By Ray Rasker, Headwaters Economics— The West’s extensive federal lands, considered by some to be an economic hindrance, are today providing an economic advantage to many communities and businesses in parts of Utah and across the West.
Recent research shows that Western protected public lands — national parks, monuments, wilderness and other areas — provide the region’s growing high-tech and services industries a competitive edge. It is a major reason why the Western economy has outperformed the rest of the U.S. key measures of employment growth, population, and personal income during the last four decades
From 1970 to 2010, the West’s employment, for example, grew by 152 percent compared to 78 percent for the rest of the country. This job growth was almost entirely in services industries, such as health care, real estate, high-tech, and finance and insurance. It created 19.3 million net new jobs, many of them high-paying, during the past 40 years.…