National forest acquires more than 4,000 acres

Officials of Wasatch-Cache National Forest are celebrating the acquisition of 4,326 acres in the High Uintas — scattered in-holdings within the forest on the Utah side of the border with Wyoming.

Purchased through the federal government's Land and Water Conservation Fund, the area is important to wildlife and recreation, according to a Forest Service press release.

"It is interspersed with the national forest and most people generally think of it as the national forest," Stephen Ryberg, a ranger in the forest's Evanston, Wyo., Ranger District, told the Deseret Morning News. "So people are using it for camping, fishing, hunting, snowmobiling — the full range of multiple uses."

The site is about four miles southeast of Bear River Lodge, he said.

Anadarko Petroleum Corp. sold the land for $3 million. In 2003, the Forest Service acquired 3,175 acres for $3.6 million from the Trust for Public Land, which often brokers such deals. Still to be purchased are 7,265 acres of in-holdings belonging to Anadarko Petroleum, with the price expected to be $7.1 million.

The company has been a benevolent landowner, allowing the public to use it, he said.

"Over the years that I've worked with them, they have been approached by a number of developers who were interested in buying the property," to be used for recreational developments, Ry- berg said.

He is grateful that the land was sold to the agency instead of developers.

"They (Anadarko officials) have gone the extra mile in working with the government to get this land in public ownership," Ryberg said.

The Forest Service release quotes Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, as saying the project "meshes perfectly with the goals of the Land and Water Conservation Fund, the national forest and Summit County. ... The purchase of these lands will insure public access as well as protect these natural resources for current and future generations."

Forest officials added that elk, moose, deer and trout are found on the land or in the streams.

With additional money from the conservation fund, the Forest Service would like to buy the rest in 2007 and 2008, bringing the total to about 14,766 acres at a cost of $13.7 million.

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