Books, pencils and erasure

Former tribal education leader Forrest Cuch believes shortcomings are intentional because it “keeps the Indian down.”

Today, members of the Ute tribe say — and the data shows — Utah has been failing to effectively educate their children for decades.

The school districts in the Uinta Basin haven't done much to incorporate Ute language and culture into the curriculum, which experts say would help them succeed.

At Uintah River High, Rosalia Cornpeach takes classes on looming, beading and speaking Ute. “We get to learn our own language,” the 16-year-old said excitedly. Her school is an outlier in providing those cultural lessons in the classroom. And that’s because of who runs it — the Ute Indian Tribe.

The number of student deaths documented by The Salt Lake Tribune is likely an undercount, as no official tally was kept.

Tribal leaders say they are now considering “how best to honor and memorialize” the children who died at the Panguitch Boarding School, which operated from 1904 to 1909.

Explore first-person accounts.

Salt River Project and Arizona Public Service both reported record power use over the weekend, and usage in coming days could eclipse the new highs

After smashing a heat record and coming within a degree of the all-time hottest day ever recorded in Salt Lake City, more triple-digit temperatures are expected this week.

A record-hot June, followed by a disaster-packed July has climate scientists “shocked” by just how extreme the extreme weather has been, including some ocean waters feeling like “a hot tub.”

Wildfires in Canada have burned a staggering 25 million acres so far this year, an area roughly the size of Kentucky. With more than a month of peak fire season left to go, 2023 has already eclipsed Canada’s previous annual record from 1989, when over 18 million acres were scorched. And the country’s worst wildfire season on record continues to rage.

Large stretches of the Arctic are carbon-rich peat bogs. As the region warms and dries, lightning strikes can spark underground fires that can burn for years.

People around the world are living longer, healthier lives than they were just half a century ago. Climate change threatens to undo that progress.

A wealthy Carbon County landowner who has tried to block public access to public land enmeshed in his sprawling ranch has hit a legal snag. The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals has told the Elk Mountain Ranch owner Fred Eshelman he cannot yet appeal a federal judge’s decision that corner crossing is OK.

Congress gave FEMA $3.95 billion to compensate victims of the Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon Fire in northern New Mexico. Seven months later, just $3 million has been paid, and most hasn’t gone to households.

Drought and a quick-melting snowpack have put Flathead Lake at record-low levels, and anglers are under the first fishing restrictions of the season on portions of the Sun and Madison rivers due to warm water temperatures and low flows.

Days after federal managers rejected a plan to release more water from the Hungry Horse Dam, Flathead Lake was almost two feet below full pool.

“Everything we know about climate change is little by little it is going to keep getting warmer, the snowpack is going to start melting earlier,” says Dr. Steve Running, a Nobel Prize-winning climate scientist.

On the northern plains of Montana, several persistent professional women have connected to create a program based on humility, healing tribal relationships and Indigenous people, working to restore native habitat.

Evidence of the ash-devouring beetle was found in Carbondale in June.

The winter of 2022-’23 walloped large-scale sheep operations in western Wyoming, even putting some ranchers out of business. There’s hope in the industry, however, and new niches are growing.

Farm and ranch lands across the West face many threats – like inflation and outside development. But the federal government is working with agricultural producers to preserve open space and the benefits it provides.

Images of cabins floating above campsites, iconic vistas creates conflicting reactions in canyon visitors.

The latest bid by conservationists and tribal leaders to block construction of a huge lithium mine already in the works along the Nevada-Oregon line was denied by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday.

After getting hammered with lawsuits aimed at halting development of a lithium mine at Northern Nevada’s Thacker Pass, a Canadian-based mining company has turned the tables and is suing the mine’s protesters.

A new court order is seeking to block the launch of a lithium exploration project on the border of the Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge near the Amargosa Valley.

A coalition of conservation groups asked a federal judge to halt drilling in the Patagonia Mountains on Friday afternoon. At the same time, they issued notice of their intent to sue the Forest Service over breach of the Endangered Species Act.

The company plans to test the controversial climate strategy in Box Elder Creek Ranch, a subdivision near Hudson, Colo.

Colorado Springs Utilities and three other utility companies operating in Colorado are seeking new sources of renewable natural gas as part of ongoing statewide efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The lesser prairie chicken was listed as endangered in southeast New Mexico and West Texas but could see conservation from renewable energy projects.

Maurice Hornocker, whose work in the 1960s and ‘70s unraveled the secret lives of mountain lions and led to their classification as big game animals across the West, has published a memoir, “Cougars on the Cliff: One Man’s Pioneering Quest to Understand the Mythical Mountain Lion.”

Ecologist Curtis Freese’s new book, “Back From the Collapse: American Prairie and the Restoration of Great Plains Wildlife,” is a call to protect and restore the northern Great Plains and the biodiversity it once held in great numbers.

A coalition of animal-welfare groups, conservationists and veterinarians is urging Ottawa to ban the use of strychnine poison, saying it causes undue suffering to animals and is leading to the deaths of non-target animals such as dogs and grizzly bears. Alberta is the only province in Canada still to use strychnine to kill animals, including wolves and coyotes, and it has asked Ottawa, which regulates the poison’s use, for permission to continue using it.

Only one spotted owl remains in Canada’s wild. The B.C. government says it is committed to recovering the species, even as it approves new clearcuts and recreational shooting in a Fraser Valley wildlife area set aside for the owl.

Studying the small owls has taught researchers about Utah’s changing environments.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife announced Thursday a plan to treat a small lake with an organic poison to wipe out its current population of fish in order to restock the lake next year with a vulnerable species of native trout.

In the latest story in Aspen Public Radio’s four-part climate series “Adaptation,” we look at how stressful conditions impact the coldwater fish who live in our rivers and streams.

A NASA-supported effort in Idaho adds remote sensing data to the suite of tools used to predict which streams can support beavers and to monitor how water and vegetation change once they return.

Atmospheric rivers can cause catastrophic flooding and landslides but are crucial for water supply. In an era of increasing weather whiplash between flood and drought, can we learn to embrace the rains?

Lax rules let the foreign-owned company pump water from state land to grow alfalfa for the kingdom’s cattle. After almost a decade, the deal is in jeopardy.

The Gros Ventre and Assiniboine Tribes of north-central Montana are closing in on a bipartisan deal to settle their water rights in Congress. The more than $1 billion policy comes after decades of negotiation and would close out a century of tribal water disputes in the state.

Experts are calling on federal regulators to adopt standards protecting outdoor workers from worsening air quality, potentially modeled after the few states that have such standards, including California and Oregon.

Can the 9-county nonattainment area ever meet EPA air quality thresholds, as Atlanta did, or will it be a perennial offender like, Sheboygan?

Battery-assisted e-bikes make a trip over Glacier Park's Going to the Sun Road easy for all, but raise challenges for park managment.

Backyard Office Utah specializes in building custom stand-alone offices in clients’ backyards.

Eastern Oregon wants to join the state of Idaho. But can Oregon afford to leave Oregon?