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2025 Utah L. Rev. 1 (2025)

handle is hein.journals/utahlr2025 and id is 1 raw text is: STATE TRUST LAND REVENUE DIVERSIFICATION THROUGH CONSERVATION Temple Stoellinger, Bryan Leonard, Travis Brammer, Shawn Regan, & Jonathan Wood* Abstract Western states oversee tens of millions of acres of state trust lands granted to them by the federal government more than a century ago to fund public education and other public services. Traditionally, these lands have been leased for energy development, timber harvesting, livestock grazing, and other consumptive uses to generate income for the trust's beneficiaries. However; evolving markets and societal values present both novel opportunities and challenges for state trust land managers. This Article finds that states are not only permitted but obligated to consider revenue generation through conservation or other nonconsumptive uses to meet their enduring trust responsibilities. This finding is not a reinterpretation of state trust land mandates to make preservation and biodiversity a top-down priority, but instead, an opportunity to leverage bottom-up interest in conservation use ofstate lands to generate additional and more diversified income. The Article then describes the obstacles that often hinder conservation use of state trust lands and examines practical considerations for integrating conservation uses into existing trust land management frameworks, offering insights into the future of state trust land management. * © 2025 Temple Stoellinger, Bryan Leonard, Travis Brammer, Shawn Regan, and Jonathan Wood. Temple Stoellinger is an Associate Professor and Wyoming Excellence Chair at the University of Wyoming Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources and College of Law and a senior fellow at the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC). Bryan Leonard is the SER Associate Professor of Environment and Natural Resources at the University of Wyoming Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources and School of Energy Resources, and a senior fellow at PERC. Travis Brammer is the Director of Conservation at PERC. Shawn Regan is the Vice President of Research at PERC. Jonathan Wood is the Vice President of Law and Policy at PERC. The authors would like to thank student research assistants Jacy Rudloff, Kate Gamble, Molly Bretthauer and Sam Johnson for their help in refining this Article. The authors would like to specifically acknowledge that the lands granted to the states discussed in this Article were not unoccupied, unclaimed lands; instead, more often than not, they were the occupied by indigenous people who had lived on the land for centuries. We also acknowledge the painful consequences that followed the settlement of western lands to the indigenous peoples, their culture, and their way of life. 1

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