Utah Trust Lands board approves sale of 50,000 acres in Book Cliffs to state wildlife division

The Utah Trust Lands Administration board voted 5-1 on Thursday to approve the sale of about 50,000 acres of popular hunting and fishing land known as the roadless Book Cliffs area in Grand County to the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources for nearly $30 million. 

One board member, real estate developer Dan Simons, voted against the sale without explaining his vote, but the others voted in favor. The vote came in a public meeting after the board spent about 40 minutes behind closed doors. 

“It’s a win for the school kids of Utah. It’s a win for the state,” said one board member, Mike Mower, who also works as senior adviser of community outreach and intergovernmental relations for Gov. Spencer Cox. “This is a real great day for Utah.” 

For years, state leaders including House Majority Leader Casey Snider, R-Paradise, have wanted the state wildlife agency to buy the land in order to permanently preserve public access to the Book Cliffs. 

The land has long been part of the Utah Trust Lands Administration’s investment portfolio, which is constitutionally required to be managed in a way that maximizes benefits for the administration’s beneficiaries, largely public schools. 

In 2024, Utah lawmakers passed a law sponsored by Snider to enable the Trust Lands Administration to sell large swaths of land directly to state wildlife officials without putting them up for public auction so long as the division pays “fair market value.” The law was meant to create a legal pathway in order to preserve land that has a unique public interest like hunting, fishing or other recreational uses. 

The Book Cliffs sale is the first of its kind allowed under that new law. 

“This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity that is of value to all parties,” Snider told Utah News Dispatch in an interview Wednesday, ahead of the vote. 

The sale was recommended by the administration’s director, Michelle McConkie, and supported by the trust land system’s independent advocacy office as a “unique” deal to benefit both beneficiaries and other public interests. 

McConkie said it had “rare, real win-win potential ” while presenting the details of the proposed sale to the board last month. In her analysis of the transaction, McConkie determined that selling the land for $30 million, a value determined by a three-appraisals process, would be in the “best interests” of the beneficiaries because it would generate “greater returns” for public school trusts by creating an immediate cash infusion for the Permanent State School Fund for further investment. 

Currently, the Book Cliffs land generates less than $125,000 a year in permits and fees. The administration will also keep the mineral rights on the property, enabling it to capture future proceeds from any future mineral development. 

Liz Mumford, director of the Land Trust Protection and Advocacy Office, said the office “concurred” with McConkie’s recommendation to sell the land. 

“Having comprehensively reviewed the methodology, appraisals, and associated documents, the Advocacy Office agrees that this sale is in the best interest of the Public Schools Trust,” Mumford wrote in a letter to the board. “This transaction offers an exceptional opportunity to transform an underperforming land block into cash assets, bolstering the permanent fund and compounding growth for annual school distributions.”

But last month, as the sale neared approval, some public school advocates expressed concerns. 

School advocate ‘dismayed’ by sale

To buy the land, the Division of Wildlife Resources will use a portion of $50 million the Utah Legislature set aside last year. They pulled the money from a fund called the Public Education Economic Stabilization Account, which acts as a “rainy day” fund for public education in times of economic downturn.

The sale’s biggest critic was Margaret Bird, founder and board president of Advocates for School Trust Land, a national nonprofit with the mission of “ensuring states fulfill their fiduciary duties as trustees” of school trust land. Before founding the nonprofit, Bird also spent decades advocating for school trust lands and led the effort to create Utah’s School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration in the ’90s.

“Shame on the state of Utah,” Bird told Utah News Dispatch on Thursday after the vote approving the sale. 

Last month, Bird’s nonprofit sent a letter to board members questioning whether the use of $50 million out of the education stabilization account could potentially violate the Utah Constitution’s requirements that income tax revenue only be spent on public education, except in some cases including services for children or people with disabilities.  

“It is beyond me to understand how the Book Cliffs is being paid for with Public Education Economic Stabilization Restricted Account (money),” Bird said Thursday. “I am greatly dismayed at how many people blinked at the state constitution and this violation of the state constitution.” 

She also said she doesn’t believe the Trust Lands Administration sold the land for its full value since it wasn’t advertised for public bidding. 

“I do not think the sale is ever fair market value, no matter what the appraisal says, if no other interested parties are allowed to bid,” she said. 

Bird also warned the board about the potential of the sale inviting a lawsuit. Asked whether she or her nonprofit plan to sue now that the sale has been approved, Bird said legal action is not off the table. 

However, Bird added that “we are more than willing to try to work with the state to help them come up with money — legitimate money — not money that belongs to the schools.” 

“But to me, to pay for school land with school money is not adherence to fiduciary duty that the state accepted at statehood,” she said. 

Bird said she’d like to see lawmakers “put the whole $50 million back” into the education fund “and just use general fund money” to buy future parcels. 

In her letter to the board, Mumford addressed concerns around the $50 million appropriation from the education stabilization account, saying “our office is highly sensitive to the funding challenges that are evident for district and charter schools” every legislative session. 

“We remain in active consultation with legislators, education leaders, and stakeholders to advocate for account guardrails and general fund appropriations to support future large land block purchases,” Mumford wrote. 

Bird welcomed future conversations with Snider and other lawmakers to find a resolution. 

“If we can figure out a way to solve this without legal action, of course we would like to do that,” Bird said. “Our organization is committed to solutions in every state that don’t make representatives violate their constitutional duty and the oath of office they took to these school trust lands.” 

‘A win for everybody’

Snider said he’s not concerned about potential litigation over the sale. He argued the sale was mutually beneficial for not just Utahns, but also hunters and fishers for public access to the Book Cliffs. He said it’s also generating an “immediate influx of cash” for the school fund that far exceeds what the land currently generates for the administration. 

“So immediately out of the gate, it’s all better for the school kids,” Snider said. “On the other side, this is a chance, long term, to maintain in the public estate an area that has been prized for generations for its recreational hunting and fishing opportunities.” 

Snider said the Book Cliffs land is “one of the largest continuous blocks” of land with public access interest that’s currently owned by the Trust Lands Administration. 

“I think we’re all going to look back and say, ‘Yep, this was a win for everybody,’” Snider said, while also pushing back on “this false narrative that Utah doesn’t care about public lands, it doesn’t protect public lands. This is literally putting our money up in a way that shows we care about this.” 

Snider also called the sale “a historic moment and something that I’m certainly proud of as part of my legislative career.” 

I believe this is the way we should do public land policy,” he said. “We have this narrative that exists that it has to be preservation at all costs or disposal at all costs. I think that’s a false choice. This allows both public access and recreation and hunting and fishing and wildlife to be of value, as well as those financial values that come with owning parcels of land. We have found a way to bridge that divide through this transaction. This is a really big deal.” 

To Bird’s concerns about the money coming out of the education stabilization account, Snider argued the money will still “go directly into education and into the classroom.” 

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“We did this in a very narrowly tailored way on this parcel because we know that every acre there belongs to public education,” he said, while also acknowledging “we need to be very judicious” with that account. 

When asked why that money didn’t come out of general fund revenue instead, Snider said “we had funds available in the stabilization account, and, again, because this money goes directly to the classroom, we felt it was consistent.” 

“We’ve resolved this issue in a way that keeps everybody whole and actually benefits (the Trust Lands Administration), and it’s fair and transparent,” he said.  

Snider added that he liked the way the Book Cliffs sale was executed, and he hopes it can be done again with other parcels state leaders have an interest in. 

About $20 million remains of the $50 million Utah lawmakers pulled out of the education stabilization account and gave to the Division of Wildlife Resources to be spent on purchases from the Trust Lands Administration. 

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