Regional News
Vital news from around the Mountain West and Southwest. Explore coverage from the Mountain West News Bureau, Western Water Bureau, NPR, and Rocky Mountain Community Radio.
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A coalition of Western conservationists and tribes are working to protect more public lands before the November presidential election.
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Newly discovered damage to part of the dam holding back America's second-largest reservoir has people who rely on the Colorado River worried about their ability to get the water they need.
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The BLM has announced a final rule to revise their oil and gas leasing regulations. It includes the first royalty rate increase in more than 100 years, as well as an increase in the minimum bond for oil and gas companies.
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Social media can influence everything from what we eat to where we vacation. Now, a new study shows it’s also driving more visitors to U.S. national parks, especially in the Mountain West.
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Tillie Torres is an English teacher in Las Vegas with more than $80,000 in student loan debt. She tells her students to be careful with loans, and in a bittersweet moment, saw her own child graduate debt-free and become a teacher. When she had her own loan forgiven, it felt like a "huge weight" was lifted.
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For the first time, the federal government is putting limits on “forever chemicals” called PFAS in the nation’s drinking water – a move that will protect communities across the Mountain West.
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The department announced $3 million in grant funding to protect big game habitats and migration corridors in seven Western states.
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The Affordable Connectivity Program has helped millions of households get internet access with subsidies. The program will wind down at the end of April unless the federal government agrees to fund it through the end of the year.
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This spring, the federal government is expected to finalize a rule that would require oil and gas companies to pay more to drill on public lands across the Western U.S.
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A new report shows air pollution is affecting most national parks across the U.S., including parts of the Mountain West.
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U.S. federal agencies and sovereign tribal agencies often work together on shared goals like managing wildfires, improving wildlife habitat, and other issues. A new repository collects a number of these co-stewardship - or sovereign-to-sovereign - agreements in an effort to help tribes and others better understand their possible uses.
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A new paper finds that current wildfire suppression policies can increase fire severity as much as decades of fuel accumulation and climate change. Using fire models, the area burned annually grew much faster under the current suppression policy when compared to a policy of allowing low- and moderate-intensity blazes to burn.
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In 2020, Congress passed the Not Invisible Act to help address the Missing and Murdered Persons Crisis. The bill formed a federal commission made up of tribal leaders, federal agencies, families, and survivors, who were tasked with developing recommendations on how best to address the crisis. The Department of the Interior and the Department of Justice responded to these recommendations in early March.
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According to the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, there were just five reported abortions in the state in 2023. A sharp decline from previous years, that number does not appear to reflect the reality of abortion access in the state since strict abortion bans went into effect.
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Methane is a strong climate-warming pollutant. And a new study shows oil and gas operations in the Mountain West and beyond are leaking a lot more of it than the government thinks.
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Here’s what you need to know about the five potential options for managing the use of Bears Ears National Monument in southeast Utah.