President Joe Biden’s land and water conservation plan, released Thursday under the title “America the Beautiful,” highlights a preference for locally driven initiatives, tribal sovereignty, job creation, respect for private property rights and reliance on science — all things that seem tailored to blunt the concerns of the West’s conservative political leaders who reflexively chafe at development restrictions on public lands.
Under one of his signature campaign pledges, Biden intends to protect 30% of the nation’s lands and waters by 2030, an initiative known as “30 by 30.”
It’s easy to imagine the administration looking to Utah and other Westerns states, which harbor more than their fair share of undeveloped beautiful landscapes, to fulfill this pledge. Eastern states have less publicly owned, uncompromised land and water...