On a bluebird spring day a few years back, Boone Taylor gathered his cattle from a grazing parcel he leases from the federal government. He rode his red roan, Navajo, through the “Sandy 3” allotment, which crosses through Bitter Creek in Capitol Reef National Park. From the creek bed, the striations of yellow-beige earth get steadily darker as they rise up the canyon walls. Taylor’s horse, chaps, work coat and cowboy hat were all roughly the same hue as the ombre landscape. His cattle made their way to the east slope of Boulder Mountain, where they spent the summer grazing on U.S. Forest Service land.
Taylor’s family has ranched in this region of southern Utah for five generations and is grandfathered into some of the few remaining federal grazing permits within a national park. The government no longer offers such permits and the family will lose access to those grazing rights when the last child of his grandfather passes away. But for the foreseeable future, Taylor can still graze in federally protected land, which is not the case with all of the state-managed parcels he’s leased.
Four years ago, Taylor was notified that his grazing permit on state land near Glen Canyon National Recreation Area was reclassified. The Utah School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration, a state agency commonly called by its acronym SITLA that generates revenue for public schools and hospitals, sold that permit to a developer of a still-unfinished glamping project, Boone said, which left a bad taste in his mouth.
“I might be a little different than some, but I’m not so hung up on the state of Utah managing more public lands,” says Taylor. But the 49-year-old rancher understands the strong feelings that his parents’ generation, and even his first cousin Redge Johnson, executive director of Utah’s Public Lands Policy Coordinating Office, have about local control of public lands.
“We, locally, have knowledge about these lands that others don’t,” says Johnson. “And, too often — regardless of party — you see decisions being made in Washington, D.C., and then pushed out that don’t make sense. I feel there is a need for more local input and more local control.”
Utah’s ‘Stand for Our Land’ campaign
Taylor stands out for not fully embracing Utah’s “Stand for Our Land” campaign. The marketing and PR push corresponds with a lawsuit the state filed against the United States last August with the Supreme Court, arguing that it’s unconstitutional for the federal government to hold unappropriated public lands in perpetuity — 18.5 million acres of Utah, specifically, which is an area about the size of South Carolina — and for states not to have the right to manage those public lands within their borders. The state has spent $1.35 million on advertising for the campaign, including a website, and ads in The Wall Street Journal, National Review and The Washington Post, podcasts, videos and scores of billboards along the Wasatch Front.
The campaign resurfaces a long-standing debate over federal versus state land stewardship in the West. But its origins go back to the nation’s founding, and resurfaced with the Sagebrush Rebellion in the late 1970s, when many of today’s politicians from the West were old enough to watch their parents and grandparents chafe under increasing federal land restrictions and national conservation efforts. Today, the U.S. government owns 650 million acres of public land, including national parks, forests, monuments, military bases, and, in large volume, land that has not been designated for a specific use and is largely overseen by the Bureau of Land Management. Certain states — primarily in the West, home to 92 percent of the federal government’s land — have long sought to manage the undesignated land (referred to in legal documents as unappropriated).
State officials in Utah, Nevada and Wyoming, among others, believe they can manage that unappropriated land better than the feds, who are viewed, at best, as an out-of-touch absentee landlord. But, the federal government retains the right, explicitly written into the Constitution, to own and manage its property. On the land it does own, the government has increasingly prioritized conservation over development and resource extraction, and it’s those conflicting uses that are at the heart of the dispute. It’s a deeply American conflict: individual rights against, what some call, a greater good.
‘Plenty of legislative pathways’
A recent poll by HarrisX for Deseret Magazine finds broad agreement with the ideas behind the “Stand for our Land” campaign: 73 percent say that states should manage more land within their boundaries, and a majority of Utahns, specifically, are supportive of the lawsuit itself. As for how public land is managed, 87 percent say conservation should be a medium to high priority.
