The BlueRibbon Coalition has formally appealed the BLM’s decision to end free dispersed camping across nearly 14,000 acres along the SR9 corridor outside Zion National Park. Our Statement of Reasons was filed on August 19, 2026 with the Interior Board of Land Appeals, and it is built almost entirely out of the BLM’s own record with support from our members.
What happened
On March 23, 2026, the St. George Field Manager signed the Decision Record for the SR9 Campground Management Plan. It authorizes designating roughly 13,943 acres along the SR9 corridor as “limited to designated camping areas,” ending the free, primitive dispersed camping that has happened there for generations. Smithsonian Butte, Gooseberry Mesa, the Sheep Bridge Road country, North Creek, and the areas off Kolob Terrace Road all sit inside that footprint.
What BLM offers in exchange is a maximum of 260 spaces at full build-out: 150 sites at a Flagstone Quarry campground, 80 at a Gooseberry Mesa campground, and up to 30 designated dispersed sites on Gooseberry Mesa. The catch is that this construction depends on funding the agency doesn’t currently have, and BLM’s own environmental review admits it cannot say how many sites will actually be ready in the first phase.
You did not let this pass quietly. Across the scoping period and the EA comment period, BRC members and supporters filed thousands of comments. After the decision came out, 178 of you sent us written adverse impact statements describing what this closure costs your family in specific terms. Those statements, along with sworn declarations from BRC Executive Director Ben Burr and BRC member Ryan Shaw, are part of the appeal record now.
What BRC did about it
BRC staff attorney Bella Eldridge filed our Statement of Reasons with the Interior Board of Land Appeals, the appellate body inside the Department of the Interior that reviews BLM decisions. The case is docketed as IBLA-2026-0142.
We are asking the Board to hold that the Decision Record, the Finding of No Significant Impact, and the underlying Environmental Assessment are arbitrary, capricious, and not in accordance with law, and to vacate them and send the project back to BLM for a proper analysis. This is the administrative challenge available to the public after a BLM decision, and the record built here is what carries forward if this fight has to continue in a federal courtroom.
We wanted to break down some of our arguments for you:
BLM cannot define their own boundary. BLM told the public the restriction affects only 15.2 percent of the “recreation analysis area.” That percentage divides 13,943 acres by a 92,053-acre denominator BLM defined for recreation and nothing else. Special status species were analyzed within a half-mile buffer. Water resources were confined to the North Creek valley bottom. Only the recreation figure, the one used to tell the public how big this closure is, was measured against a boundary five to ten times wider. Internal records show staff picked the wider boundary after public comments had already closed, couldn’t later explain how they’d drawn it, and privately acknowledged it made the closure look smaller than it is. Interestingly, an earlier draft that compared total acreage directly was removed after someone asked BLM to take it out. Staff proposed that boundary after scoping had already closed, could not later reconstruct how it was drawn, described it as, at best, “not quite as arbitrary” as the available alternatives, and said aloud that the resulting framing “paints a … rosy picture.” An earlier draft included a straight total-acres comparison. BLM removed it after receiving “a comment to remove that.”
Only 59.4 acres damaged, yet 13,943 acres are closed. The only quantified, mapped, site-specific evidence in the record of where dispersed camping has actually degraded the land is BLM’s own restoration figure of 59.4 acres, which is 0.43 percent of the area BLM proposes to close. The EA never explains the gap and never analyzes whether targeted restoration at those 59.4 acres would address the problem it describes.
260 campsites cannot absorb 544,500 campers. That visitor figure is BLM’s own. The EA cites a National Park Service survey finding roughly 11 percent of Zion’s 4.95 million annual visitors intend to camp outside the park, which the agency translates to about 544,500 visitors camping outside Zion each year at an average of 4.5 nights. The EA never reconciles that arithmetic against 260 unfunded fee spaces, and never analyzes where the people who cannot get one will go. One of our supporter’s impact statement put the problem more directly than the EA does:
“If I had to get a reservation or fight for a spot in a developed camp ground I would never come. I don’t know my schedule far enough in advance to have set dates either.”
