Mountain West News Bureau

For thousands of years, the Whitebark Pine has provided a valuable food source for birds and bears throughout the Mountain West. But dwindling numbers are forcing forest managers to act.

The tree spans from Alberta and British Columbia in Canada to the Mountain West states of Idaho, Wyoming, Montana and parts of Nevada. But, the number of these trees throughout the region is declining, as much as 90 percent in some areas.

Public school teachers are seeing historically low wages compared to workers with similar education and skills. Noah Glick found our region varies wildly according to a new report.

Last year, the weekly wages for teachers was more than 21 percent lower than those of comparable workers. That’s according to the recent analysis from the Economic Policy Institute.

KUNR Public Radio has joined the Mountain West News Bureau, a regional reporting collaboration of public radio news stations. KUNR, a service of the University of Nevada, Reno, joins five current member stations in serving the Rocky Mountain states of Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming and Utah—and now Nevada’s high desert and the Sierra.

The Department of the Interior is continuing its push to move some agency headquarters out West by asking Congress to fund the initiative.

Interior Secretary David Bernhardt is asking Congress for $10.5 million in the next fiscal year for the relocation efforts. The department says it plans to choose a new western location for the Bureau of Land Management headquarters later this year. It has also signaled that it may move the U.S. Geological Survey headquarters to the Denver area.

Nevadans are taking part in a groundbreaking genetic study that could give researchers insights into public health across the state.

Nearly 50,000 Nevadans have already taken part in the Healthy Nevada Project. Now the study is expanding statewide, making it one of the largest of its kind in the world. Participants donate saliva in exchange for their DNA information. Joseph Grzymski is the principal investigator for the project.

In a mostly symbolic move, the U.S. House voted Thursday to stop the Trump administration from exiting the Paris Climate Agreement. Meanwhile, many cities and states in the Mountain West are continuing to warm faster than the national average.