Kirk Siegler
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Tourists are visiting national parks and surrounding public lands in record numbers this summer, which is causing some overwhelmed national park gateway towns to rethink their promotion strategies.
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Republicans are pressuring President Biden to withdraw his nominee to be the country's next public lands chief amid controversy over her alleged involvement in a tree spiking incident in the 1980s.
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Growing crowds at America's national parks have prompted some of them to allow entry by reserved tickets only. Arches National Park in Utah may be next, and there's renewed controversy over that step.
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Federal fire managers warn the U.S.'s firefighting resources are near full deployment, a declaration rarely made this early in the summer as Western states bake in record heat and drought.
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Federal officials warn of a long, potentially dangerous summer of fire. Since January, more than a million acres have burned from more than 28,000 wildfires.
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States with the lowest vaccination rates are clustered in the South and the Southwest. But there's one standout, New Mexico, where health officials now say some counties are close to 90% vaccinated.
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If confirmed, environmental leader Tracy Stone-Manning would be the first permanent director of the Bureau of Land Management in four years.
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People in "the UFO capitol of the world," Roswell, N.M., are eagerly anticipating the release of a Defense Department report on their investigations into UFOs.
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The pandemic has made the housing market even tighter in the mountain West, where first-time buyers are trying to decide whether this is just the future or a bubble headed eventually for a bust.
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Ninety percent of the West is under drought. Concerns of another bad fire year come as one farming community in Washington state has barely started cleaning up from a destructive fire last year.