Mar 29, 2022

Smoke signals

Smoke signals

By Mountain West News • Issue #286 • View online

Wildfires and the West's grim new realities

Deadly ‘smoke waves’ from wildfires set to soar

Along with the surge in deaths and destruction from their flames, smoke from Western wildfires presents a health threat to people far from the fires that will get much worse in the next few decades, scientists reported today. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences, largely focuses on tiny particles that go deep into lungs and can even enter the bloodstream to cause sickness and death.

insideclimatenews.org • Share

Large fires becoming even larger, more widespread

In the journal Science Advances, a team of environmental scientists found that fire frequency has tripled in some parts of the United States—and that in the 2000s, wildfires grew up to four times the size of fires in previous decades.

www.washingtonpost.com • Share

Western heat wave sets records, fuels fire near Boulder, Colorado

They were among dozens of heat records set in the western United States on Saturday. Daily records for March 26 were set in Salt Lake City (79 degrees); El Paso (87 degrees); Reno, Nev. (79 degrees); Clayton, N.M. (82 degrees); Pocatello, Idaho (70 degrees); and Pueblo, Colo. (84 degrees), among other locations.

www.washingtonpost.com • Share

NCAR fire evacuations lifted, but fire officials worry about what’s next

“We only have 365 fire days a year,” said Mike Smith, Incident Commander for Boulder Fire Rescue. “It’s March and it feels like it’s November. We are nervous about the season coming up. When you look at the long-term forecast for the upcoming season, I think this is just a sign of the way things are going to go.”

www.cpr.org • Share

Three months after a wildfire swept through, displaced Colorado residents struggle to rebuild

Inadequate insurance, delayed payments and complex building codes have slowed the return to two Colorado towns

www.theguardian.com • Share

Wildfire trends outpace mitigation measures

Mark Finney, a U.S. Forest Service researcher forester with the Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory, told Montana’s Environmental Quality Council that logging or thinning alone has not been shown to prevent large fires burning under extreme conditions. He detailed several fires in which logged areas burned alongside unlogged areas. The key mitigation found to be successful at mitigating fire was previous fire, he said.

helenair.com • Share

Landmarks

Tribes assume full management of bison range

Following decades of stalled efforts to reassert management authority over the nearly 19,000-acre swath of Flathead Indian Reservation land where an iconic herd of bison roams, the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes has assumed full management control over what was formerly known as the National Bison Range, which has been under jurisdiction of the federal government for more than a century.

flatheadbeacon.com • Share

Tribe officially takes over at Hell Creek on Fort Peck Reservoir

After almost 60 years of state oversight, Hell Creek State Park was officially transferred to the management of the Montana Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians last week.

billingsgazette.com • Share

Grijalva announces landmark vote on tribal consultation bill

House Natural Resources Chair Raúl Grijalva yesterday announced what he calls a historic step in federal relations with Indian Country: a vote on legislation to codify tribal consultation issues.

subscriber.politicopro.com • Share

Officials seek change of course in wild salmon recovery

The Biden administration reiterated Monday its determination to change course on the decadeslong, $17 billion effort to recover wild salmon in the Snake and Columbia rivers and to uphold the treaty rights of the Nez Perce and other tribes of the basin. But it did not say how it hopes to improve those efforts, which have yet to prove successful.

dnews.com • Share

Anthropology association apologizes to Native Americans for the field's legacy of harm

For decades anthropologists exploited Indigenous peoples in the name of science. Now they are reckoning with that history.

www.scientificamerican.com • Share

Deb Haaland’s long game for victory

It’s not easy being a progressive who works for a middle-of-the-road president. Mark Sundeen sizes up the Interior secretary’s first year in office—which has been a disappointment to climate-change activists—and decides she’s most likely to make a mark through a historic reckoning over the U.S. government’s shameful running of Native American boarding schools.

www.outsideonline.com • Share

The children at rest in 4-H Park

The city of Albuquerque is finally working to address the legacy of its boarding school cemetery.

www.hcn.org • Share

How radar is helping track down lost Indigenous grave sites

Indigenous groups in Canada and the U.S. are using ground penetrating radar to locate possible burial sites hidden at former schools.

undark.org • Share

Images from the first-known Native American female photographer

Jennie Ross Cobb put her subjects at ease for uniquely candid photos from early 1900s Indian Territory.

www.hcn.org • Share

Political animals

Killing wolves to own the libs?

The predators were reintroduced to Idaho in the nineties—and have been the object of political controversy ever since. An aggressive new law allows people to hunt or trap as many as they can.

www.newyorker.com • Share

A covenant to coexist: The past, present and future of the Yellowstone grizzly bear

Kerry Gunther, bear management biologist for Yellowstone National Park, said grizzly bears seem to do fine just as long as humans don’t kill them, and as humans, we ultimately get to decide where they can and can’t live. “As a general rule, they try to avoid us as much as they can, but the West is filling up with people pretty fast,” he said.

www.bozemandailychronicle.com • Share

Montana sheriff says hiker killed, grizzly bear suspected

A Montana man who went missing while hiking earlier this week was killed in a suspected encounter with a grizzly bear north of Yellowstone National Park, authorities said Friday.

