Access Utah

It’s been almost 20 years since wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park and parts of Idaho and placed on the endangered species list. At the time, advocates said wolves were a vital link in the natural ecosystem. Worried about the effect of wolves on their livelihoods, ranchers and hunters protested the reintroduction, some even filing lawsuits.

If the Colorado River stopped flowing, the water in its reservoirs might hold out for three or four years, but then it would be necessary to abandon most of southern California and Arizona, and much of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. For the entire American Southwest the Colorado is the river of life, which makes it all the more tragic and ironic that by the time it approaches its final destination, it has been reduced to a shadow upon the sand.

The Food Safety Modernization Act is the first major update of federal food safety laws since 1938. FSMA gives the FDA new abilities to prevent food safety problems, detect and respond to food safety issues, and improve the safety of imported foods. The act is geared to help prevent the outbreaks of food-borne illnesses that are on the rise-- though seldom traced back to small local producers.

Utah State University alumnus Lars Peter Hansen is one of three Americans recently named as a recipient of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Economics. Professor Hansen, a Cache Valley native who now teaches at the University of Chicago, will share his feelings on winning the Nobel Prize and discuss his research. He will also discuss the recent housing bubble, and government regulation of markets.

Today we revisit our conversation with Jared Diamond, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Guns, Germs and Steel,” “Collapse,” and other books, joins Tom Williams to discuss his latest: “The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn From Traditional Societies?” which is now out in paperback.

A series of Tanner Talks continues at USU on Wednesday with a panel discussion called “Community and the Demise of Local Newspapers.” Media veterans will offer their insights, concerns, warnings and prognostications as local newspapers struggle and community news evolves. Organizer and Assistant Professor in the USU Department of Journalism and Communication Matthew LaPlante, quoted in USU Today, said “I love newspapers. That’s where I come from but we have to start opening up people to the idea that, yes, there are things that we are losing as local newspapers decline. But this also gives us an opportunity to redefine the ways we communicate in our communities.”

On Veterans Day we consider the problems of returning military veterans and how we can help.Joining us are Matthew LaPlante, USU Assistant Professor of Journalism, and U. S. Navy veteran, who covered veterans issues for the Salt Lake Tribune for 7 years; former Executive Director at the Utah Department of Veterans Affairs, and U. S. Army veteran, Terry Schow; Public Affairs Officer for the U. S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and veteran, Jill Atwood; and former US Army Captain Stacy Bare, Director of Sierra Club Outdoors Mission, an initiative to reconnect Americans, veterans in particular, to the outdoors and to use nature to facilitate reintegration.

The Food and Drug Administration is accepting public comments for the proposed Food Safety Modernization Act, through November 15, 2013. In its current form the rule, if passed, could cost farmers thousands of dollars every week or month. Farmers will have to comply with new regulations such as mandatory weekly water testing and treatment, wildlife monitoring and rigorous manure and composting standards. It threatens the subsistence of small, local farms with small profits, at a time when they are on the rise across the U.S. In her continuing series called Farm Action, Sheri Quinn profiles a California sustainable farm in the Making. It is an agricultural recipe for growing your own farm from scratch.

During the period of October 1, 2000 to April 30, 2013 the remains of 2,541 migrants who had crossed the U.S./Mexico border illegally, were recovered from Cochise, Pima and Yuma counties in Arizona, according to the AZ Daily Star Recovered Human Remains Project. In order to store the bodies, Pima County installed a second morgue refrigerator. They call it the Second Cooler.

Nicholas Basbanes, author of a trilogy on all things book-related including “A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books,” is out with a new book: “On Paper: The Everything of Its Two-Thousand Year History,” in which he considers everything from paper’s invention in China two thousand years ago, which revolutionized human civilization, to its crucial role in the unfolding of historical events, political scandals, and sensational trials: from the American Revolution to the Pentagon Papers and Watergate.