Utah’s public lands ‘are not for sale’: Hundreds rally at Capitol in protest of Republicans’ ‘land grab’ lawsuit.

Surrounded by signs that read “Protect Wild Utah” and “Keep Public Lands In Public Hands,” Regina Lopez-Whiteskunk sang from the Utah Capitol steps, a melody she called a ‘sounds of the winds.”

“I hope those legislators got disturbed by that very beautiful sound,” Lopez-Whiteskunk, a member of the Ute Mountain Ute tribe, said of the song she wrote during a drive past Bears Ears National Monument.

“If they didn’t get disturbed, I hope they had some peace,” she told several hundred Utahns, dressed in parkas and scarves, who weathered near-freezing temperatures and large snowflakes Saturday afternoon during a rally organized by conservation group Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.

Prompted by Republican leader’s “threats” to Utah’s wild lands from a “land grab” lawsuit and the potential reductions of a pair of national monuments by the incoming Donald Trump administration, SUWA legal director Steve Bloch said the peaceful demonstration asked Utahns to show their support for the protection of public lands.

“These lands are not for sale,” said Lopez-Whiteskunk. “But let’s remember, they never were. ... Not today, not ever, not for our future generations.”

The protest, which lasted a cold two hours outside the Capitol, included speeches by Utah Senate Minority Leader Luz Escamilla and poet and conservationist Terry Tempest Williams.

Louise Fernandez, the rally’s first speaker and a student at Salt Lake Community College studying environmental biology, said the rally is in “defiance – to say no to the destruction of our home."

“Our ancestors knew that this land is not just our home, but a place that sustains us, nurtures us and connects us to something far greater than ourselves,” she said.

“If not us, then no one,” Fernandez continued. “If we do not stand together, our children will never know the beauty these lands hold.”

An hour before the rally, Wilson Webster, 27, and his father, Brett Webster, took their place on the Capitol’s steps, holding a sign twice their size that read “Stop the Sell” and an image of a bulldozer destroying Utah’s Delicate Arch.

For Wilson, who’s known Utah his “whole life,” public lands “belong to Americans – they belong to everybody."

“Utah is undeniably ... one of the most beautiful areas in the entire world,” he said. “That that might be stripped away for materialistic commodities is a scary, scary thought.”

In August, Gov. Spencer Cox and then-Attorney General Sean Reyes filed a lawsuit to the U.S. Supreme Court challenging whether the Bureau of Land Management’s “unappropriated” ownership of 18.5 million acres of land violates the U.S. Constitution.

“It is obvious to all of us that the federal government has increasingly failed to keep our lands accessible and properly managed,” said Cox in an August news conference announcing the lawsuit. “Utah deserves priority when it comes to managing this land.”

Utah has paid over $500,000 to a law firm championing the attack on federal control over public lands and has budgeted twice as much on a media campaign to influence public opinion.

SUWA, in December, countered by suing the two Republican leaders, citing that Utah “forever disclaim[ed] all right and title to the unappropriated public lands” when it became part of the United States.

“It can feel isolating, sometimes, to think that you’re just a ‘voice in the wilderness,” said Bloch of conservation efforts .“[This rally] is really setting down a marker for the Governor, for Legislature ... that Utahns care about their federal public lands.”

Escamilla, welcoming demonstrators to “the people’s house,” said advocating for public lands is a “collective fight.”

“Public lands in the state of Utah are not for sale,” said Escamilla. “Democrats will stand and will continue to stand against ridiculous lawsuits. ... But what we have right now is a need for collective efforts to educate the public about the threatened efforts to basically sell public lands.

Sen. Nate Blouin, D-Salt Lake City, reiterated Escamilla, adding that Republicans “get to do what they want” with their supermajority in the Legislature.

“They set the agenda behind closed doors ... without a whole lot of public input,” Blouin, who attended the rally, told The Salt Lake Tribune. “[For] members of the public, I would encourage folks to come up and speak at committees ... talk to your legislators and tell them your perspective on how this is going to impact your daily life.”

Tempest Williams closed the rally by directly addressing the recently reelected governor who, she said, “has lost his way.”

“These open lands do not belong to a single state,” she said, “but to a state of mind, a state of being open to all species, not just our own governor. We must ask ourselves, as Americans, can we really survive the worship of our own destructiveness?”