Yvette Fernandez
Regional Reporter, Mountain West News BureauYvette Fernandez is the regional reporter for the Mountain West News Bureau. She joined Nevada Public Radio in September 2021.
Before joining, she worked as a reporter in Los Angeles, the Bay Area and Phoenix in both radio and television. She has won awards including a regional Emmy for spot news coverage, a national award for investigative reporting from the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, and several others.
Yvette has also been a consulting professor with C.A. Specialized Training Institute, teaching first responders and public information officers how to conduct various types of interviews and prepare for news conferences in emergencies
Yvette is bilingual in English and Spanish and jokes she learned French in Mexico, having attended a trilingual school there. She earned a bachelor’s degree in broadcast journalism at Arizona State University. Yvette enjoys spending time outdoors with her dog, Maya.
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The Trump administration could potentially redraw the boundaries of national monuments as part of a push to expand energy production. The new Secretary of the Interior, Doug Burgum, issued orders to review monuments, and some in our region may be on the list. -
Two representatives from our region are seeking to strip presidential powers to designate national monuments and historic landmarks. But Indigenous communities caution the effort could remove a safeguard for sacred lands and pave the way for development. -
Large-scale solar farms in Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado could be affected, and an Idaho wind project was put on hold. Many Western states have also made big investments and created new jobs in the clean energy sector. -
The Missing and Murdered Indigenous People Crisis is an ongoing issue of national concern. Now, tribes are hoping new measures will get bipartisan support in Congress to help tribal law enforcement solve these cases. -
The ACLU recently acquired documents revealing that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is actively considering locations to expand its detention capacity. Some of those locations include private prisons in the Mountain West. -
People who lived near nuclear test and waste sites across the Mountain West and were sickened from their exposure to radiation are hopeful lawmakers will revive a program to help them. It comes amid a day of remembrance for so-called “downwinders". -
Medical resources are stretched in southern California amid the ongoing wildfires. Nurses from a large hospital system in our region are headed out to help alleviate the crunch. -
Funding for EV charging stations aims to close the gap in underserved areas and ease 'range anxiety'Many people hesitate to get electric cars because of concerns over being able to charge them, and many people don’t have the means to have home chargers. Federal funding aims to put chargers in places that are more accessible to lower-income and underserved communities. -
Immigrants without legal status make up a large part of the workers in several industries and have a combined household income of almost $27 billion dollars in the Mountain West. The consequences could be dire if those workers were sent out of the country. -
The year-end funding package addresses research for childhood cancers, but there's still no movement on the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, which expired in the summer of 2024 and hasn't had a replacement despite an impassioned plea by several Tribes in September.
