiny for a tragic situation until some kind of finality or justice is reached.

This time, you can bet we’ll be told when that day comes.