A 20-year cooperative agreement signed last Thursday between Utah and the U.S. Forest Service represents the culmination of decades of effort to restore forests devastated by bark beetles, including the Manti-La Sal National Forest in Sanpete County.
Gov. Spencer Cox and Tom Schultz, national chief of the Forest Service, signed the agreement at the State Capitol on Jan. 8, formalizing a framework that gives Utah a greater role in managing more than 8 million acres of national forest land.
“This is something we’ve been working for and wanting, literally, for generations in our state,” Cox said before signing the document. “And now the moment is here where we can be involved on the front end of these decisions.”
The agreement’s roots trace back to one of the worst ecological disasters in Utah’s recent history: the spruce bark beetle infestation that swept through the Wasatch Plateau in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Since 2000, bark-boring beetles have killed nearly 90% of the Engelmann spruce on the Wasatch Plateau between Sanpete and Emery counties, according to Ryan Nehl, a former supervisor of the Manti-La Sal National Forest.
The dead trees, many still standing and others fallen across the forest floor, created an unprecedented fire risk and fundamentally altered the mountain landscape that defines Sanpete County’s eastern boundary.
The epidemic emerged against a backdrop of changing attitudes toward timber harvesting. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, environmental concerns dramatically reshaped forest management nationwide, leading to reduced timber sales and increased protections for wildlife habitat and old-growth forests.
Scientists point to several factors that allowed beetle populations to explode: drought conditions that weakened trees, warmer winters that failed to kill beetle larvae, and increased forest density after decades of fire suppression.
The Forest Service response came in 2019 with the launch of the Canyons Project, a 15-year restoration effort that has become the largest logging project Utah has seen in years.
The project aims to remove 50 to 60% of the dead spruce from more than 30,000 acres in Sanpete, Emery, Carbon and Sevier counties, with the timber sold to help offset costs.
“It means a big boon for us because there is enough wood on that cut to keep us in business for 20 years,” Brett Belnap, sales manager of Satterwhite Log Homes in Gunnison, said when the project was announced.
Thursday’s agreement builds on Utah’s Shared Stewardship Partnership with the Forest Service, officially established in May 2019. That initial partnership identified the Canyons Project as a priority for state-federal collaboration, and since then, more than $20 million from state and federal appropriations has been invested in forest management projects.
The new agreement expands beyond timber and wildfire management to include recreation, watershed protection, grazing and wildlife management. It allows Utah to provide funding, staffing, contracting expertise and technical support to implement projects more quickly.
“Utah knows how to manage land well and has done so successfully, side-by-side with federal partners for decades,” Cox said. “This agreement doesn’t change who owns or controls national forests. It simply lets us work together more efficiently.”
Forest Service Chief Schultz called the partnership “more than a partnership, it’s a friendship,” and said the framework represents “cooperative federalism” that gives states a greater seat at the table in decision-making. Utah is the third state to formalize such an agreement recently, following Idaho and Montana.
For Sanpete County, the agreement promises continued support for forest restoration. The Forest Service continues projects throughout the Sanpete Ranger District, including timber sales in Ephraim Canyon and prescribed burns where commercial harvest isn’t feasible.
The goal is restoring a healthier species mix, shifting from the current 85% fir and 5% spruce composition toward a 30% fir and 60% spruce balance, a process that could take decades.
“Federal resources alone are often insufficient to address these issues at the required pace and scale,” according to the governor’s office. “This agreement provides a long-term framework to proactively address these risks, while protecting nearby communities and natural resources.”