Utah

In March, representatives of six tribes announced the formation of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument Inter-Tribal Coalition to work to protect the national monument.

Public lands advocates worried that allowing Utah’s case to move forward would threaten to upend management of 200 million acres of public lands across the West.

A program in Utah is paying farmers to make their irrigation equipment more efficient, but researchers say it may not be saving as much water as it appears.

Utah is asking the Supreme Court to grant it control of public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management. The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance argues the state’s case is illegal and they’re concerned about the potential implications for public lands across the west.

Runners from around the world compete in the Moab 240, a 240-mile race through mountains and valleys.

Like the draft plan, it places a strong emphasis on tribal co-management and incorporating traditional Indigenous knowledge into decision making, education, and interpretation.

The outcome of the case could determine how much authority a president has to resize national monuments, which could impact Colorado’s Camp Hale and Dolores River.

The arguments center around a federal law signed in 1906 called the Antiquities Act, which allows presidents to protect areas of federal lands with “critical natural, historical and scientific resources.”

A Utah bankruptcy judge is ordering anti-government activist Ammon Bundy to comply with subpoenas and depositions from St. Luke’s Health System regarding his finances.

Fights over public lands aren’t unusual in the West. But Utah is now going straight to the U.S. Supreme Court to wrest control of 18.5 million acres of federal land.