Utah Episodes

Dr. Jackie Grant explains how a Congressional Review Act attack on Grand Staircase–Escalante’s management plan could destabilize public-land planning nationwide, despite extensive local participation and the monument’s ecological and economic importance.

Journalist Zak Podmore connects proposed nuclear-waste storage in southeastern Utah with the rapid ecological recovery emerging from Lake Powell, asking who bears the nuclear fuel cycle’s costs and what a restored Glen Canyon could become.

Mary O’Brien of Project 1100 explains how commercial honeybees compete with and spread disease to native solitary bees, why public lands are essential pollinator refuges and what genuine bee conservation requires.

Writer Morgan Sjogren reads from Path of Light, tracing the beauty of Glen Canyon alongside the lasting damage uranium mining has inflicted on Indigenous communities, wildlife, water and public lands.

Parker Lloyd tours the Nature Center at Pia Okwai, where Tracy Aviary and West Valley communities are restoring former industrial land as wildlife habitat and an environmental-justice gathering place.

Diné leader Davina Smith explains Bears Ears as a living cultural landscape, the legacy of her grandmothers' resistance and the necessity of Indigenous leadership in protecting sacred lands.

Season Four opens with the Los Angeles fires, the designation of Chuckwalla National Monument, and the emerging Moab-to-Mojave network of protected lands across the Southwest.

Chris Clarke talks with public lands journalist Jonathan Thompson about Utah's lawsuit seeking greater state control over federal lands and what it could mean for development, recreation, conservation, and NEPA.

Great Salt Lake is shrinking, threatening an ecosystem of hemispheric importance to migratory birds. Chris Clarke travels to Utah to examine efforts to protect the lake and the Wilson's phalarope, a remarkable shorebird that depends on saline wetlands during its enormous migrations. Scientists and advocates consider whether the Endangered Species Act could provide another tool for protecting both the bird and its habitat, while Utah residents gather at the State Capitol to demand action for the lake.