outdoor recreation

Nearly a half-million people got a Utah license to hunt and fish this year. Money raised from those license sales goes toward habitat restoration and conservation efforts across the state.

Four friends ran around the giant whale sculpture at 9th & 9th hundreds of times to reach 26.2 miles. Now, others are also running the “Whaleathon.”

The city will vote on Nov. 21 if it wants to keep funding new recreation projects the way it has since the 1990s.

The U.S. Forest Service manages some 160,000 miles of trails, and maintaining that sprawling system is a major undertaking. Volunteer trail workers have become an essential part of keeping the public’s access open to its vast wild areas.

The project in Zion National Park to rebuild the Kolob Canyons Road illustrates the challenges of maintaining infrastructure across southern Utah, where constant erosion is part of life.

City officials worry that the picturesque venue is suffering from a “privatization” of public open space.

“El Camino Latino,” from advocacy group Defiende Nuestra Tierra, is a map of public lands in the Roaring Fork and Colorado River valleys. It has information on recreation in both English and Spanish, with the hopes of making the outdoors more accessible for everyone.

El Camino Latino”, realizado por el grupo de apoyo Defiende Nuestra Tierra, es un mapa de las tierras públicas en los valles de Roaring Fork y del río Colorado. Contiene información sobre actividades recreativas tanto en inglés como en español, con miras a hacer la vida al aire libre más accesible para todas las personas.

The wet winter has filled Lake Powell enough to restart boat tours to the giant red rock arch. But welcoming more tourists to the remote monument in southern Utah brings both benefits and challenges.

Utah leads the nation for rates of melanoma of the skin. Immediate neighbors like Idaho, Arizona, Colorado and Wyoming don’t even come close.

Even with temperatures reaching well over 100 degrees, visitors continue to flock to Utah’s Zion National Park. That means park staff have to work extra hard to keep people safe.

Latino Conservation Week features events nationwide aimed at getting more Hispanic families into nature and elevating their voices about the environment.