Utah goes for the ultimate public land grab

Lawsuit would seize control of 18.5 million acres of your land

🤯 Annals of Inanity 🤡

This week, the state of Utah filed a lawsuit looking to seize control of some 18.5 million acres of federal land in the state, culminating decades of effort by movements such as the Sagebrush Rebellion and Wise Use to wrest America’s public lands from the public’s hands. The suit only targets “unappropriated” lands, meaning those managed by the BLM that are not designated as national monuments, parks or conservation areas or wilderness areas. It’s not clear how this would apply to national monuments the state is looking to shrink or revoke, such as Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante. 

Utah says it launched the legal action to “answer the constitutional question of whether or not the Federal Government can retain unappropriated lands in a state indefinitely.” And on the state’s website — standforourland.utah.gov — created solely to promote the suit, the state justifies the action by saying, “Federal overreach prevents Utah from actively managing public lands, impacting recreation, local economies, and resource development.” 

And they’re mad because the feds shut down a handful of trails to motorized travel (while leaving far more open to OHVs and jeeps and other internal-combustion-engine-propelled machines). Oh, yeah, and Gov. Spencer Cox is apparently feeling sensitive about his opponent and state lawmaker Phil Lyman out-wing-nutting him on public lands issues. So instead of his old “disagree better” routine, Cox has gone all in on the MAGA grievance party, in which he whines and cries about having too much public land in his state, even though that public land is easily the state’s most valuable asset and alluring draw. It’s all a vain and vacuous spectacle aimed at riling up the extreme right wing that is increasingly calling the shots in Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho. 

And one way to do that is to appeal to a sense of nostalgia for a past that never really existed, for which “Make America Great Again” is exhibit A. Exhibit B? The ad Utah posted on Twitter or X or Elno’s rantroom to build support for its lawsuit (I’ll get to the legal merits in a moment). Let’s take a look:

• Video opens and immediately lets you know that you’re in the late 1970s or early 1980s. Tip offs include: 

  • Bushy hipster mustache on a guy that’s not a hipster;

    

  • bowl-style haircut that resembles my own, circa 1978; 

  • tube socks; 

  • green Coleman cooler; 

  • Mom’s matching pastel blue capri pants and shoes; 

  • giant RV — possibly the same one in Breaking Bad, only these guys were probably not manufacturing meth, but rather were cooking up some illicit fry sauce, contraband Jell-O, or moonshine soda pop.

    

  • the family plays cards on the road rather than stares at phones;

  • Dad takes photo of family with a Pentax K1000, which is what I used to shoot with in my Silverton reporter days, so I appreciate the touch.  

• Wistful acoustic music plays in the background, though curiously it’s not from the ‘70s or ‘80s, but “We Are” by Paper Planes (“We are still young/And our hearts still run/Come on, be cool/It’s our time, let’s move”). If you haven’t heard it imagine Bon Iver put through a muzak filter. 

• They reach the campsite somewhere in southern Utah’s Canyon Country. The implication is that it’s a dispersed site, but one tell is that the campfire around which they sing and play guitar is in a steel fire ring, meaning it has to be a designated campground. This becomes important later. Also, the fire’s way too small for a bunch of Utah yahoos. For accuracy, they shoulda thrown some gasoline, an old couch, and a living, centuries-old juniper tree on the thing.

  

• Fast forward to the present day. Dad is now a far more clean-cut grandpa. The son now drives the gargantuan RV — estimated cost $235,000 — while gramps and grandkids play cards in the back — no phones or screens in sight (Yeah, right!). It would be more accurate if the RV were towing four side-by-side OHVs, one for each family member. The same music is playing.  

• They reach the same Canyon Country place as some 40 years earlier, and pull to a stop. The music cuts out. Faces look inquisitive, then concerned, then grief-stricken.

  

• Cut to the view out the giant windshield: An old two-track road with a chain across it and a sign that simply says, “NO ENTRY” (interestingly it is generic, not a telltale BLM sign). Gramps and dad slump back into their seats in disappointment. The camera pans back and a caption appears:  

  

  “You are losing access to Utah roads and trails. Let Utah manage Utah land.”

The ad is overflowing with misinformation, but it tugs at the heartstrings and evokes that faux nostalgia, which is the objective, I guess. It does harken back to the wrong era, though: The Sagebrush Rebels’ glory days ended in 1976, when Congress passed the Federal Land Policy Management Act, and when President Jimmy Carter vowed to end the Western “rape, ruin, and run” ethos. And, besides, I’m pretty sure no RV-appropriate roads are being closed anywhere in Utah. The handful of routes that are going non-motorized are in the backcountry, and are mostly used by OHVs. 

Okay, but let’s get to the legalese. First of all, Utah’s claim is baseless, because the 1894 Enabling Act, which paved the way to Utah’s statehood, gave up all right to the public domain (i.e. lands stolen from the Diné, Ute, and Paiute people). It reads: 

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.

See that “forever” part? Well, we’re still within that timeline. 

Utah’s complaint reads: “Nearly half of that federal land—roughly 18.5 million acres—is ‘unappropriated’ land that the United States is simply holding, without formally reserving it for any designated purpose or using it to execute any of its enumerated powers.” But then, in the very same paragraph, Utah contradicts the no-designated-purpose part by writing that the BLM “earns significant revenue by leasing those lands to private parties for activities such as oil and gas production, grazing, and commercial filmmaking, and by selling timber and other valuable natural resources that the federal government retains for its own exploitation.” 

The formal purpose of unappropriated BLM land is just this, what’s called multiple-use in FLPMA. And, by the way, the federal government isn’t exploiting those resources — which belong to the American people. The oil and gas companies, livestock operators, mining companies, and recreationists are. Utah also fails to mention that a lot of that revenue comes back to the state and local communities. 

Meanwhile all the taxpayer money the state is throwing away on spurious lawsuits, and on the ads to support them, ain’t coming back.

But what’s most irking is Utah’s victim shtick. They feel like they’re being discriminated against because nearly 70% of the state is public land, while only 1% of Connecticut and New York or managed by the federal government. I guess Utah’s so-called leaders haven’t noticed that East Coasters are coming to Utah in droves, to visit or to live, and are stocking up the state’s coffers in the process. Are they coming for the sodas? The fry sauce? The backwards ass politics? 

Nope. They’re coming for all of that public land. 

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🏠 Random Real Estate Room 🤑 

A new report from CoreLogic finds 2.6 million homes in the West are in wildfire danger zones. That includes 1.26 million in California and more than 321,000 in Colorado. Damn. I reckon a lot of those folks have or will get a grim letter from their insurance company canceling coverage or hiking prices.

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📸 Parting Shot 🎞️

Who says these are the dog days of summer, anyway?