Utah Wildlife Board approves 2024 expo permits

Salt Lake City — During the public meeting Thursday, the Utah Wildlife Board approved a total of 200 expo permits to be offered in 2024.

Expo permits are offered once each year through a drawing held at the Western Hunting and Conservation Expo in Salt Lake City. Anyone can apply for the permits during the expo. There is a $5 application fee for each permit, and part of that fee goes to the conservation organizations that oversee the expo to help pay for costs associated with hosting the event and running the permit drawing. The remaining portion of the application fee is used for conservation efforts.

"The expo permits not only provide a great hunting opportunity, but the funding from these yearly allocated permits has also led to the enhancement of thousands of acres of crucial habitats and the completion of important research to help us better manage big game populations in the state," Utah Division of Wildlife Resources Wildlife Section Chief Covy Jones said.

The expo permits are available for the following species in Utah:

• Deer
• Elk
• Pronghorn
• Moose
• Bison
• Mountain goat
• Desert bighorn sheep
• Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep
• Turkey
• Black bear

The board also approved a few changes for which hunting units the expo permits are for and the allocation of the permits in that area, including:

Elk

• Beaver, East unit (one mid-season, any legal weapon)
• Book Cliffs, Bitter Creek/East unit (one mid-season, any legal weapon)
• Central Mtns, Manti unit (six mid-season, any legal weapon)
• Central Mtns, Nebo/San Pitch Mtns unit (one mid-season, any legal weapon)
• La Sal, La Sal Mountains unit (one mid-season, any legal weapon)
• Mt Dutton unit (one mid-season, any legal weapon)
• Panguitch Lake unit (one mid-season, any legal weapon)
• Plateau, Fishlake/Thousand Lakes unit (two mid-season, any legal weapon)
• Plateau, Fishlake/Thousand Lakes unit (one late-season, any legal weapon)

Turkey

• Southern Region

The board also voted to approve the audit of the 2023 expo permit drawing. Two hundred expo permits were also offered in 2023, and there were a record number of expo permit applications, with over 435,000.

You can watch the full board meeting on the Utah Department of Natural Resources YouTube channel.