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Democrats who control the state legislature are increasingly using a survey they fill out in secret to help determine whether bills live or die. The results are kept from the public, raising questions about transparency and potential violations of the state’s sunshine law.
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President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law this week. The massive piece of legislation funds programs ranging from electric vehicles, to advanced nuclear energy research. Specific to the Mountain West, it includes billions of dollars for forest lands and agriculture to fight climate change.
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A bipartisan committee on Monday voted to begin drafting 10 bills ahead of their next legislative session. They include proposals to buy remote cameras and invest millions to create a statewide team of wildfire investigators. The same bills died last spring.
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Meteorologist Coleen Haskell says the grim fire forecast for this summer has been years in the making.
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State Rep. Dylan Roberts, D-Avon, said Tuesday he was not able to find the $2 million to pay for the new camera program this year. He also blamed Republican filibuster attempts that started Monday on other bills as a reason the camera program cannot advance before the legislative session ends Wednesday.
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With the bulk of wildfire season on the horizon, officials in the Mountain West region are working to minimize risks. And sometimes they’re getting help from four-legged friends.
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The U.S. Forest Service recently announced a 10-year plan that includes a dramatic increase in treating forests through thinning and prescribed burns. That plan includes treating 20 million acres of Forest Service land, and 30 million acres of other federal, state, tribal, and private lands.
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Federal agencies spend a lot of time and money fighting increasingly extreme wildfires, but have limited resources for prescribed burns. Public-private partnerships can help. This year, the nonprofit Nature Conservancy partnered with the Forest Service and others to help burn and thin more than 150 acres of public lands in Idaho. Other, similar programs are cropping up all around the West.
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Wildfire season is winding down across much of the Mountain West as cold weather moves in. But it’s the perfect time to set controlled, or prescribed, fires to burn unwanted dead trees and underbrush that fuel larger wildfires.
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Sitting in front of a large computer monitor in the back of a Pilatus PC-12 airplane parked at the Centennial Airport, firefighter Adam Hanson says his work feels more important this year than it ever has before.