County Lands and Natural Resources Director Jess Kirby conservatively estimates there’s $15 million of the 2021 bond left.
Over the past three years, the money has been used to preserve 14,000 acres — or roughly 22 square miles — of land.
The biggest chunk is the 8,600-acre 910 Cattle Ranch below Jeremy Ranch.
“We have done 4000, almost 5000, acres in North Summit, and then the 910 Ranch, of course, in the Snyderville Basin,” Kirby told KPCW. “And then in South Summit, we've got about 900 acres between the Andrus farm and the Ure Ranch.”
The county’s open space bond spend includes both parcels it has purchased, as well as deals still in progress. The 910 ranch, for example, is fully funded with $15 million in bond money and $40 million from a federal grant but not officially purchased yet.
“Most of the time we are leveraging those dollars at least two-to-one. Sometimes it's four-to-one,” she said, referencing third-party grants that her department has secured. “So we've been really, really good at finding other grant sources to match the funding to put this land into perpetual preservation.”
Much of that is done in concert with the nonprofit Summit Land Conservancy, which monitors conservation easements to make sure landowners abide by development restrictions.
The county’s open space bond has been used to purchase land outright or fund conservation easements the nonprofit land conservancy is pursuing.
Once the 910 and other purchases are complete, a total of 100,000 acres or 8% of the county will be preserved.
Kirby said that includes private, county and city conservation lands. It doesn’t include greenbelt properties, where landowners open their property to grazing or agriculture and pay reduced taxes.
There are 1.2 million acres total in Summit County, 44% of which is already federal land, mostly the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest.
