For more than a little while U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, has been working with Utah counties and associated stakeholders on a plan for public lands: which might be open to energy development, which might be protected as jewels in the public lands kingdom. On Wednesday, the congressman is expected to reveal his plan in Salt Lake City at the Capitol.

The Republican's "Grand Bargain" is said to involve 18 million acres in eastern Utah. During the roughly three years that the plan has been in the making, various parties have called for it to include "completion" of Canyonlands National Park, that areas will be open to mining interests, and that wilderness areas be designated.

More recently, there have been calls that a large swath of southeastern Utah be set aside as a Bears Ears National Monument, a landscape sacred to Native American tribes who are tired of seeing it chewed up by off-road vehicles and looted by grave robbers and artifact hunters. While the tribes had hoped they could work with Rep. Bishop and U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, to include such a monument in the bargain, they grew weary of not being taken seriously and have said they'll seek President Obama's help in designating the monument through the Antiquities Act.

There also have been voiced desires to see a highway from Vernal to Green River be cut through the Book Cliffs region, a rugged and wild region that would gain partial protection from development through the long-envisioned America's Red Rock Wilderness Act. And there have been reports that Rep. Chaffetz favored creation of a "Jurassic National Monument" centered around the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry, a U.S. Bureau of Land Management property in Emery County in central Utah.

A bill could be ready to present to the House Natural Resources Committee, which Rep. Bishop chairs, this week.