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Utah Governor Spencer Cox and U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz signed a 20-year agreement yesterday that gives Utah a greater role in management decisions on more than 8 million acres of national forest land. State officials say the deal will improve efficiency and collaboration, but conservation groups warn it could be bad for Utah's national forests.
“This agreement strips federal protections, shuts the public out of decision-making, and puts Utah’s old-growth forests directly on the chopping block,” said Laiken Jordahl, national public lands advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity. Steve Bloch, legal director at the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, said the change “sets the stage for Utah officials to have both a heavy hand and the loudest voice” in the room, “crowding out all other stakeholders.”
Utah has had a Shared Stewardship Partnership with the Forest Service in place since 2019, but this deal goes further than previous agreements, giving the state and counties more say in planning and implementing watershed restoration and grazing and recreation projects, like trails and campgrounds. Utah is the third state to sign an updated stewardship agreement with the Forest Service this year, following Idaho and Montana.
Oil and gas auction gets zero bids in Colorado
Recent federal oil and gas lease auctions highlight sharply declining oil industry interest in public lands. In Colorado, the Bureau of Land Management received zero bids on 23 parcels totaling more than 20,000 acres in an auction held yesterday, even with new, lower leasing and drilling rates put in place last year by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
In Wyoming, companies bid on less than 1 percent of the 26,000 acres offered in a December 30 BLM lease sale. These results suggest many public lands are viewed as uneconomic by the oil and gas industry, undercutting claims that drilling is being constrained by lack of access rather than market realities.
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The Shared Stewardship Agreement is nothing more than a sneaky way to clearcut roadless areas in national forests in Utah... Roadless areas provide clean drinking water and function as biological strongholds for populations of threatened and endangered species.”
