Madelyn Beck
Reporter, Mountain West °µºÚ±¬ÁÏ BureauMadelyn Beck is Boise State Public Radio's regional reporter with the Mountain West °µºÚ±¬ÁÏ Bureau. She's from Montana but has reported everywhere from North Dakota to Alaska to Washington, D.C. Her last few positions included covering energy resources in Wyoming and reporting on agriculture/rural life in Illinois.
Pre-journalism jobs include (but are not limited to): ranch hand for Icelandic horses, hotel laundress, large caliber brass shell sorter/inventory, salmon processor in Alaska and waitress for a murder mystery dinner theater.
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New federal funding may help with forest and wildfire management, but there are still hurdles. Increasing firefighter wages still can’t always contend with skyrocketing housing costs and burnout from long seasons. Funds may also help pay for supplies, but supply chain issues still make certain supplies hard to get. -
The Mountain West is known for big blue skies. But several cities here are among the nation’s worst for short-term air pollution levels, according to a new American Lung Association study. Wildfire smoke is an increasing factor, but so is smog from growing cities across the region. -
The Interior Department is reopening lease sales on public lands. However, the agency announced that it was 80% less acreage than the oil and gas industry nominated for leasing. The Interior also increased royalty rates. -
New research in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows that teens haven’t used more illegal drugs over the last decade. However, they are dying from drug overdoses at twice the rate. -
The Pentagon has announced that a new nuclear design is going to be assembled in our region. It’s called Project Pele, and it aims to produce a mobile nuclear microreactor. -
A housing crunch in the West has some looking to public lands as a solution… and a place to live. -
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland recently announced she will remove some federal oversight from tribal water rules. A memorandum that dates back to 1975 required federal approvals for tribes to change their water codes, but now that’s no longer the case. -
Landowners in Wyoming want damages from four Missouri men who went over a corner where four pieces of land meet: two private, two public. They didn’t touch the private land, but landowners argue they still went over it and, therefore, trespassed. -
A seasonal break from wildfires is disappearing in the West. A wildfire started this Saturday near Boulder, Colorado. It forced thousands of evacuations over the weekend, reminding people of what had just happened 3 months ago: the Marshall Fire, which burned down more than 1,000 homes. Experts say there are no longer fire seasons, just fire years. -
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing to list the northern long-eared bat as endangered. The bat’s populations are being decimated by a fungal infection called white nose syndrome. While these bats only touch Montana and Wyoming in our region, they could spread this fungus to other hibernating bats in the Mountain West.
