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SALT LAKE CITY -- State and county leaders met with environmental groups today to announce a new land use agreement for north-eastern Utah.
The compromise deal promises to put to rest years of uncertainty about the fate of public lands in Daggett County. Rep. Bob Bishop helped broker the deal and said it’s one of the first times the groups were able to put aside their differences.
“Everyone has to give up something,” Bishop said. “Any group that decided to pout and stamp out of the meeting because they didn’t get everything they wanted, they would have killed the entire process.”
Daggett County Commisioner Jerry Steglich said the sacrifice came with a lot of heartburn.
“We’ve given up one-fifth of the county in forest land, BLM land and wilderness designation,” he said. “That’s a little over 100,000 acres of wilderness designation in a county that has a little over 500,000 acres of total acreage.”
In exchange, Daggett County gains assurances that motor vehicle routes outside of protected areas will remain open. It also gains land for future resort development. Steglich said despite the sacrifices, he was proud of the agreement.
“What we gave up in our eyes, as commissioners and most of the people that we talked to, makes sense for Daggett County. We expect some people to coming back that aren’t happy with wilderness designation. But again, it’s an education process and we need to explain to them what we gain through wilderness preservation.”
One of the biggest advantages for county leaders is the compromise gave them bargaining power to preserve grazing lands.
“There are some areas worthy of wilderness designation, and we discovered that, converted it into leverage for what we wanted, and moved forward,” Steglich said.
The Daggett County deal integrates into Rep. Bishop's larger public lands initiative. He is continuing to work with other counties to strike land use deals that would ultimately require congressional approval.
“That’s one of the reasons we started with Daggett, because you can actually see almost everything we’re attempting to do in the other counties, just in one spot.”
Bishop said he already has a bill written that correlates with this initiative and plans to push it in the House at the beginning of next year. Brianna is a reporter and weekend anchor for KSL News Radio. Contact her at: bbodily@ksl.com or on Twitter @BriannaBodily
