Latest news with #UtahDepartmentofNaturalResources
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
What is a quagga mussel and why is it bad?
The summer boating season brings wakeboarding, fishing and good times on the water. It also brings the dreaded quagga mussel. The destructive aquatic invasive species infest lakes and reservoirs, typically from being transported on boats or other watercraft. They attach to hulls, propellers, rudders, keels and intake and exhaust ports. A single mussel can reproduce over 1 million eggs per year. Quagga mussels have shown up in several western states, including Utah, Arizona, Idaho, Nevada and California. Unlike the mussels you find at the seafood market, quagga mussels are not edible, so people don't harvest the tiny mollusks for food as a means to get rid of them. Removing quagga mussels is expensive and time consuming. Once they're established, they're almost impossible to eradicate. They have an astounding ability to resist chemical and other methods of removal, according to the Utah Department of Natural Resources. The most effective way to decontaminate equipment is to prevent quagga mussels from being transported from one body of water to another. Over this past Memorial Day weekend, DWR, Utah State Parks, Arizona Game and Fish Department and the National Park Service and Utah Department of Natural Resources officers inspected 10,988 boats and performed 141 decontaminations. Of those total numbers, 1,829 of the boat inspections and 63 of the decontaminations took place at inspection stations in the Lake Powell area, where the mussels were first found in 2012. Statewide, DNR officers found 113 violations of Utah laws established to prevent the spread of the invasive mussels. The majority of the violations last weekend were due to: Boaters failing to take the mandatory mussel-aware boater program course and not paying the associated aquatic invasive species fee for motorized boats. Boaters failing to remove drain plugs while transporting their watercraft. In addition to quagga mussels, wildlife agencies were also looking to prevent the spread of Eurasian watermilfoil, an invasive plant species. While officers performed thousands of inspections that weekend, some drivers pulling boats blew right past mandatory checkpoints. 'We opened a new aquatic invasive species mandatory inspection station in Kanab, and unfortunately, we had some boaters drive past it over the holiday weekend,' Lt. Bruce Johnson, of the Utah Department of Natural Resources Law Enforcement Aquatic Invasive Species Statewide Operations, said in a press release this week. 'Even watercraft that have been inspected at Lake Powell are required to stop at operating mandatory inspection stations to verify their inspection.' Utah has 40 inspection stations located at various boat ramps, along highways and at port of entry stations. The DWR and its partners have also installed five dip tanks across the state that more efficiently and effectively decontaminate complex boats. The dip tanks are free to use and are typically close to either the entrance of a state park or near a boat ramp. Dip tanks are located at: Lake Powell — Stateline Launch Ramp at Wahweap Marina Utah Lake State Park Sand Hollow State Park Lake Powell — Bullfrog Marina Willard Bay State Park The quagga mussel is a species of freshwater mussel native to the Aral, Black and Caspian seas and the Dnieper River drainage in Ukraine. It's closely related to the zebra mussel. Quagga mussels were introduced to the Great Lakes in the late 1980s, likely as a result of ballast water discharge by ships from Europe, and spread quickly to other U.S. waterbodies via contaminated boats and other watercraft. The thumbnail-sized, two-shelled mollusks are shaped like the letter 'D' and vary in color from brownish yellow to black. Quagga mussels reproduce via eggs that free-float in the water until fertilized, and then the microscopic larvae — called veligers — emerge after three to five days. Veligers are dispersed in the water while they grow and are free swimming for up to a month until they are large enough to secure an attachment site on just about any kind of surface. They go through metamorphosis and grow an adult shell, reaching maturity in one to two years, per the DWR. According to the DWR, quagga mussels: Plug water lines, even lines that are large in diameter. Get into water delivery systems, costing millions of dollars annually to remove and keep the pipes free, which can result in higher utility bills. Remove plankton from the water, which hurts fish species. Get into a boat's engine cooling system, fouling the system and damaging the engine. Stink when they die in large numbers and are sharp obstacles in beaches.
