Utah News Dispatch
East entrance to Zion National Park to stay ‘serene and pristine’ under new deal
The view from the floor of Zion Canyon in autumn. (U.S. National Park Service/Christopher Gezon)
A nonprofit supporting Utah’s most-visited national park is celebrating a milestone for preservation at its scenic, winding East entrance.
The Zion Forever Project announced Wednesday it has secured a conservation easement to protect 145 acres just outside Zion National Park in southwestern Utah. Under the agreement, a private landowner is keeping title to the property but handing over rights to develop it, with Zion Forever as its steward going forward.
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Chris Horton, the nonprofit’s chief operating officer, said it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for conservation. It means no hotels, condos or restaurants will pop up there, although visitors will be able to take advantage of a planned, expanded trail network running through the newly protected area, which is a little smaller than one square quarter-mile.
“There are a lot of people that really enjoy that drive in from the east side because it’s so serene and so pristine compared to a lot of other gateway communities surrounding national parks across the country,” Horton told Utah News Dispatch. “People can be very happy to know that that stretch of land is going to look the way it does now forever.”
Zion Forever is calling the move a monumental step, saying it won’t just protect the views and watersheds, but also wildlife corridors along the park. Horton declined to disclose the exact cost, but noted easements aren’t cheap, generally matching the price of the land if it were to go on the open market.
Horton said it was philanthropist Brian Donnell and the landowner who approached the group about working together to protect the patch of land within a half-mile of the park.
“Zion belongs to all of us, and preserving it takes people who are willing to think beyond their own lifetime,” Donnell said in a prepared statement issued by the nonprofit Wednesday.
Donnell went on to say that “my hope is that future generations will experience this treasured landscape with the same sense of wonder that we have today.”
The group already has a separate conservation easement for land close to the new site, though not right next to it, Horton said. That’s in addition to six other properties it owns outright along the park’s boundary.
