Sometimes, it’s best to stop and listen, to have a conversation instead of a duel.

And as my colleague Chris Smart wrote in Thursday’s paper, the bile that has festered for years among land lovers and land users (not mutually exclusive) may have evolved into a more reasonable way of negotiating.

To wit: Sen. Bob Bennett’s wilderness bill would preserve 256,000 wilderness acres in Washington County even as it opens a lot of land elsewhere for commercial development.

And the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance’s agreement with the Bill Barrett Corp., which allows the energy producer to drill for natural gas on the Tavaputs Plateau, but on a much smaller scale than the company had proposed.

That helps satisfy the nation’s need for natural gas and its concurrent need to preserve achingly beautiful places such as Nine Mile and Desolation canyons.

All because they negotiated in a business setting, not a courtroom.

This doesn’t mean there won’t be costly, nasty battles over public lands, particularly in a state where many believe the feds ought to just deed us the 70 percent of federal land within our borders. Or in flashpoints such as San Juan County, where Cedar Mesa is in the gunsights of both sides in the public use vs. preservation debate.

A few years ago, my brother with an MBA sent me the book Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High. Its premise is that creating openings for conversation, not confrontation, can result in conclusions acceptable to all sides in a debate.

It’s about talking in a way to offer opinions, share feelings and articulate theories, creating more intelligent and mutually acceptable outcomes.

For too long, conflicts about water, oil, gas, public access and ownership rights have ended up in court at great cost and too much wasted time — although sometimes the courthouse is the only conceivable forum.

But under the Barrett-SUWA model, for example, it appears that the company’s idea of good business practices found alignment with the preservationists’ legal and financial heft.

Utahns have myriad reasons for loving the earth beneath our feet. I’m not going to go all Kumbaya here, but it seems that reasonable, good-faith negotiations should be the model for solving conflicts before us now and sure to pop up in the future.

Bottom line? Drawn-out battles may be necessary sometimes, but they’re pretty much always counterproductive, acrimonious and ultimately boring.

Of course, I’ve got my biases, too. Save Cedar Mesa.

And Nevada? Keep your sticky mitts off that Snake Valley water.

Peg McEntee is a columnist. Reach her at pegmcentee@sltrib.com.