Utah state lawmakers have allocated millions of taxpayer dollars to pay a company to provide a unique tree-clearing strategy in hopes it will fortify land against wildfires, save water and improve wildlife habitat.
But a recent audit revealed the company has had to pay back some of the money it received “because there were no viable locations on which to use their system.”
Mike Siaperas, a software executive turned rancher, patented “roller felling” — a method that involves stringing a cable between two bulldozers and hanging a barrel on it to keep it suspended above the ground as they move forward. The practice rips conifer trees out of the ground so that fire-resistant, less-thirsty aspens can grow in their place.
[Read more: Man vs. trees: How a rancher’s bulldozing project cost Utah taxpayers]
The audit, published Tuesday, also examined state funds given to organizations for removing gray wolves from the endangered species list, helping Utah veterans and protecting the Pando aspen clone in central Utah.
Roller felling
Siaperas owns a roller-felling company called 106 Reforestation, which has generally worked with the state through his nonprofit, Atlantis USA Foundation. The Utah Legislature appropriated $1 million to Atlantis in 2023.
The audit revealed that in August, the nonprofit returned $900,000 of that appropriation with interest. “Because this process can only be used on very specific lands,” the audit reads, referring to roller felling, “the 2023 funding was not used.”
The Legislature appropriated another $700,000 to Atlantis USA Foundation in 2024, but that money “will not be disbursed or used” for roller felling, the audit said. The charity’s website says it intends to bring about positive change for veterans “through conservation of our lands and our values.”
Lawmakers previously allocated money for 106 Reforestation in 2019 — a $2 million appropriation for “strategic and targeted forest fire treatment.” Lawmakers appropriated another $500,000 for the company the following year.
The Utah Department of Natural Resources began working with 106 Reforestation in 2020. It had paid out just over $1 million of the appropriated $2.5 million for the company’s completed work by 2022, according to the audit.
The audit doesn’t specify how or whether the remainder of that appropriated money was spent. But it concluded that 106 Reforestation and Atlantis have been paid correctly and “according to legislative intent.”
The state Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands — part of the Department of Natural Resources — has partnered with Utah State University to determine the environmental impacts of roller felling. That study has not yet been completed.
During the division’s work with the company, the audit said, “FFSL staff determined the best locations to conduct the roller felling process, closely monitored the reforestation process, and oversaw the burning of felled trees. Any work done with these funds has been done on private land.”
Last year, Siaperas secured a new state contract to clear 825 acres in the state reserve of Currant Creek, but he was able to roller fell only about 10% because the site was too steep for his equipment. The state paid him $240,000, about a quarter of the budget.
The federal government manages most of the land that is suitable for roller felling, according to Don Peay, a hunting advocate who has served on the board of Siaperas’ Atlantis USA Foundation. More than three-quarters of Utah’s forests lie on federal land.
Earlier, between 2012 and 2019, the Department of Natural Resources awarded Siaperas more than $200,000 to clear trees on his eastern Utah ranch and the nearby Cold Spring Wildlife Management Area, a state hunting reserve.
Funding for veterans to ‘gain closure’
The Utah Legislature has appropriated $1.5 million over the last two years to the Best Defense Foundation, a nonprofit that helps veterans return to battlefields and “gain closure of a time in their life that had an impact on the world,” according to its website.
As of September, the Best Defense Foundation has spent a little over $600,000 of the $1 million appropriated to it in 2023.
The nonprofit has used that money to send five Utah veterans to battlefields — which cost $200,000 — and 73 Utah veterans to other events. It spent over $251,000 on a kick-off event, and the rest of the funding on events held at a lodge in Price, Utah.
“These expenditures are all allowed under the contract,” the audit reads.
Protecting Pando
Utah is home to one of the world’s largest organisms: a cloned stand of aspens in south-central Utah called Pando. It’s the largest tree in the world by weight and land mass.
This year, the Legislature appropriated $250,000 to the Utah Department of Transportation to help protect Pando. The money is supposed to go toward building a new fence and cattle guards, which will dissuade deer and elk from eating the tree.
But that money hasn’t been spent yet.
The Department of Transportation is “still working on how best to meet the intent of the funding as the funding is insufficient to fence the entire perimeter of the organism,” the audit reads.
