Although federal agencies, such as Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), are the entities formally charged with governing federally-owned lands that are deemed "public lands," there are a number of groups that challenge that jurisdiction and/or aim to participate in land and resource governance. There are a plethora of non-governmental organizations that have developed to further environmentalist and indigenous interests and participation in public lands governance. Such organizations include those that have taken on formal partnerships with the BLM and USFS, such as Grand Staircase Escalante Partners (the official "friends" organization of Grand Staircase Escalanate National Monument that takes care of much of the outreach and public interface work related to the monument) and the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition which is a management partner with USFS and BLM for the Bears Ears National Monument. The latter governance formation is a result of work on the part of a number of organizations focused on protecting indigenous landscapes and pushing for Indian sovereignty and is a rare instance of indigenous representatives having an institutionalized management role on federal public lands.
There are also those who wish to shape public lands governance by pushing for the transfer of federal public lands to state governance or to private landholders. Much of this work is done through lobbying to legislators to create such bills as Utah's Lands Transfer Act, which called for shifting federal lands into state management (although critics argued that such a bill passed by Utah legislative bodies is unconstitutional). Much of the anti-federal sentiment is expressed through highly organized but less institutionalized militia efforts as well as through conservative think tanks such as the American Legislative Exchange Council, the American Lands Council, and the Heritage Foundation.
Additionally, in Utah there are a number of fundamental Latter Day Saints (fLDS) communities that do not recognize the federal government and its agencies, i.e. BLM, as legitimate rule-makers/governers of the spaces surrounding where they live. Although there is some overlap with these communities and the anti-federal groups listed above, further examination of the perspectives on land use and governance from fLDS groups and the mainstream LDS church are needed.