apnews.com • Share

Utah mule deer is 1st in U.S. to test positive for COVID-19

State wildlife employees swabbed the noses of nearly 300 mule deer last year, and recent test results confirmed the country’s first case of COVID-19 in the species, the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources announced Monday.

www.sltrib.com • Share

USDA's Wildlife Services killed more than 400,000 wild animals in 2021

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s latest report on its wildlife killing program, which aims to reduce the loss of livestock to carnivores, suggests the agency is continuing its preference for lethal management. More than 404,000 wild animals were killed in their natural habitat last year.

www.publicnewsservice.org • Share

Dispatches from the energy transition

U.S. oil boom towns risk ghost town future

The world has spent a decade gorging on fuel from America’s shale basins, and oil prices are topping $100 a barrel. So it might seem an odd time to be contemplating the energy transition. But that’s precisely the task facing the small towns across places like Texas, Wyoming and New Mexico: deciding when to move on from their bedrock industry, even when it’s in an upswing.

www.bloomberg.com • Share

How Biden's budget would change the energy sector

The administration’s plan would have repercussions for renewables, the grid, cybersecurity, pipelines, and oil and gas on public lands.

subscriber.politicopro.com • Share

With gas prices high, Colorado oil production is ramping up

The number of drill rigs opening new wells in Colorado jumped from eight in March 2021 to 14 at the end of this month.

www.cpr.org • Share

West Elk Mine helps state coal production rebound

Colorado coal mine production last year rebounded from the year before, led by growing production at Arch Resources’ West Elk Mine in the North Fork Valley in response to a stronger market for thermal coal.

www.gjsentinel.com • Share

One big detail could derail Northwest's clean-energy goals

Inability to get renewable energy from producers to users has planners worried about meeting mandated clean-energy goals

columbiainsight.org • Share

Misinformation is derailing renewable energy projects across the United States

The spread of misinformation about solar and wind energy is leading some states and counties to restrict or even reject projects. Researchers say it’s a threat to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

www.npr.org • Share

What else we're reading today

Booming resort towns influence Boise State to launch new hospitality program

Leaders in the Idaho hospitality industry, such as Brundage Mountain Resort and Bogus Basin, were big advocates for bringing a large program to the state.

boisedev.com • Share

In the Roaring Fork Valley, finding shelter has gotten even harder

The region’s housing crisis, along with its prevalent mental health issues, has led to growing homelessness in some of Colorado’s most scenic and wealthy communities.

coloradosun.com • Share

BLM would undergo a major hiring spree under Biden budget

The proposal calls for the Bureau of Land Management to hire 760 people to help address what senior leaders call severe staffing shortfalls.

www.eenews.net • Share

Nebraska wants to build a $500 million canal over the border. Can Colorado stop it?

Remnants of the last time the Huskers tried this, in 1894, pock the landscape of far northeastern Colorado. Experts say there’s a difference between water rights and what’s right.

coloradosun.com • Share

Half-century after the Clean Water Act, half of Utah’s waterways remain polluted

An environmental group is using the 50th anniversary of the Clean Water Act to call attention to the fact that many states’ waters remain troubled, and Utah is no exception.

www.sltrib.com • Share

Would dredging Utah Lake upset a century of peace over water rights?

Should Utah Lake get dredged as proposed by a company hoping to build a network of artificial islands, the vital pump station at the head of the Jordan River would no longer function, jeopardizing Salt Lake County residents’ access to clean drinking water from Wasatch canyons, according to several water managers.

www.sltrib.com • Share

Montana environmental group sues EPA over new water quality law

Environmental nonprofit Upper Missouri Waterkeeper filed suit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Thursday over its handling of a new Montana law that loosens nutrient pollution regulations in the state’s waterways.

montanafreepress.org • Share

‘Glamping’ proposal threatens Gallatin River, conservationists claim

Developer says The Riverbend Glamping Getaway project is misunderstood. Groups claim people, river at risk.

montanafreepress.org • Share

Cloud-seeding program in Colorado aims to make good snow storms better

The decades-old practice of cloud seeding is one way, experts say, to bring water to the drying West

www.denverpost.com • Share

Climate change may push the U.S. toward the ‘Goldilocks zone’ for West Nile virus

Colorado recently recorded the most West Nile virus deaths and cases of neuroinvasive infections in nearly two decades. Scientists warn that climate change will make conditions ripe for more West Nile transmission.

khn.org • Share

Corner crossers reach for federal court, access to 1.6M Western acres

Four hunters charged with trespassing in Carbon County, Wyoming, seek a federal court where their case could resolve the legality of corner crossing to access 1.6 million acres of public land across the West.

wyofile.com • Share

Road to ruin

The Roadless Rule is supposed to protect wild places. What went wrong in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest?

grist.org • Share

The controversial biofuel threatening British Columbia’s forests

The province’s wood-pellet industry is booming. Will it push old-growth ecosystems to the brink?

thefern.org • Share

Rockies Today is edited by Matthew Frank, fellow in regional journalism at the O’Connor Center for the Rocky Mountain West at the University of Montana.

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The big stories up and down the Rocky Mountains

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O'Connor Center for the Rocky Mountain West, University of Montana, Missoula, Montana, 59812