The long-running fight over the proposed Northern Corridor Highway through Red Cliffs National Conservation Area (NCA) near St. George, Utah has entered a new, infuriating phase. In January, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service flipped their own science on its head and reapproved a four-lane, high-speed highway through some of the last best habitat for the threatened Mojave desert tortoise. In an abrupt about-face, the agencies made the decision just two years after they agreed to take a harder look at the damage this road would cause and had declined to approve the highway right-of-way due to its incompatibility with the values of Red Cliffs NCA.
This is at least the eighth time this zombie proposal has lurched back to life, and it’s still a terrible idea. The route would carve through the heart of an NCA that Congress specifically set aside to “conserve, protect, and enhance” its values—not to facilitate highway construction and more speculative sprawl. The agencies’ latest decision doesn’t resolve these fundamental conflicts; it just pretends they don’t exist.
SUWA and our conservation partners are not playing along. On February 4, our coalition filed a federal lawsuit challenging the January 2026 approval as illegal under multiple federal laws, including the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009, the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the Land and Water Conservation Fund Act. The suit also argues that the agencies violated the terms of the 2023 settlement that sent this project back to the drawing board in the first place.
Thankfully, just before this newsletter went to press, the court granted our motion for a preliminary injunction, halting the Utah Department of Transportation’s rush to install fencing, clear vegetation, and move tortoises in advance of any final highway development plan. The injunction will remain in place while the case moves quickly toward a decision, ensuring that Red Cliffs and its threatened tortoise population are not irreversibly harmed in the interim.
As we’ve been saying all along, the Northern Corridor Highway would fragment tortoise habitat, ratchet up wildfire risk, and send a dangerous message that even our “most protected” public lands are only protected until the next flashy development scheme comes along.
Red Cliffs was promised to the public as a conservation area. We intend to hold the agencies—and Utah—to the law and to that promise.
—Kya Marienfeld
The above article first appeared in the Spring 2026 issue of our Redrock Wilderness newsletter. Become a member to receive our print newsletter in your mailbox 3 times a year.
