Access Utah

Today on the program Sheri Quinn talks to paleontologist Dr. Kenneth Carpenter about recent advances in the study of dinosaurs and why Utah is one of the best places on earth to study them.

With the expansion of mobile computing, we are all more or less living in the "cloud."

We meet photojournalist Scott Wallace, who wrote "The Unconquered: In Search of the Amazon's Last Uncontacted Tribes." It's the story of a journey into the deepest recesses of the amazon to track one of the planet's last uncontacted tribes in the world.

Utah is the only state in the U.S. to enact a law that requires someone who is engaged in bioprospecting to notify the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire, and State Lands before removing certain microorganisms, plants, or fungi from state lands. Bioprospecting is the search for and collection of biological material, usually microbes, that could prove either economically useful or in environmental protection efforts. For example if extreme algae in the Great Salt Lake can make a biofuel without impacting the ecosystem it can be harnessed in the laboratory. Since research may turn those algae into a profitable fuel, the law leaves the groundwork for Utah to benefit from profits made off the research.

We turn the focus now to you, listeners and voters. Maybe you want to share who you voted for and why? What issue were you focused on this election season? Maybe you ran for office or worked for a candidate? Did your experience last night make you more or less hopeful about the democratic process?

The environmental impact of energy development across the west was the theme at the Restoring the West conference at Utah State University this week. Today on the program, Sheri Quinn talks to a conservation ecologist about the effects of the largest gas field in the U.S. on the endemic pronghorn population that winters on these gas fields in western Wyoming.

One spring morning in 1914 members of the United Mine Workers of America clashed with guards employed by the Rockefeller family and state militia in Colorado. When the dust settled, 19 men, women and children from the miners' families lay dead. The strikers had killed at least 30 men and destroyed 6 mines and laid waste to two company towns.

On Access Utah the topic is water, specifically the Colorado River and the documentary Watershed. The producers call the Colorado River the most "damned, dibbed and diverted river in the world." It is struggling to support 30 million people, and population is expected to explode.

Debating constitutional amendment a in the first half of the program today, continuing our Vote Utah series. The amendment proposes the Utah constitution be amended to require a portion of the revenue from all state severance taxes, to be deposited in the state trust fund, beginning in 2016.

On Access Utah we preview the Restoring the West conference happening Tuesday and Wednesday on the Utah State University campus. The conference will focus on balancing energy development and biodiversity. There's a boom in energy development in many areas of the west, and Tom Williams asks our guests if there is a balance to be found on Access Utah this hour.