Associated Press - May 6, 2009 2:54 PM ET

DENVER (AP) - A southern Utah county has taken its fight to manage roads in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument to a federal appeals court, claiming that federal officials improperly closed routes to traffic.

Lawyers for Kane County argued Wednesday before the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver that the county managed the roads for years before the nearly 2-million-acre monument was designated in 1996.

Environmental groups sued the county after it removed federal signs prohibiting motor-vehicle traffic in some spots and put up county signs opening the roads. Jim Angell, an attorney representing The Wilderness Society and the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, said the county must prove its right to the roads.

A decision by the three-judge panel is pending.

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