Efforts to take back federal land make Utah stand out
DENVER — In an American West that has a love-hate relationship with the federal government’s ownership of a checkerboard of parks, monuments, forest and desert in states from Washington to New Mexico, Utah stands out.
The state has gone well beyond any other in the region in trying to pry the federal government’s hands off land it sees as belonging to its residents.
In 2012, its legislature passed a law demanding the federal government give 30 million acres of the land it owns in Utah to the state government — a measure other Western states have balked at replicating, even deeply conservative ones such as Idaho.
Earlier this year, a Utah congressman introduced a bill to sell more than 4,600 square miles of Western federal land to private entities but pulled it after a backlash. And on Monday, President Donald Trump is expected to announce he’s significantly reducing the size of two national monuments in southern Utah, the first such act by a president in half a century.
“Utah’s certainly on the tip of the spear,” said state Rep. Mike Noel, who represents south-central Utah, where some residents have fought to shrink or eliminate Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument since President Bill Clinton created it in 1996.
Polls have repeatedly shown Westerners cherish national monuments and other protected federal land — even in Utah — but the state’s political leaders have been united in celebrating Trump’s expected move.
The president’s decision has already sparked protests. On Saturday, thousands of demonstrators holding signs with messages such as “Protect Wild Utah” converged on the steps of the Utah State Capitol.
The president is considering changes to other Western monuments as well, as recommended by his interior secretary, Ryan Zinke. But no state has been agitating for reductions like Utah. In a telling move, at the same time Zinke recommended the Utah shrinkage, he urged the creation of a new national monument in his home state of Montana, where he’s believed to harbor political ambitions.
“There’s nothing in our data that’d say, politically, that this is popular,” Lori Weigel, a Republican pollster in Denver, said of efforts to trim monuments. Weigel has done surveys on Western land conservation for years, including recent ones for supporters of the monuments that found Utah voters back them by a 2-1 margin.
“I can’t say why Utah elected officials have taken this on more than in other states,” she said. “But we see widespread recognition that designation of protected land is valued.”
The reasons range from geography to politics to Utah’s unique Mormon history and culture. Even Utah’s sharpest critics of federal land bristle at the notion that they are against conservation. They say they treasure the state’s five national parks, many national forests and even some of its monuments.
The state itself conserves lands in expansive state parks, they add, and would protect its scenic treasures. But the nearly 3,000square-mile Grand Staircase and the 2,000-squaremile Bears Ears National Monument that President Barack Obama created last year are too intrusive on local communities and ranchers, they argue, and too much of the state is locked up by the federal government and barred from energy development. The federal government owns two-thirds of Utah’s land, a greater percentage than in any other state in the lower 48 other than Nevada.
“If you live in Colorado, you live in Arizona, you are not dealing with the federal lands that we are,” state Senate President Wayne Niederhauser said.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints makes Utah unlike any other state. It was founded in the 19th century by Mormons desperate to have a land they could call their own, said Matthew Bowman, author of a history of the faith called “The Mormon People.”
“Self-reliance is something ingrained in our lives,” state lawmaker Ken Ivory said.