Still, it’s a dispute that many legal scholars, who describe Utah’s petition to the high court as a frivolous “hail Mary,” agree is best decided legislatively. And the state’s publicity campaign appears to be less about whipping up support for a court battle — especially since the Supreme Court declined to hear the state’s lawsuit this past January — and more about convincing voters that it’s time to take the cause to Congress.
“These are not either-or,” says Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee, referring to addressing the federal land debate in the judicial or the legislative branch. “They both need to happen.” And as the chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, he’s in a position to shape and put forward that legislation. In his mind, there is no question that President Donald Trump’s administration is more sympathetic to Western states’ federal land issues than, at least, the previous one.
“There’re plenty of legislative pathways for this to happen,” Lee says. “A lot of which I’m already working on to try to transition at least some federal land to state, local, and — in some cases — even individual control.”
It’s a deeply American conflict: individual rights against, what some call, a greater good.
At the second Continental Congress in 1776, delegates from the 13 original colonies were charged with forming a new government following their Declaration of Independence. They debated voting and representation but were also locked in battle over whether states or the new federal government should own rights to lands west of the colonies. While the founders deliberated for only two days about breaking away from Britain, the western land debate prevented ratification of a new government for nearly five years.
New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia held rights to land beyond their western borders — along with the potential wealth and associated influence. Delegates from the other six states with fixed western borders felt that if certain states grew much larger and wealthier than others by expanding west, they’d be trading one overlord for another. Resolution came when the states with western land rights agreed to create a “common property” to be held by the newly formed government. Real estate west of the colonies could immediately earn the fledgling nation some much needed cash. The nation was in the midst of an expensive war and could sell land to private interests and foreign nations eager to support the colonists’ cause. The resolution put the collective needs above the individual states by assuring all that the lands would be “disposed of for the common benefit of all the United States.”
Not all of that land was transferred to each state’s individual management as they were formed, and a percentage was retained by the U.S. government. The feds withholding that land from the states is seen by some today as breaking the resolution passed by the Continental Congress. “If you change the nature of that agreement, where the federal government only holds the land in trust, you’re undermining the very principles and patriotism and compact upon which the nation was founded,” says state Rep. Ken Ivory, a Republican and longtime advocate for transfer of public lands to the state.
John Leshy, a law professor at University of California, San Francisco, and a former solicitor at the U.S. Department of the Interior from 1993 to 2001, understands that moment in history differently. He opens his book on the history of public lands, “Our Common Ground,” with the same proud American moment of the nation’s founding, but contends the deal was struck for the “common benefit” of “all the United States,” not just those states with greater rights to large allotments of land.
The Sagebrush Rebellion
Pursuing the greater good didn’t make the thorny nature of federal stewardship go away. When Congress admitted Utah Territory into the Union as a state in 1894, the statehood Enabling Act had this clarification: “That the people inhabiting said proposed State do agree and declare that they forever disclaim all right and title to the unappropriated public lands lying within the boundaries thereof.” The language was copied nearly verbatim into the state’s constitution that was ratified a year later. Statehood came in 1896.
As decades passed, relations with the state’s federal landlords simmered and finally boiled over after Congress passed the Federal Land Policy Management Act, or FLPMA, in 1976, which ended homesteading and redefined the Bureau of Land Management’s mission to prioritize multiple uses of the lands it managed in the West. In addition to natural resource extraction and grazing, the law mandated recreation and conservation as legitimate uses of government land. Nevada and Utah state legislators introduced a number of bills and filed lawsuits attempting to transfer control of federally owned public lands from Uncle Sam to the states — none of which stuck. It wasn’t just FLPMA, either, but the culmination of years of frustrations felt by Westerners who thought that the government’s presence in the West was heavy-handed — imposing oversight and regulations that ignored the needs of those living closest to the land.
