Utah needs help understanding its elusive river otters. The state’s Division of Wildlife Resources (DWR) put out a call Monday asking Utah residents to report any sightings of the animals whose numbers in the state are still unknown. “River otters are important because they are an indicator of how healthy the aquatic environment is around […]
On Tuesday the Trump administration offered more than 150,000 acres of public lands for fossil-fuel extraction near some of Utah’s most iconic landscapes, including Arches and Canyonlands national parks. Dozens of Utahns gathered at the state Capitol to protest the lease sale, which included lands within 10 miles of internationally known protected areas. In addition […]
By Zoe Woodcraft The sound is like a low, steady rumble, soothing yet powerful. Imperceptible to the human ear, the hums of red rock arches in Bears Ears and Grand Staircase National Monuments carry with them the deep patterns of the earth’s plates sparked by events like ocean currents colliding in the open Pacific that […]
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke did not draw the reduced boundaries of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah to benefit a political ally, The Associated Press reported Monday. The Department of Interior’s (DOI) Office of Inspector General (OIG) was investigating whether or not Zinke had altered the monument’s boundaries specifically to benefit Utah Republican Congressman […]
By Rosalyn R. LaPier Forty years ago the U.S. Congress passed the American Indian Religious Freedom Act so that Native Americans could practice their faith freely and that access to their sacred sites would be protected. This came after a 500-year-long history of conquest and coercive conversion to Christianity had forced Native Americans from their […]
Twenty-nine uncontained wildfires are blazing in the Western U.S. right now, raising concerns that 2018’s fire season could rival 2017’s record-breaking season for devastation, The New York Times reported Monday. The fast-moving County Fire in Northern California, which started Saturday and has burnt more than 60,000 acres of land as of late Monday, has belched […]
By Sam Schipani With rainfall at record lows, water is an increasingly precious commodity in the deserts of southern Utah. But in the driest reaches of redrock country, one long-waged water war thunders even louder than the rest. Utah legislators and water managers have spent nearly a decade trying to break ground on the 140-mile-long […]
By Sam Schipani While the Ancestral Puebloan people of the Southwest were building citadels like Chaco Canyon, the Fremont people were carving mysterious petroglyphs depicting horned, broad-shouldered triangular men and sweeping carvings of desert snakes. Nowhere is their legacy more apparent than in eastern Utah’s Molen Reef. Fremont artifacts dominate this cultural heritage site, but […]
A federal judge Tuesday struck down the city of Oakland’s ban on coal shipments through a planned export terminal. U.S. District Court Judge Vince Chhabria ridiculed the city for violating its contract with the developer of the Oakland Bulk and Oversized Terminal in its 2016 ban, writing in his opinion that there is no “substantial […]