Look West: Public lands and energy news from the Center for Western Priorities

Over a dozen states file briefs supporting Utah's land grab lawsuit

Thursday, October 24, 2024
Utah's Desolation Canyon Wilderness Area; BLM/Flickr

Federal and state officials from over a dozen states have filed amicus briefs asking the Supreme Court to take up Utah’s land grab lawsuit and to rule in the state’s favor.

Republican attorneys general from nine states with very little national public land filed a joint brief in support of the lawsuit. Those include Iowa, South Carolina, Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Nebraska, and Texas. The Dakotas also signed onto that brief. Attorneys general from Alaska, Idaho, and Wyoming also filed a joint brief siding with Utah, as did the Arizona Legislature.

The filings come right as hunting season gets underway, and hunting advocates say transferring national public lands to Western states like Utah would be bad for sportsmen and wildlife. Under state control, the pressure to wring every dollar out of these lands would lead the state to increase resource extraction as well as sales of public land for revenue. That would decrease the amount of public land available for hunting and other forms of recreation, and lead to the destruction of wildlife habitat.

Famous grizzly hit, killed
A famous grizzly bear, who lived most of her life inside Grand Teton National Park and was beloved by tourists and photographers, is dead after being struck by a vehicle in western Wyoming.

Grizzly No. 399 died Tuesday night on a highway in Snake River Canyon south of Jackson, park officials said in a statement. At 28 years old, the bear was the oldest known reproducing female grizzly in the Yellowstone ecosystem. A yearling cub was with the grizzly when she was struck and, though not believed to have been hurt, its whereabouts are still unknown.

Quick hits

Grizzly bear 399 struck, killed by vehicle south of Jackson

WyoFile | Associated PressGuardian | ABC News

Montana Fish and Wildlife cites four people for driving side-by-sides through Big Hole River

Daily Montanan

Over a dozen states align with Utah in land grab lawsuit 

E&E News | Deseret News 

Religious freedom law firm joins Tribe to stop copper mine at Oak Flat

E&E News

Zion National Park’s first wild California condor suffers a ‘horrible death’

Salt Lake Tribune

Enforcement finally comes to New Mexico's San Juan Basin oil field

Land Desk

Recreation site arsons near Missoula investigated at local, state, federal level

Missoulian

Holding out hope on the drying Rio Grande

Inside Climate News

Quote of the day

”This fight here at Oak Flat is spiritual, it’s on our religious rights, of who we are and where God put us to be and where he put spirits... This is the fight that I’m fighting the United States with.”

Wendsler Nosie, head of Apache Stronghold, former chair of the San Carlos Apache

Picture This

@Interior

Interior joins our partners, community members and friends in Wyoming, and around the world, in remembering grizzly bear 399. https://fws.gov/press-release/2024-10/grizzly-bear-399-fatally-struck-vehicle-snake-river-canyon… Photo by C. Adams / NPS

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