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Mountain West News Bureau

Mountain West News Bureau

The Mountain West News Bureau is a collaboration between Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNC in Colorado, KUNM in New Mexico, KUNR in Nevada, Nevada Public Radio, the O'Connor Center for the Rocky Mountain West in Montana and Wyoming Public Media, with support from affiliate stations across the region.
  • A new report from Headwaters Economics and Columbia University’s Climate School paints a damning picture of wildfire policy priorities: those interventions most effective at protecting communities and ecosystems – like building codes, home hardening and prescribed fire – often get the least support, while the least effective (and even sometimes counterproductive) – like wildfire suppression – receive billions in funding.
  • So-called Repair Cafes have a simple goal: pairing people and their broken household belongings with tinkerers and tools to fix them, thus shrinking the flow of waste to landfills. The idea started in Europe, but has spread to the US and cafes are starting to pop up in the American West. Idaho’s capital Boise just held its first.
  • In the first of five expected rounds of grant applications, the federal government awarded nearly $180 million to communities across the country to fund projects to reduce wildfire risk. Montana-based Headwaters Economics evaluated how well that first round met the goals of prioritizing high-risk, low-income and disaster-impacted communities. The short answer is pretty well, but there’s still room for improvement, especially when it comes to poorer communities with limited local government staff.
  • Like many tribal leaders and advocates, Angel Charley of the Coalition to Stop Violence Against Native Women saw court challenges to the law as an attack on tribal sovereignty. She also says it was an opportunity for extractive industries to get a larger foothold on tribal lands.
  • Allstate and State Farm recently announced that they would no longer be selling homeowners insurance in California, with State Farm pointing to "rapidly growing catastrophe exposure."
  • In less than four months, temporary pay raises given to federal wildland firefighters are set to end just as the season typically starts winding down. This week a group of Western senators, including one Republican, sent a letter to leaders of the Homeland Security Committee urging “swift consideration of legislation that authorizes a long-term solution to increase wildland firefighter recruitment and retention.” Colorado Senator Michael Bennet, a Democrat, said that “failure is not an option” when it comes to addressing the pay issue.
  • One element of the BLM’s proposed Public Lands Rule would allow for so-called conservation leasing, which would enable public and private entities to carry out restoration work or compensatory mitigation to offset the impacts of projects. The Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank, says that such leases could speed the development of clean energy on public lands, an important prospect given the Biden administration’s ambitious goal of permitting 25 gigawatts of such projects by 2025.
  • A new analysis from Climate Central shows that summer temperatures have risen steadily across the United States over the last half century, a trend that’s even sharper in the American West. The report chalks up much of the blame to climate change, but a researcher says that in urban areas the built environment can also play a huge role in temperature jumps.
  • Water is scarce in much of the Mountain West. That’s why, every spring, one tribe spends days cleaning ditches that are vital to irrigating their farmlands. But aging infrastructure and the effects of climate change are making it harder for farmers to get enough water – even after the cleanings.
  • It’s something many current and former wildland firefighters ask themselves: what does all this smoke, dust and ash I’ve been breathing for months on end mean for my health? A new national registry for all firefighters could eventually shed a great deal more light on that largely unanswered question.