Utah lawmakers agreed to swap over 160,000 acres of state lands inside the Bears Ears National Monument for federal land elsewhere.
State officials agreed to a deal in mid-May to transfer the acreage’s management from the Utah School and Institutional Lands Trust Administration to the federal government. Most of the land will be used for mineral extraction and renewable energy, such as solar.
“This land swap is clearly going to result in better management for sacred and cultural sites within the monument,” wrote the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance in a tweet.
The group previously condemned President Donald Trump’s actions to shrink the monument. “However, the devil will be in the details; we are concerned about some of the lands that School Trust Lands proposes to acquire in the exchange.”
