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After the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Utah's long-shot lawsuit challenging the legality of federal ownership of national public lands, Utah and Wyoming are resorting to Plan B—legislative resolutions demanding power over public lands within their borders. In Wyoming, a resolution demanding that Congress transfer ownership of all federal lands and mineral rights to the state, with the exception of Yellowstone National Park, easily passed out of committee. And in Utah, a state legislator has announced plans to introduce a resolution that would call on Congress to enter into a co-management agreement with the federal government for the "Mighty Five" national parks within Utah's borders.
Even if these resolutions pass, they won't have any immediate effect since state legislatures can't make Congress do anything, making this strategy an even longer shot than Utah's lawsuit. Rather, messaging resolutions like these are intended to communicate to Congress the legislature's support for this fringe idea, in hopes that members of Congress will feel emboldened to support it. However, transferring national public lands to states is an idea that has been tried unsuccessfully several times since the 1980s and remains deeply unpopular with the public, including in Utah and Wyoming.
Can President Trump even do that? Public lands edition
In the latest episode of the Center for Western Priorities podcast, The Landscape, Aaron and Kate are joined by Mark Squillace, natural resources law professor at the University of Colorado Law School. Professor Squillace provided legal counsel to the Interior Department under President Bill Clinton and Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, and he’s a two-time veteran of this podcast. He discusses the legality of President Trump’s executive orders on public lands, including which are likely to end up in court and whether the Trump administration will have the personnel to implement these orders, after making sweeping layoffs.
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The state can help the national parks by calling on the Congressional delegation to ensure parks are managed to their gold standard, as visitors expect. A short-term patchwork management scheme that would siphon money away from the national parks doesn't help the parks, the visitors, or Utah.”
