Mission Statement:

"The Department of Natural Resources is empowered by the Southern Ute Indian Tribal Council with the mission to develop, administer and manage the natural resources of the Southern Ute Indian Reservation for the benefit of the Tribe and Tribal Members.  The Department is entrusted with promoting the beneficial use, protection, conservation, preservation, and developmental enhancement of the Tribe's natural resource by using sound administrative, ecological, cultural, socioeconomic and educational methods for the benefit of present and future generations."

Management of the Tribe's extensive natural resources requires a broad array of organizational functions services, and expertise.  Historically, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) exercised management responsibility on behalf of the Tribe.  Over the years, however, the Tribe has assumed more and more of a direct management role, and the organizational structure and capability of the Tribe has grown correspondingly.

In the 1980's, the Tribe began examining the possibility and feasibility of contracting certain resource management functions from the BIA.  As the Tribe took on more of these functions and concurrently developed additional in-house expertise and capability for resource management, the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) began to grow into a fully staffed organizational unit with the structure and capability to exercise management of the broad spectrum of surface resources.  DNR now employs over 46 full-time and temporary employees, about 19 % of who are tribal members or other Native Americans.  The Department continues to follow, as its "road map", the Tribal Natural Resources Management Plan, which was approved by the Tribal Council 1990 and updated in 2000.