On television, the state of Utah eagerly promotes the magnificence of its five national parks. “This is life elevated,” the narrator intones in one of the state’s many tourism commercials. “Five iconic parks. One epic experience.”
But off screen, state and federal lawmakers from Utah have worked aggressively to dismantle protections for millions of acres of wild federal land in the state. In 2017, the Trump administration, working with Utah’s Republican governor, Gary Herbert, cut the size of the Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears national monuments by some two million acres. The move came as the administration was pushing for fewer restrictions and more development on public lands, including oil and gas extraction, mining and logging...