- 100-foot-high by 40-foot-wide images projected onto Corona Arch in BLM land near Moab appeared last week.
- New advocacy group, inspired by similar English protests, seeks to bring awareness to the potential sale and extractive use of public lands.
- Referencing the Trump administration and Utah state politicians actions, the groups is worried that public lands will be sold off to private interests and lost forever.
Last week, two alternating 100-foot-high by 40-foot-wide images appeared projected onto Corona Arch on BLM land outside Moab, Utah. “Keep Public Lands in Public Hands” read one, and the other was a red-white-and-blue graphic of a home for sale sign, stating that “Your Public Lands” were “under contract.”
A group of activists calling themselves the same name projected onto the arch, Keep Public Lands in Public Hands, took credit for the protest. The group released a YouTube video and an Instagram account detailing the reasoning for the projections while simultaneously establishing its social media presence.
“America’s public lands — our national parks, forests, and wildlife refuges — are under attack,” said the modulated voice of the video narrator. “Donald Trump wants to sell them off, open them to drilling, and strip away protections that have preserved them for generations.”
In addition to concerns over the Trump administration’s perspective on extraction and public lands — a “drill, baby, drill” clip is included in the video — the group is also responding to Utah lawmaker desires to transfer the control of federal lands to states.
“I’m really concerned about the ongoing push for state ownership of federal lands,” said Zeppelin Zeerip, a Salt Lake City-based documentary filmmaker and the group’s founder. “We’ve seen throughout history that when states own public lands, they are more apt to sell them off and privatize them.”
In the video, Zeerip and his advocacy group refer specifically to Utah’s recent failed Supreme Court lawsuit associated with the “Stand for Our Land” campaign that sought to transfer control of 18 million acres of federal land over to the state. Fourteen other states signed amicus briefs in support of the suit, and while it has not yet been refiled at a lower court, decision makers have suggested they may do so in the future.
There are no laws explicitly prohibiting this protest on BLM lands, which is where Corona Arch is, but any damage or defacement could result in prosecution.
In response to last week’s protest, a BLM spokesperson wrote that, “We support the public’s First Amendment rights. We encourage those exercising free speech to consider other users and their enjoyment of our amazing natural spaces.”
Has the state sold off its public land?
While Utah has sold off more than 4 million acres of federal land given to it when it gained statehood in 1896, most of that was done under the Utah School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration, or SITLA, to help fund education and other public goods. That financial value was the reason the federal government gave states land at statehood in the first place, with the intention to help provide for states short on tax dollars while early in their existence.
There have been other efforts to sell other forms of public lands more recently. There were two iterations of the HOUSES Act introduced by Utah Sen. Mike Lee, which sought to approve the sale of federal land within municipalities for private development. And within the Utah statehouse, a number of bills and amendments have appeared over the past few years seeking to transfer land in order for it to be sold.
Where did the idea for a massive projection come from?
Zeerip explained that the group was inspired by the work of Led By Donkeys, a U.K.-based political activist group that uses large projections as statement pieces. While they’ve used projections to protest during COVID-19 and the war in Gaza, they’re most famous for their work displayed on the British House of Commons in London in 2018 protesting Brexit and the policies of the then prime minister, Boris Johnson.
Zeerip and his group plans on continuing to put up similar installations to the Corona Arch protest throughout this year, and for as long as they think such protests are necessary. Had their generator not run out last week, they would have brought the installation to Castleton Tower, too.
“There will be an onslaught of public land issues over the next four years,” said Zeerip. “Whether it’s the Arctic Refuge, or it’s Bears Ears being rescinded again, or this new call to log more U.S. timber, whatever it is, it’s going to be nearly constant threat,” and he intends to respond to each “accordingly.”