About Red Cliffs NCA

Red Cliffs NCA in Southern Utah is strikingly beautiful with its wide-open lands, narrow canyons, and namesake rock formations. These public lands are treasured by locals and visitors and protection from development is essential if we don't want to lose the diverse range of unparalleled ecological, cultural, wildlife and recreational resources they hold. The proposed Northern Corridor Highway would:

Permanently damage critical habitat and further endanger species like the Mojave desert tortoise that are struggling to survive.
Harm places where people love to hike, bike, climb, and horseback ride.
Set a terrible national precedent that protected public lands can be paved over.

Building a Local Highway Through Protected Lands Has National Consequences

A threat to one National Conservation Area is a threat to all protected public lands. If constructed, the Northern Corridor Highway would set a dangerous national precedent that would make all protected public lands vulnerable to development.

Conservation Lands in the United States cover around 35 million acres, including all 17 National Conservation Areas, numerous National Monuments, Wilderness Areas, National Scenic and Historic Trails, and Wild and Scenic Rivers. If the Northern Corridor Highway is constructed, these beloved lands will become vulnerable to development, undermining the entire National Conservation Lands system. We must ensure that lands already designated as protected remain protected.

Keep Protected Lands Protected

Red Cliffs is Too Valuable to Destroy

Red Cliffs NCA spans 45,000 acres of stunning red rock wilderness in Southwest Utah next to the St. George metropolitan area. Red Cliffs NCA was designated by Congress in 2009 for the sole purpose of ensuring permanent protections for the ecological, scenic, wildlife, recreational, cultural, historical, natural, educational, and scientific resources found in this area, such as the threatened Mojave desert tortoise.

Red Cliffs is No Place for a Highway

The Northern Corridor is a proposed 4-lane highway through the protected Red Cliffs Desert Reserve and National Conservation Area. The highway would run through Red Cliffs for 4.5 miles, damaging critical habitat, exquisite scenery, cultural resources, and world-class recreation.

The Northern Corridor Highway was approved by the Department of the Interior in the final days of the Trump administration. This decision was made despite the fact that the highway was denied six prior times because it was found to violate several laws and was unsupported by Congress. In June of 2021, the Red Cliffs Conservation Coalition filed a lawsuit challenging the highway approval to ensure that Red Cliffs remains protected.

The Northern Corridor Highway must be stopped because:

Red Cliffs NCA is part of the ancestral homelands of Southern Paiute and Pueblo communities. These lands are filled with significant cultural resources to Indigenous communities in the Southwest region that construction will irreparably harm.

The construction of the Northern Corridor Highway and related decisions would cause habitat degradation and destruction leading to the permanent loss of Mojave desert tortoise habitat. The highway will impact over 20 additional threatened, endangered, and sensitive species including the Gila monster, burrowing owl, and kit fox.

Red Cliffs NCA is a popular destination for all outdoor enthusiasts with world-class recreation that attracts over 200,000 visitors annually. In addition to harming the integrity of the protected landscape, the Northern Corridor Highway would damage 15 popular trails.