While being an officer is difficult in any jurisdiction, Utah Department of Natural Resources Director Joel Ferry believes patrolling Utah’s vast outdoor spaces is especially hard.

On average, the state estimates one outdoor resources officer is tasked with protecting wildlife, trails, lands and other resources across 385,000 square acres. The job also comes with an
expectation to protect the state’s outdoor features, something that Utah is internationally known for.

“It’s not for the faint of heart to be out in the wild alone, protecting and standing up for the resources of Utah, for the people of Utah,” Ferry told KSL.com.

For years, four agencies — the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, Utah Division of State Parks, Utah Division of Outdoor Recreation and the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands — were tasked with handling issues at state parks and other state-managed lands, as well as the wildlife that roams around the state.

However, that’s no longer the case, thanks to HB 469, a piece of legislation that took the sworn officers from each of these divisions and consolidated them into a single group managed by the Utah Department of Natural Resources.  

The new Utah Division of Law Enforcement will essentially perform the same functions that its officers performed in their prior agencies. Many of the officers will likely patrol the same areas they did previously. Ferry says the reorganization is about efficiency.  

“It’s really something that we’ve been looking at — as a department, multiple times over the last 10, 20, 30 years — doing. We felt like now is the time to do it,” he told KSL.com, adding most people won’t notice a difference in enforcement on state lands and other areas where the past divisions patrolled. 

Utah Governor Spencer Cox led a ceremony on January 13 to swear in 140 officers to the newly formed Utah Division of Law Enforcement. Todd Royce, the department’s law enforcement director since 2018, was named the division’s first chief. He believes that unifying all the agencies will improve efficiency but said it can also improve training, resources and opportunities for all of the officers.

“It’s not new; it’s a new chapter,” he said during the ceremony. “There have been many people who have come before us, and we stand on their shoulders.”