The Western outcry grew into a social movement dubbed the Sagebrush Rebellion. The movement’s heyday in the late ’70s and early ’80s was an identity-driving experience for many Westerners whose livelihood was tied to the land. Even Ronald Reagan referred to himself as a “rebel” in a 1980 campaign speech in Salt Lake City. The remnants of the rebellion, or at least the ideas animating it, turned ugly 10 years ago with an armed standoff between federal officers and Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s family over grazing fees. It culminated in the 2016 occupation of Oregon’s Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, led by Bundy’s son, Ammon.
Charges against Cliven and his sons were dismissed following a mistrial in the Nevada case in 2018 after Ammon and his brother Ryan were acquitted in Oregon of firearms and conspiracy charges in 2016. But both events stemmed from the ideological and cultural moorings of the Sagebrush Rebellion shared by the current “Stand for Our Land” campaign.
Johnson references lingering frustrations from the Sagebrush Rebellion in his explanation for Utah’s strategy to take their case to court. “I wish that the federal government lived up to their agreement under FLPMA,” he says. Instead, there is less and less “multiple use” and more and more conservation. “I don’t think anybody wanted to be here, but this is where we are.”
Taylor may not like what happened to his state lands grazing permit, but he really gets upset over what happens when federal land policy changes every time someone new occupies the White House. He references Bears Ears National Monument, where President Barack Obama, then President Donald Trump, followed by President Joe Biden, have pingponged the monument’s size and status. In early February, Trump’s new Interior Secretary Doug Burgum ordered a review of all federal land withdrawals, which includes Bears Ears. Reacting to laws and permissions that change every four years, rather than consistent long-term planning, is not the way to operate a viable ranching operation, Taylor says. “It takes years to implement stuff,” he says. “Four years on a resource on the mountain or desert, that’s a drop in time. It doesn’t make one bit of difference as far as getting things done.”
The resentments felt by ranchers, miners, developers and the states against federal management align with how most folks feel about the current public land arrangement.
Conducted in November, following the presidential election, pollsters surveyed 1,512 registered voters in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. Nearly 75 percent of respondents would prefer their state’s public land to be owned by the state rather than the federal government.
The vast majority of Utahns polled, 86 percent, say that public lands should stay public and not sold to private interests. But that opinion is mitigated with a touch of skepticism. Some 43 percent of respondents believe the state would sell those lands to the highest bidder. To that suggestion, Gov. Spencer Cox is unequivocal: “There’s no intention to sell lands off.” He adds, however, that Lee is working on a bill in which states would take over federal land within city limits to sell to developers for much needed housing. “That has nothing to do with these vast landscapes that we’re talking about” with the lawsuits, says Cox. “‘Public lands’ means nothing if they’re not open to the public. And that’s what we’re trying to do, is to keep public lands public.”
Kate Groetzinger has her doubts. As the communications manager for the Center for Western Priorities, a nonpartisan conservation and advocacy organization, she’s followed Utah’s actions on public lands for years and has no faith that conservation is a priority. “Our main concern is that Utah lawmakers have shown time and time again that they are interested in privatizing federal land and state land,” she says. “They’ve sold hundreds of thousands of acres of the state trust lands that they were given at the time of statehood, and Utah lawmakers have made their intentions clear: They want to drill and develop and sell off national public lands.”
The state’s publicity campaign appears to be less about whipping up support for a court battle and more about convincing voters that it’s time to take the cause to Congress.
While the debate over who should own public lands goes back decades, the idea to sue the government came up in a bipartisan committee when Cox was lieutenant governor. Rep. Brian King, a Democrat who would later run unsuccessfully against Cox for governor last year, suggested they stop talking about the legal arguments and just file a lawsuit. While King says the comment was tongue-in-cheek, its resonating logic was “instead of wasting money and talking about it, let’s find out one way or another and move it along the path,” Cox recalls.
The lawsuit asked a very narrow constitutional question: Can the federal government permanently retain the unappropriated lands within the state of Utah?