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Baby fox rescued after falling into irrigation drain in Farmington
FARMINGTON, Utah () — A baby fox was rescued after falling into an irrigation drain over the weekend in Farmington. According to the City of Farmington, on Saturday, May 10, the fire department received a call from a resident who found a baby fox had fallen into a round irrigation valve vault. The fire crew and Todd Adams, the Deputy Director of the Utah Department of Natural Resources, who is also a Farmington resident, responded. Adams called local conservation officers with the Utah DNR Division of Law Enforcement to help with the rescue. After being lifted out of the concrete vault, the baby fox ran into its den nearby. 'A big shout out to Todd Adams and his professional conservation officer team,' Farmington City wrote in a of the fox. BYU leads in student inventor patents, recent study shows President Trump defends plan to accept Qatari luxury jet The Walk to Cure Arthritis brings hope to those suffering Show Up for Teachers provides $40K in grants through Utah What the decade-long planning for Utah's 2034 Olympics will look like Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
21-04-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
Gov. Cox issues wildfire executive order as Utah prepares for the ‘unexpected'
Gov. Spencer Cox issued an executive order Monday that seeks to bolster Utah's wildfire preparedness and coordination ahead of the anticipated fire season. The order establishes the Working Group on Wildfire Management, which will be composed of several agency heads, including Utah Department of Natural Resources Director Joel Ferry, Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands Director Jamie Barnes and Utah Department of Public Safety Director Jess Anderson. They will be tasked with providing a report by June 1 that outlines areas of concern; coordination with city, state and private land owners; and improvements to evacuation planning. The report will also seek to identify "priority areas" for wildfire mitigation projects on state and, through possible coordination, federal land, and post-fire risks like debris flows, among other things. "This is about making sure we're ready before the next fire season begins," Cox said in a statement. His order is slated to expire June 1. The order comes less than a week after the governor said he was working on potential emergency declarations for some parts of Utah amid drought concerns in central and southern Utah. He hinted that drought-related executive orders could be issued when legislators return to Capitol Hill for a session in May. Most of Washington County and parts of Iron County remain in extreme drought, while another third of the state — including large portions of eastern and western Utah — is listed as in severe drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. Only a quarter of the state is either not listed under a drought category or considered "abnormally dry." These indicate that soil moisture levels are not ideal for most of the state, which is a potential problem. "Utah's low soil moisture can create conditions favorable for wildfires," the order states. "Unpredictable factors, such as weather, can impact fire activity and may cause the rapid growth of wildfires." Long-range outlooks don't offer many favors, at least for the start of summer. While the National Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center projects a wet end to April for Utah, its latest report lists the state as having greater odds for below-normal precipitation and above-normal temperatures in May. Its three-month outlook leans toward slightly drier conditions for most of the state between May and July, aside from the very southern end of the state, which is listed as having "equal chances" for precipitation. Even then, early monsoonal storms could produce lightning before conditions improve across the driest part of the state. That's where early planning comes into play. Cox's order comes after the state passed a few wildfire-related bills in the 2025 legislative session, including one that put Utah on track to join the Great Plains Interstate Fire Compact, which would allow it to share resources with other member states. Those legislative conversations took place as state leaders looked to find ways to avoid repeating the catastrophic fires that killed more than two dozen people and destroyed over 15,000 structures in Southern California earlier this year. Meanwhile, state fire experts have warned about unpredictable fire conditions that can last before and after the typical summer months. 'When it comes to wildfires, the unexpected has become the new normal,' Barnes said. 'Improving the effectiveness and efficiency of our planning efforts can help reduce risks to watersheds and landscapes across the state — and strengthen our overall wildfire preparedness.'
Yahoo
20-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Utah, Navajo Nation finalize landmark water rights deal
Utah and the Navajo Nation have finalized a landmark water rights agreement. A state judge signed an interlocutory decree late last month to formally transfer annual water rights totaling 81,500 acre-feet of water to the Navajo Nation, marking the final step in a long process that started over two decades ago. The state will also transfer the last of $8 million that it pledged to help Navajo Nation officials pay for future water development projects. "Today is a day for celebration," said Navajo National Councilwoman Shaandiin Parish, moments before leaders from both sides — some holding copies of the decree — gathered for a photo together at the Utah Capitol on Wednesday to commemorate the agreement. The agreement, she says, will help residents have water for brushing their teeth, showering and all the "necessities" tied to water that others take for granted. The Navajo Nation — located within parts of Utah, Arizona and New Mexico — has long fought for water access, especially since it was excluded from the Colorado River Compact in 1922. Over a century later, only about half of the homes of the now 6,000 members on the Utah portion of the reservation have running water and indoor plumbing. "Unfortunately, I can say that's the case throughout the Navajo Nation," said Michelle Espino, its chief legislative counsel. "It's almost 40% of our homes nationwide that are without water." Efforts to address these issues picked up over the past two decades, but it has taken time and many people to improve the situation. In Utah's case, "deliberate, formal negotiations" over a water agreement began in 2003 before an agreement was reached in 2015, said Teresa Wilhelmsen, Utah's state engineer and director of the Utah Division of Water Rights. Federal officials approved that agreement five years later, and it was ratified by state leaders in 2021. Their agreement received another boost in 2022, as the Navajo-Utah Water Rights Settlement Agreement received funds from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. It included $220 million in federal funding and $8 million in state funding for water infrastructure. "This shows that we can do hard things if we're patient enough and we're willing to stay at the table," said Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson. "We can't change the past, but we can change the future — and that's what we're doing today." While the agreement is life-changing, tribal and state leaders say it's also just the beginning. Wednesday's ceremony coincided with other issues Navajo leaders came to the state Capitol to address, including a proposed road and child protection laws. Thus, Parish says the decree is "one step in the right direction," but there are more issues that still need to be settled. Joel Ferry, director of the Utah Department of Natural Resources, said it's also just the beginning of a "shared responsibility" among all water users to ensure that water resources last as the region continues to deal with drought and supply shortages. Yet, both sides say the agreement also marks a key moment for the reservation. "I see this as, truly, being the first major step in a sustainable future for the Navajo Nation," Ferry said. Utah's settlement follows a similar agreement with New Mexico that also took a long time to complete, as it was finalized last year after an agreement in 2009. Espino said the nation is also working toward a similar settlement with Arizona. With deals now complete in two out of three states, tribal leaders are concidering ways to advance water development within the reservation. These include more running water for homes and restoring lost farms. 'This settlement is so important to help us move forward so that we can finally fulfill our goal, our vision to provide water to all of the Navajo Nation who are lacking water,' Espino said.
