Mountain West News Bureau

Headwaters Economics recently released an updated analysis of federal data on the economic impact of the recreation economy, whose scale rivals or exceeds that of many sectors that get a lot more attention, like car manufacturing and air transportation. Those impacts are on the whole even more significant in much of the West.

As a part of the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative, the Department of Interior and the National Endowment for the Humanities will be digitizing records that document the experiences of those who survived such schools, as well as their descendants. $4 million from the NEH will also support an oral history project with those people.

The American Lung Association’s new State of the Air report includes a number of Western cities among those most impacted by ozone, short-term and year-round particle pollution. They include Salt Lake City, Boise, Albuquerque and a number of front range cities in Colorado.

The US Fire Administrator visited Boise this week, along with a number of other officials, to discuss a new national report on fire prevention and control. Among the key components is the promotion of enforcement of building codes - with the emphasis on structures in the wildland-urban interface - to improve fire resilience.

Yushchenko, who survived a 2004 poisoning before becoming Ukraine’s third president, spoke at a packed Boise State University auditorium and thanked the rapt audience for the solidarity that many Americans have shown Ukraine since Russia’s February 2022 invasion.

A new study provides a detailed look at the number of abortions being performed in all 50 states and the District of Columbia before and after Roe V. Wade was overturned. In the West, as elsewhere, states where significant restrictions were approved saw numbers collapse, while neighboring states without such restrictions saw abortions rise.

Earlier this month, the US Census Bureau released its 2022 county-level population estimates. The Economic Innovation Group recently analyzed that data at a regional level, and across the West it found that - while population growth rates remain well above national averages - they have slowed to near pre-pandemic levels.

The proposed monument's name would include the Havasupai phrase "Baaj Nwaavjo," which means "where tribes roam," and the Hopi phrase "I’tah Kukveni," which means "our footprints."

The Center for Western Priorities' most recent annual spills report logged nearly 2,500 spills in the three important oil- and gas-producing Western states.

That law bars efforts to misleadingly present products as having been produced by tribal members, and the changes would expand the definition of what constitutes an "Indian Product" under the law and in some cases allow for non-native labor in the making of such products.