When it comes to protecting public lands, there’s no denying it’s been a long six months. But beyond the frenzied world of people and politics, the redrock canyons still echo with birdsong—and our work in the field persists too. As seasons change, sunlight shifts, and desert flowers bloom and fade, our Stewardship crews remain fixtures of the landscape, steadily caring for these wild places. 

Now in our 10th year, SUWA’s Stewardship Program spent the first half of our 2025 season in familiar territory—from Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments to proposed wilderness in Utah’s West Desert to the designated wilderness of Emery County and the San Rafael Swell. In this era of upheaval, we continue to provide expertise and resources to ensure that Utah’s wild places receive the hands-on protections they need and deserve. Our work  includes helping land managers rehabilitate backcountry campsites, install signage and fencing, naturalize landscapes impacted by motorized use, and survey sensitive cultural sites. Learn more and apply for a project today.

Spring Highlights

By the Numbers

For some inspiration, join us in looking back at where we’ve been this season—as well as where we are headed in the coming months. 

• To date, 99 volunteers have dedicated 1,535 hours over 12 stewardship projects covering 44 work days since mid-March. Twenty-four non-permitted routes were remediated alongside 184,306 square feet of wild lands naturalized. 1,720 feet of protective boundary barriers were built, 62 wilderness and wilderness study area signs installed, 69 dispersed campsites cleaned or dismantled, and over 635 lbs of trash removed from public lands. 
  
  
• In addition, we’ve restored native vegetation deep in the redrock canyons of southeastern Utah, removed graffiti from the badlands beyond the Kaiparowits Plateau, and surveyed cultural resources to better protect popular landscapes from the growing impacts of recreation.  

Where We’ve Been

• In March, via a collaboration with SUWA’s Organizing Team, we hosted a West Los Angeles Community College student group in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. The students worked on a gamut of restoration projects to learn about the breadth and challenges of managing a monument rich with scientific and cultural resources. SUWA staff and community leaders delivered evening talks to illuminate the history of the region and the importance of protecting ancestral landscapes.
  
  
• In early April, we collaborated with the Wilderness Conservation Crew (WCC) to tackle a major fencing project in Emery County Wilderness (designated in 2019). It takes the truly dedicated to build buck and rail fence in the snow to protect the heart of Utah wilderness.
  
  
• Throughout May, Talitha and Ellie led multiple crews into the further reaches of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments. In Bears Ears, volunteers worked on vegetation management near waterways in the wilderness and conducted cultural site surveys to assist the USFS in identifying—and subsequently protecting—these resources. 

For each crew, it’s about more than the work itself. We form communities during stewardship projects (sometimes lifelong friendships), and from one another we learn how to better steward wild places. There are many anecdotes to share, but the truth is that nothing beats being there—experiencing it yourself and being part of the story.

Field Notes: An Inside Look at a Few of Our Trips

West Desert I 
Trip Leader: Ellie Swanson

The first of four West Desert projects just wrapped! We focused on Swasey Mountain Wilderness Study Area (WSA), west of Delta and north of Notch Peak. This zone attracts a breed of volunteer that tends to match the landscape: rugged, a bit austere, and very much appreciated. The highlight was transforming two-tracks within the WSA—one up high that accessed stunning rim views out toward the Deep Creeks and Great Basin National Park, which we made into a “nature trail” of sorts, and one down low that led to some motorized “hill climbs.” Another win: the death camas (Toxicoscordium venenosum—what a name!) and other vegetation was popping up on a two-track Talitha and volunteers re-naturalized last fall. Mother nature’s a fighter, y’all. 

Dark Canyon 
Trip Leader: Talitha McGuire

Even if an area is protected, even if it has that beautiful capital ‘W’ Wilderness Designation, that doesn’t mean it’s a static place, frozen in time, immune to impacts and degradation. Wilderness, even if designated by Congress, still needs the support of managers to uphold its ecological integrity. 

This past week, we focused on doing this with the Manti-la Sal Forest Service Trail Crew. This 3-person crew, along with the forest’s recreation technician, are hilarious, hard-working, and skilled folks who got hit hard this spring by the federal layoffs. Luckily enough, they were hired back on and are out there protecting the landscape.

We focused on removing invasive tamarisk from Spring Canyon, clearing it from all three forks of the canyon. Tamarisk was first introduced to North America in the 1800s as an ornamental plant, and was later used to prevent erosion. Unfortunately, this species spreads rapidly, and its deciduous needles salt the ground around it, making it hard for anything else to grow. It also channelizes streams and river corridors, decreasing the diversity in wetland habitat making it hard for juvenile fish and insects to thrive. By removing tamarisk, we protect the ecological integrity of this Wilderness.

Bears Ears National Monument
Trip  Leader: Talitha McGuire

Once a year, we collaborate with Forest Service archaeologists to help survey for cultural sites to support their protection. If sites are undocumented by agencies, they cannot be protected by those agencies. And if sites were previously poorly recorded, or recorded before 1979, they might be eligible for new protections.

This year, we surveyed some extremely strenuous terrain and identified 4 previously undocumented cultural sites along with two “independent finds.” With these sites now recorded, measured, and noted, the Forest Service archaeologists can monitor them for disturbance, ensure that future projects do not disturb them, and make them eligible for various levels of protection.

Outside of the protections on paper that this work facilitates, I really love this project because it challenges folks’ expectations, understanding, and relationship with both archeology and with cultural sites. Several volunteers this year were able to unlearn outdated perceptions and relearn new ways to ethically engage with sacred ancestral landscapes. That part, as uncomfortable as the conversations involved can be, is a crucial element of this project.