The decision came before the study. Internal records show that more than five months before public scoping opened, BLM had already selected its action: “We are dropping Eagle Crags and Wire Mesa … We are moving forward on the Quarry Campground, Gooseberry Mesa Campground, and Designated Dispersed Campsites.” Later, the interdisciplinary team was thanked for “amending rationale to align with the updated proposed action.” Additionally, an internal request instructed staff to trim the mapped acreage to avoid “sticker shock” with the public.” Finally, the Statement of Work governing the EA told BLM’s contractor that “no alternatives (other than No Action) will be analyzed in detail.” The two alternatives that would have preserved dispersed camping, one with supporting infrastructure and one with a permit system, were added to the “Considered but Eliminated” section only after the comment period closed. The public never got to test BLM’s reasons for rejecting them.
BLM had relevant data and ignored it. Tellingly, BLM had the data to calculate the economic value of free camping to visitors and never ran the math. The agency’s own worksheet cites a mean consumer-surplus value of $74.41 per day for camping and recreation in Utah. It had that per-day value and it had the 544,500-visitor estimate, and it never multiplied them. Back of the napkin math puts this impact at $40.5 million of economic benefit that was just completely ignored. An internal draft acknowledged that new fees “have the potential to exclude low-income campers.” In the final EA, those campers are merely “inconvenienced.”
What BRC supporters said about it
The impacts of removing dispersed camping have a face. One of BRC’s supporters wrote:
“As a single mom with 5 kids it’s difficult to afford camping fees. Being able to do dispersed / free camping was a huge benefit to my family, we have camped gooseberry mesa and sheep’s bridge road area for about 8 years.”
Another wrote regarding their bi-annual trip:
"I understand the proposed action replaces dispersed camping with approximately 80 developed sites. Based on publicly reported estimates, nightly fees are expected to fall in the range of $40 to $60 per site. For a group of our size, this requires a minimum of 3 to 5 sites. At those rates, a two-night trip could generate $240 to $600 in camping fees alone ... Dispersed camping was not a convenience. It was a condition that made the trip feasible."
Another wrote on the availability of options around Zion:
"Watchman campground is always booked up and expensive. And the hotels and the lodge are out of reach. Now only people with a lot of money will be able to visit Zion. I'm not sure I'll be able to make it back so I'm holding off on purchasing my America the Beautiful Pass."
Another wrote on the experience only dispersed camping can provide:
"While I can afford and sometimes do camp in developed camp sites, I generally elect to camp in dispersed camping areas. I do not do this necessarily because it is of no charge, but because I go camping because I want to be able to enjoy an experience in private."
What happens next
The appeal is docketed and our Statement of Reasons is filed. BLM will respond, and the Interior Board of Land Appeals will rule. These cases move on the Board’s timeline, not ours, and a decision can take many months. We will report each development as it happens rather than waiting for a final answer.
Two things are worth watching in the meantime. The EA itself states that it “does not itself close these areas to camping” and that “any actual closure would require a separate process.” We'll be watching for that separate process, because that is where the acreage actually comes off the map. And the replacement campgrounds are still unfunded, which keeps alive the outcome BRC has warned about from the start: the free camping disappears long before the paid camping exists.
This is what your statements bought
Every argument above traces back to a public record that exists because people showed up. The comments of our members and supporters established BRC’s standing to bring this appeal. The impact statements gave our attorney the evidence of real harm an appeal requires. The declarations put sworn testimony behind it.
Appeals cost money. Staff attorney time, review of thousands of pages of administrative record, and the willingness to keep filing for years are what separate an organization that complains from one that fights. If you want BRC on the case for the next closure, and there will be a next closure, support our legal fund.
We read what you sent us. We used it. And as long as you keep showing up, we will keep using it to defend your ground.
We belong here.
