This week, Utah officials filed a lawsuit asking the U.S. Supreme Court to address whether the federal government can control “unappropriated” lands within a State indefinitely. The unappropriated land in question is approximately 18.5 million acres in Utah controlled by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA).
The lawsuit does not concern federal lands designated as national parks, monuments, wilderness areas, national forests, tribal lands or military property.
The federal government currently controls nearly 70 percent of the land in Utah. In comparison, the federal government owns less than one percent of the land in Connecticut, New York, and Rhode Island, and less than three percent of the land in Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
Utah Governor Spencer Cox said in a news release that, “When the federal government controls two-thirds of Utah, we are extremely limited in what we can do to actively manage and protect our natural resources. We are committed to ensuring that Utahns of all ages and abilities have access to public lands. The BLM has increasingly failed to keep these lands accessible and appears to be pursuing a course of active closure and restriction. It is time for all Utahns to stand for our land.”
National parks, forests and other congressionally designated areas represent about half of all federally controlled land in Utah. The other half is managed by the BLM under FLPMA for multiple uses. However, state officials, grazing allotment holders, and lessees with permits for energy development, mining and timber harvesting have been very critical of how the BLM is managing that land.
Earlier this year, Utah and Wyoming filed suit against the BLM’s recently published Public Lands Rule that aims to bolster conservation on public lands.
“The new Public Lands Rule is devastating to Utah as it allows the BLM to unnecessarily restrict access to millions of acres of land by adopting a hands-off, museum-like management approach,” said Attorney General Sean D. Reyes. “The Rule redefines and prioritizes ‘conservation’ or ‘non-use’ over all other legal and productive uses, directly violating existing federal law and vitiating the intent of multi-use policies as required by FLPMA.”
Officials said that if the Supreme Court rules in the state’s favor, Utah would manage the land for livestock grazing, mining, energy development and recreation.
“Today, we filed a historic lawsuit asking the U.S. Supreme Court to address whether the federal government can simply hold unappropriated lands within a state indefinitely. Nothing in the text of the Constitution authorizes such an inequitable practice. In fact, the Framers of the Constitution carefully limited federal power to hold land within states. Current federal land policy violates state sovereignty and offends the original and most fundamental notions of federalism,” said Reyes.
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The article reads, ““When the federal government controls two-thirds of Utah, we are extremely limited in what we can do to actively manage and protect our natural resources.”
Who is this “we” that is extremely limited? The federal government provides more ways for the public to influence its lands and resources than the state of Utah gives its citizens with Utah State lands.