Requesting a hearing before the Supreme Court was a long shot, and legal observers like Leshy gave it little chance. He explains that the high court has issued “numerous decisions, often unanimous,” confirming Congress’ unlimited constitutional power to manage government land. And the only time the court attempted limiting that power was the 1857 Dred Scott decision — when it confirmed slaves could never be U.S. citizens — which is considered the worst decision in Supreme Court history.
In a single sentence, the high court stuck to precedent in Utah’s suit: “The motion for leave to file a bill of complaint is denied.”
Cox, who has clerked for federal courts, gave Utah’s filing a 50/50 chance from the onset and says that even when the court likes an argument, they prefer to see complaints wend their way through the lower courts. “We’re not done with the lawsuit,” he says. “An option that I feel fairly confident that we will take, is just to file it in district court.”
At the same time, the state will pursue other avenues to address its concerns over public lands. “We’ll continue to work closely with the president and specifically with the secretary of the interior (former North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum), who’s a dear friend of ours, great guy, wonderful governor, and someone who understands this,” Cox says.
And the state isn’t wasting time on the legislative front. Three days after the Supreme Court ruling, Reps. Celeste Maloy of Utah and Mark Amodei of Nevada introduced a bill that would presumably prevent another Bears Ears controversy by stripping presidential authority “to unilaterally designate national monuments and give that authority to Congress.”
Despite the Trump administration’s review of federal land withdrawals, Maloy won’t back off her proposal. “Congress should be deciding what should be a national monument and what’s not,” she says. “That’s something I want to fix, no matter who’s in the White House.”
Even Ronald Reagan referred to himself as a “rebel” in a 1980 campaign speech in Salt Lake City.
States supporting Utah’s campaign
Utah is not alone in its campaign to change federal land management in the West. Fourteen other states filed amicus briefs in support of Utah’s case, emphasizing similar arguments for state ownership of federal land.
Those states have no qualms with national parks and forests within their borders — rather, their beef is with BLM lands. The Wyoming brief stated that the BLM is “wielding an unconstitutional police power over Wyoming’s lands and resources” by keeping that land outside of the state’s management. Another amicus brief from a coalition of counties in Arizona and New Mexico with large percentages of their territory managed by the BLM stated, “the federal government’s retention and control of these (unappropriated BLM) lands both negatively impacts the tax revenue in these counties and inhibits state sovereignty.”
Of course, the BLM takes a more conciliatory tone in a statement summarizing its approach to working with Utah: “The BLM’s mission is to provide balanced management and allow for multiple uses and sustainable recreation across the millions of acres of public lands in Utah, and it is important that we have a good working relationship with our state agency partners. These relationships remain strong and center upon shared interests and mutually beneficial outcomes.”
A recent example of that cooperation was Biden signing a bill earlier this year that transferred title to several parcels of BLM and Forest Service land adjacent to three Utah state parks to the state. “Our door is, and has always been, open to their input and collaboration,” the BLM spokesperson says.
Utah officials likely won’t experience much, if any, political fallout from the state’s “Stand for Our Land” campaign, as 62 percent of Utah voters polled by HarrisX largely support the state spending $14 million of taxpayer dollars in its first step of petitioning the Supreme Court. That is, so long as the end game is to preserve the land for future generations — 68 percent of Utahns and 69 percent of Western folks would like those resources to be preserved for public use, regardless of who manages them.
Taylor shares that view. But the future of his operation and ranching in general, whether under state or federal land management, weighs on him. The average age of the American rancher is pushing 60, and of his three daughters (two in college, and one in high school), he doesn’t know if any of his children will take over the business. As fewer people live and work in these remote places, there is ample reason for concern about who manages the public lands and how, and whether or not they prioritize making opportunities for future ranchers — or recreators — to enjoy them as previous generations have.
In the fields around Capitol Reef National Park, condos and bed-and-breakfasts stand where there were once farms. “The resource is what’s taking the hurt,” Taylor says. “That’s what really matters, and it gets locked up in the political fight back and forth.”
This story appears in the March 2025 issue of Deseret Magazine. Learn more about how to subscribe.