This comprehensive report offers state trust land managers the latest strategies and tools for asset management, residential and commercial development, conservation use, and collaborative planning. Land managers will learn how to fulfill their trust responsibilities while producing larger revenues for trust beneficiaries, accommodating public interests, and more. This is a revised edition of a report originally published in 2006.

An examination of state lands, from a state rather than federal government perspective. This study presents information from 22 US states in its discussion of state trust lands as models of public land administration.

Concentrated in nine western states, 42 million acres of state trust land represent an important public resource. Trust land managers, responsible for upholding the fiduciary purpose of these lands for the designated beneficiaries--primarily K-12 public schools--must actively and deliberately take advantage of opportunities to generate revenues while ensuring the long-term sustainability of the trust. This policy focus report offers an overview of the history and unique aspects of state trust lands and presents examples of new management strategies and tools that focus on asset management, residential and commercial development, conservation use, and collaborative planning.

States are obligated to generate income from state trust lands to fund public institutions, through mining, grazing, agriculture, or logging. However, this report--a product of Western Lands and Communities, a joint program of the Lincoln Institute and the Sonoran Institute--shows how conservation can be an equally robust source of revenue. From the mid-1700s to the late 1950s, state trust lands were granted to states upon their entrance into the Union for the sole purpose of supporting public institutions, primarily K-12 public schools. Eighty-five percent of the remaining 46 million acres of state trust lands are concentrated in the West. This report explores current and recommended strategies to conserve state trust lands with ecological and environmental value, while maintaining the trust obligation to earn revenue for K-12 schools and other beneficiaries. Building on the Lincoln Institute's previous report, State Trust Lands in the West: Fiduciary Duty in a Changing Landscape (2006), and a companion website, State Trust Lands (statetrustlands.org), the authors evaluate the pros and cons of the conservation mechanisms that are currently available to state trust land management agencies, including conservation sales and leases through easements or outright fee-simple purchases, contributory value and nonmonetary value, ecosystems services markets, and land tenure and exchange. They also offer recommendations for new methods to realize revenue from conservation activity. Key recommendations are to: expand the use of conservation sales and leases; improve the utility of contributory value in the master planning process; increase access to ecosystem services markets; and streamline the land tenure adjustment process, which includes reform of the appraisal process. Monetizing conservation will provide opportunities for land management agencies to pursue conservation options. All state trusts carry the mandate to fund beneficiaries in perpetuity, indicating the need for sustainable land management practices.

From Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara lands in South Dakota; to Cherokee lands in Tennessee; to Sin-Aikst, Lakes, and Colville lands in Washington; to Chemehuevi lands in Arizona; to Maidu, Pit River, and Wintu lands in northern California, Native lands and communities have been treated as sacrifice zones for national priorities of irrigation, flood control, and hydroelectric development. Upstream documents the significance of the Allotment Era to a long and ongoing history of cultural and community disruption. It also details Indigenous resistance to both hydropower and disruptive conservation efforts. With a focus on northeastern California, this book highlights points of intervention to increase justice for Indigenous peoples in contemporary natural resource policy making. Author Beth Rose Middleton Manning relates the history behind the nation’s largest state-built water and power conveyance system, California’s State Water Project, with a focus on Indigenous resistance and activism. She illustrates how Indigenous history should inform contemporary conservation measures and reveals institutionalized injustices in natural resource planning and the persistent need for advocacy for Indigenous restitution and recognition. Upstream uses a multidisciplinary and multitemporal approach, weaving together compelling stories with a study of placemaking and land development. It offers a vision of policy reform that will lead to improved Indigenous futures at sites of Indigenous land and water divestiture around the nation.

A study of the laws, policies, and agencies under which state lands are managed in ten states.