Madelyn Beck
Reporter, Mountain West News BureauMadelyn Beck is Boise State Public Radio's regional reporter with the Mountain West News 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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Higher elevations like mountain tops usually have more moisture, and fires historically hadn’t burned there very often. But that’s changing rapidly. The Dixie and Caldor fires in California are the first two wildfires ever recorded crossing the Sierra Nevada crest and burning down the other side. -
President Joe Biden flew into Idaho today as the first of several stops around the West to talk wildfires, climate change and his infrastructure plan. In Boise, he visited the National Interagency Fire Center, a hub for agencies managing wildfires. He heard about the need for resources to fight and prepare for fires, and talked about bipartisan support for wildland firefighters. He’ll also be visiting California and Colorado during this visit.
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The Biden Administration is starting the process of re-opening federal lands to oil and gas leasing. That comes after a federal judge ruled Biden’s across-the-board moratorium on the leases was an executive overreach.
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The U.S. Interior Department is expanding access to hunting and fishing on about 2.1 million acres of Fish and Wildlife Service land. That’s nearly the size of Yellowstone National Park. While hunters and anglers applaud the efforts, other conservation groups believe that refuges shouldn’t have hunting or angling at all.
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Pills that are laced with fentanyl or contain nothing but fentanyl are coming into the Mountain West via the border with Mexico. About a quarter of the fentanyl pills seized by the DEA have had enough fentanyl to kill.
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Fatal drug overdoses are skyrocketing, driven by synthetic opioids like fentanyl. And that potentially deadly drug has made it to the Mountain West – the last part of the U.S. to face the brunt of the opioid crisis.
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In the high-stakes fight against fentanyl-induced drug deaths, one remedy is fairly simple: blue and white strips of paper. Fentanyl test strips work like a pregnancy test. One line shows up if there’s fentanyl in a solution. Two lines if there’s none. But where are they needed most?
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Fentanyl test strips and better data may be a few of the many solutions to the opioid epidemic and the Mountain West's spike in overdose deaths.
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A federal judge in Nevada has ruled that a law that further penalizes those who re-enter the U.S. after deportation is unconstitutional. Section 1326 says if you were denied entry to the U.S. or were deported at some point, that law makes entering the U.S. a felony. The Nevada judge says it violates the U.S. Constitution because of its racist, anti-Mexican origins. The U.S. Department of Justice is appealing this decision.
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As of this week, the National Park Service is requiring masks in crowded parks again. The new mask mandate will require everyone, regardless of vaccine status, to wear masks in National Park facilities and in crowded outside areas. That means you’ll need a mask wherever you can’t adequately distance outside.
