The Bureau of Land Management is taking another step toward resolving a yearslong battle over a proposed Utah highway corridor that would cut through a national conservation area and habitat for a threatened tortoise.
BLM has completed a draft supplemental analysis of the Trump administration’s last-gasp approval of the corridor through the Red Cliffs National Conservation Area. The administration greenlighted the project in January 2021, just days before Joe Biden’s inauguration.
But the draft supplemental environmental impact statement (EIS), outlined in an advance notice in Thursday’s Federal Register, doesn’t include a “preferred alternative” indicating what direction BLM is headed with the contentious project.
The bureau could decide to uphold then-Interior Secretary David Bernhardt’s approval of the corridor, reject it outright or modify the proposal.
