The Greater San Rafael Swell: Honoring Tradition and Preserving Storied Lands. By Stephen E. Strom and Jonathan T. Bailey

Abstract

When surveyed among the celebrated landscapes of the Colorado Plateau, Utah’s San Rafael Swell is often overlooked. This land of hardened sandstone and sculpted badlands neither has the familiarity nor designations of nearby parks and monuments. Stephen E. Strom and Jonathan T. Bailey urge readers to take notice of it. For over two decades now, locals, officials, and conservationists quietly brokered compromises avoiding the sticky political mire that usually characterize public lands politics. Hoping to get out in front of public lands issues before executive action resulted in a monument designation or legislative measures imposed wilderness areas without local input, county citizens and officials began actively meeting in the 1990s to consider solutions to public lands issues in their county. Conversations between conservation and recreation groups, off-highway vehicle (OHV) enthusiasts, tribal communities, and other individuals and groups eventually led to a major piece of federal legislation, the Emery County Public Land Management Act. Signed into law in 2019, the act created three wilderness areas, a recreation area, and an enlarged state park. The authors outline in briefer detail similar conservation successes in Washington County, Utah, and in Custer and Owyhee Counties, Idaho.