State Rep. Mike Noel, a Republican from the southern community of Kanab, said: It gets down to "sovereignty and autonomy. It's Western independence. We own the water, we have the right to graze, the minerals are still available, and the roads belong to us. By dang, we are not going to give them up."

Noel is part of a self-styled "cowboy caucus" in the Legislature that has helped direct hundreds of thousands of state dollars to counties bickering with the federal government.

In addition, the Constitutional Defense Council, established to protect state and county interests on federal land, has paid out more than $10 million, much of it to assist southern counties in legal battles against the BLM and the National Park Service.

The 2-year-old Public Lands Policy Coordination Office last year offered each county in Utah $10,000 to fight for rights of way across federal land and is funding a $1 million study to examine the economic impact of large federal holdings in the state.

Critics say taxpayer money should not be used to fight these legal battles and argue that there is little accounting of how much money is spent by the Constitutional Defense Council and public lands office.