It's not often we get to talk about the Navy in Wyoming, but it was Navy week at Frontier Days and Vice Admiral Sean Buck was in town. He is the superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy. He joined Wyoming Public Radio's Bob Beck.

Still disturbed by Iraq, Wyoming High School Teacher Tim Ross learns about a strange ritual involving an old crime and phantom sightings of a murdered girl. That's the tease to the book The Burqa Cave written by Wyoming Author Dean Petersen who joins us now.

Open Spaces show rundown for July 30th, 2021

Outdoor recreation is a popular pastime in Wyoming. But when people spend time outside, they run the risk of being bitten by ticks that carry a variety of diseases. But the types of ticks, and the diseases they carry, changes across the country. To learn more, Wyoming Public Radio's Ivy Engel spoke with Dr. Will Reeves, a medical and veterinary entomologist with the CP Gillette Museum of Arthropod Diversity in Colorado.

Climb Wyoming is celebrating its 35th anniversary this year. Climb is an organization that offers job training to single, low-income mothers and helps them find work after they graduate the program. Martha Harris spoke with Katie Hogarty, the incoming CEO for Climb Wyoming, about what Climb has done in the last 35 years and how the program works.

An updated version of a 2019 report published in the journal BioScience on Wednesday includes an additional 2,800 scientists’ signatures.

A study published earlier this year found that even without bark beetle outbreaks and wildfire, trees in Colorado's subalpine forests are dying at increasing rates from extreme summer conditions.

Wyoming medical students that are part of the WWAMI UW School of Medicine program, will travel around the state for a new survey. Students will interview at-risk and underrepresented communities in public health in August. The goal is to engage communities in their own healthcare solutions.

The Jackson Hole affordable housing department has increased the money they can provide to help pay for downpayment assistance. The increase comes as officials work to make sure houses are owned by the local workforce.

The reservoir in Grand Teton National Park is expected to be drawn down to levels only seen three times in the last 30 years.

Low vaccination rates make many counties in the Mountain West especially vulnerable to the COVID-19 delta variant right now, according to data from the public health research group PHICOR. That’s prompting tough new action from some state and federal officials.

Cases of the COVID delta variant are surging nationwide, prompting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week to issue new guidance for vaccinated people to mask up in areas with high transmission rates. But if infections continue to rise, some Western states have limited how officials can respond.

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland faced lawmakers on Capitol Hill Tuesday as she advocated for an $18 billion budget increase for her department next year. The money would go towards advancing renewable energy projects, expanding wildland fire programs and boosting public safety on reservations.

The U.S. is facing a jet fuel shortage this summer. It’s causing long delays at airports across the West as well as some concern among aerial firefighters.

Topic Olympics

When Facebook accounts get hacked, victims call and email the company for help to little avail. Some have found a costly workaround: buying a virtual reality headset to get customer service.

Both the U.S. and Japan had been undefeated after going 2-0 to win their groups.

NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Nicole Auerbach, senior writer for The Athletic, about the realignment of athletic conferences and what this means for the future of college football.