St. George – It’s official.
One month after the release of the final environmental study that was critical of the proposed Northern Corridor Highway, federal agencies on Thursday formally rejected the right-of-way for the polarizing road that was granted in 2021 during the first Trump administration and has been bitterly contested ever since.
The decision from the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service underscored the environmental study’s findings that putting a four-lane highway through the Red Cliffs National Conservation Area would spread noxious weeds, stoke more deadly wildfires and destroy critical habitat for Mojave desert tortoises and other endangered species.
Aimed at cutting traffic in the St. George area by 15% during peak travel areas, the Northern Corridor has been on hold since spring 2021 when Conserve Southwest Utah and other conservation groups sued the two federal agencies that approved the highway, pending the outcome of a second environmental study intended to fix oversights in the first study.
Now that approval has been overturned, conservation groups are hailing the federal action.
“We are very encouraged by this decision, which reaffirms decades-long local agreements to protect Red Cliffs,” Conserve Southwest Utah Executive Director Holly Snow Canada stated via email.”
Kya Marienfeld, wildlands attorney for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, also lauded the decision.
“Authorizing a major freeway through a Congressionally-designated conservation area should never have happened in the first place,” Marienfeld stated via email. “This fight, just to uphold Congress’ intent to protect Red Cliffs for conservation, recreation, and wildlife, has dragged on unnecessarily for almost a decade, but we’re pleased the agencies still firmly recognize the value and importance of this gem of public lands and are recommitting to protecting the important habitat and cultural sites that a four-lane highway would have damaged forever.”
Utah governor weighs in
Conversely, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox blasted the federal agencies.
“It’s unfortunate it [has] taken so many years for the BLM and FWS to come to the wrong decision on the Northern Corridor,” Cox said in a statement. “They are ignoring congressional intent, creating new public safety risks, failing to provide needed relief of traffic congestion and diminishing protections for the Mojave desert tortoise. The proper corridor was authorized four years ago, and we should be moving forward with that corridor today.”
So did Washington County officials, who sued the two federal agencies in August for allegedly conducting an improper biological analysis that led to the second environmental study and paved the way for derailing the highway.
“Today the federal government once again proved its incompetence and loyalty to special-interest environmentalists,” Washington County Commissioner Adam Snow stated in a release.
In his written statement, Washington County Attorney Eric Clarke called the decision a “blatant violation of the 2009 Omnibus Public Lands Act and a slap in the face to decades of good-faith collaboration with Washington County, but also an appalling display of indifference to the environment – especially Zone 6.”
Congress enacted the Omnibus Public Land Management Act, in part, to create the 45,000-acre Red Cliffs National Conservation Area in Washington County and tasked the BLM to oversee the land and protect the area’s natural resources and desert tortoises.
Selling or saving Zone 6
Zone 6, which consists of 6,800 acres – about half of which is owned by the Utah Trust Lands Administration – was created in 2021 to offset the negative impacts of the Northern Corridor Highway. Aside from protecting more tortoise habitat, the area has become a haven for hikers, mountain bikers and other climbing enthusiasts, who have banded together to lobby for saving the land from development.
Now that approval for the highway has been overturned, the question remains if the state will make good on its threat to sell roughly 3,000 acres of its trust lands in Zone 6 to raise money for public education. In October, Trust Lands officials took a major step in the direction by soliciting requests for proposals from the Legislature and other government entities.
In doing so, their aim was to find out what incentives government agencies might provide to facilitate the construction of high-density housing on 1,200 acres on the southern half of its Zone 6 holdings. There are no concrete plans in place to develop the northern parcel, although one idea floated by Trust Lands officials calls for building multimillion-dollar homes on large lots in the area.
If all 3,000 acres are developed, according to Trust Lands officials, Mojave desert tortoises would be put in peril and about 60% of the trails in Zone 6 would be negatively impacted, including the Bearclaw Poppy and Zen Trails, along with 300 bouldering and 80 rock-climbing sites.
While lauding the federal agencies’ reversal of the Northern Corridor, conservation groups acknowledged the world-class recreation and critical-species habitat in Zone 6′s Greater Moe’s Valley remain in jeopardy.
“We are committed to safeguarding other vulnerable lands, such as the Greater Moe’s Valley area, and we urge decision-makers to join us in securing permanent protections for these invaluable spaces,” Snow Canada wrote in her statement.”
If Zone 6 is sold to developers, Commissioner Snow isn’t shy about affixing blame.
“Conserve Southwest Utah sued and settled on this issue and the blame for any negative impacts to the thriving recreation and tortoise population in Zone 6 lies with that organization,” he said in his statement.”
Asked what the county will do next, Clarke told The Tribune all options remain on the table, including more litigation. County officials retain some hope that the incoming Trump administration might reverse the federal agencies’ decision.
The Red Cliffs National Conservation Area is encompassed within the 69,000-acre Red Cliffs Desert Reserve, which was created in 1996 to recover desert tortoises threatened by development.