What a Mountain is Worth

The dog stops so suddenly it’s like the whole world stops with him. He is so still it feels like you’re inside a painting. If it weren’t for the cheatgrass gently waving in the wind, you might believe it. His head is high and alert, one forepaw raised. The desert sprawls behind him, with no sign of man except the dusty old two-track you rode in on.

You turn off your safety and walk in, knowing a bird is there. Your heart beats in your chest as you wait for wings to beat the air.

There’s nothing else in that moment. You, the bird, the dog, the dust. And if you’re good enough, and lucky enough, the old Italian-made gun in your hands will crack like thunder. A spent shell will tumble into the dirt, and for a moment you’ll smell the smoke hanging in the desert air.

It’s a scene that has played out for me across dozens of landscapes. From arid, rocky peaks to deciduous forests to sage grouse plains, my bird dogs and I have explored deep into wild country, miles from roads, cell service, or any other sign of civilization. Aldo Leopold wrote, “There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot.” I am one who cannot.

There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot.

Bird hunters are not the only ones. Millions of people seek out wild places for thousands of different reasons. Anglers, big-game hunters, small-game hunters, overlanders, backpackers, campers, off-roaders, horseback riders, photographers, and people who simply want to stand somewhere that hasn't yet been remade for them.

We don't all want the same thing from these places. Sometimes we even fight bitterly over how they should be used. But underlying those disagreements is something worth preserving: the belief that there should still be wild places to disagree about.

There is more to a mountain than the minerals inside of it. It has value simply as a mountain. There is more to a tree than the lumber it can produce. Both have an intrinsic value that some would argue is greater than whatever price they might fetch. I’m not arguing against resource extraction. There is an appropriate time and place for it. We need lumber. We need minerals. We need energy. Conservation does not mean refusing to use the natural world.

What I am arguing is that our political class has become remarkably good at recognizing fiscal value and remarkably bad at recognizing intrinsic value. We know what things cost. We have forgotten what they are worth.

Merriam-Webster defines conservatism as “an inclination in politics to preserve what is established,” and as a belief in the value of established and traditional practices in politics and society. Conservation, likewise, is fundamentally the act of protecting what we have.

The two ideas are so similar they should be natural companions. To conserve something is to recognize that it has value, to protect it from unnecessary destruction, and to preserve it for those who come after us. That is why I am a conservative.

And yet, there are progressive factions on the right, especially in Utah, that insist on abandoning this fundamental conservative value.

Theodore Roosevelt was a Republican, and he understood the balance that had to be maintained between conservation and extraction. He believed in American industry and the development of natural resources, but he was also an outdoorsman and a hunter. He looked at the natural world much as a farmer might look at his family farm: not as something to be handed to the next generation used up and worn out, but as an inheritance to be properly cared for.

Roosevelt argued that a good farmer does not exhaust his soil and leave his son a diminished farm. Through responsible stewardship, he leaves it more valuable than he found it. He believed a nation owed the same duty to its natural inheritance.

“We are prone to speak of the resources of this country as inexhaustible; this is not so.” - Theodore Roosevelt

Greedy politicians will sell this country’s inheritance to any willing buyer. During the most recent effort to sell federal public lands, supporters repeatedly presented the proposal as a solution to the West’s housing shortage. But this was not simply an attempt to make a few appropriate parcels available when growing communities needed room to expand. The legislation was titled “Mandatory Disposal of Bureau of Land Management Land for Housing,” and it directed the federal government to select and dispose of a minimum amount of public land. Even after the proposal was narrowed, the Secretary of the Interior would have been required to select between 0.25 and 0.50 percent of BLM land for disposal.

Supporters later limited eligible parcels to those within five miles of a population center and required the land to be used for housing or related community needs. Those restrictions were an improvement, but being within five miles of a town does not make a piece of Western desert, mountain or sagebrush suitable for a subdivision. In fact, the legislation treated suitability for residential housing as one factor to prioritize while still imposing a minimum amount of land that had to be disposed of. None of this was necessary to create a mechanism for communities to acquire appropriate federal land. That mechanism already exists. Under FLPMA and the Federal Land Transaction Facilitation Act, BLM can dispose of appropriate parcels, including land whose sale serves community expansion or economic development, through an established planning, environmental-review and appraisal process. Qualifying proceeds can then be reinvested in other public lands with important conservation or recreational value. The 2025 proposal did something very different: it started with a required acreage target and worked backward to find land to sell.

There are some on the right who argue that stewardship of these vast tracts of public land is not a proper role of the federal government. However, the federal government’s management of these lands is neither new nor unconstitutional. In fact, Article IV, Section 3 of the Constitution expressly gives Congress the power to “dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States.” That authority has existed since the founding and has repeatedly been upheld by the Supreme Court. The legitimate argument, then, is not whether the federal government may manage federal land, but how that land should be managed and what obligation the government has to preserve it for the Americans who come after us.

Utah has a particularly bad case for taking over public lands, so it is somewhat ironic that it is sounding the charge. When Utah entered the Union, it expressly disclaimed title to the unappropriated public lands within its borders. At the same time, Congress granted the new state millions of acres of land to be held in trust for its public schools and other institutions. Those lands, known as school trust land, offer us a useful glimpse at what happens when the purpose of land ownership changes. Utah was originally given roughly 7.7 million acres of school trust land. Today, the state manages only about 3.3 million acres. Much of the rest has been sold or otherwise disposed of. I’m not saying that land shouldn’t have been sold, but once it is gone it’s gone forever. Land that was meant to generate money has been traded for a one time payout.

That is the problem with treating federal public land as though it is just an asset waiting to be transferred. State trust land exists to make money. Public land exists for a broader public purpose.

If the argument for public land is that the states will preserve access and protect these places for their intrinsic value, Utah’s track record should invite a healthy level of skepticism.

Again, Theodore Roosevelt said it better than I ever could:

“Defenders of the short-sighted men who in their greed and selfishness will, if permitted, rob our country of half its charm by their reckless extermination of all useful and beautiful wild things sometimes seek to champion them by saying the ‘the game belongs to the people.’ So it does; and not merely to the people now alive, but to the unborn people. The ‘greatest good for the greatest number’ applies to the number within the womb of time, compared to which those now alive form but an insignificant fraction. Our duty to the whole, including the unborn generations, bids us restrain an unprincipled present-day minority from wasting the heritage of these unborn generations. The movement for the conservation of wild life and the larger movement for the conservation of all our natural resources are essentially democratic in spirit, purpose, and method.”