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Sierra Club Lawsuits

No More Roads through the Paradise Ridge Prairie in Idaho

Case Updates:

August 1, 2003

Putting a road through a threatened native prairie sounds unwise. But that’s exactly what the federal and state highway agencies tried to do over “Paradise Ridge,” one of the last remaining areas of undisturbed prairie in western Idaho. The Sierra Club filed a lawsuit in April 2003 challenging the proposed 4-lane highway that threatened to destroy Paradise Ridge. The following September, a federal district court in Idaho blocked construction of the highway across Paradise Ridge, forcing the agencies to reconsider the environmental impacts of the project. In stopping the project, the court explained that the agencies had "acted in an arbitrary and capricious manner" in approving a highway that would impact an area that "may be the rarest, most endangered prairie ecosystem in North America." With the agencies back at the drawing board, Paradise Ridge is safe for now.

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