The U.S. Forest Service just opened a rulemaking process that could reshape how motorized vehicles are allowed to move through national forests and grasslands nationwide.
Not a proposed rule yet. Just the opening bell – and the window to speak up is now, before that proposal gets written.
Here’s what happened. Following an executive order from the White House, the USFS issued a Notice of Intent (NOI) to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement and revise the Travel Management Rule. That’s the framework that’s governed where motorized vehicles can travel on National Forest System lands for more than twenty years, decided forest by forest based on local input, resource conditions, and the best science available at the time. The NOI kicks off the first public scoping and comment period, meaning the agency is asking what it should consider before drafting anything.
What’s on the table
The NOI lays out several changes the USFS is considering:
- An “open unless closed” presumption for existing roads and trails, instead of the reverse
- Removing the national minimization criteria that currently push managers to limit damage to soils, watersheds, and vegetation, and to reduce wildlife harassment and habitat disruption
- Reconsidering routes that are currently closed or heavily restricted, depending on funding
- Replacing the Minimum Road System requirement with a looser “adequate and appropriate” standard
- Changes to how the public gets to weigh in and how travel designations get monitored going forward
- New allowances for limited off-route motorized use – think retrieving downed big game, dispersed camping, and gathering firewood
- Pulling Class 1 e-bikes out from under motor vehicle rules on trails where regular bikes are already allowed, while keeping other seasonal and site-specific restrictions in place
Access and conservation have never been separate conversations
I’ve spent forty years running roads and trails across California’s forests and backcountry, and I’ve never seen access and conservation function as two different issues. They’re the same issue. How a route gets managed determines what happens to the habitat around it. What happens to that habitat determines whether the hunting and fishing that draw people out there in the first place are still worth doing five or ten years from now.
I support motorized access to public land. I drive it constantly. But more access isn’t automatically better access, not if it comes at the cost of clean water, wildlife habitat, or the quality of the experience everyone’s actually out there for.
This NOI comes just days after the USFS proposed rescinding the 2001 Roadless Rule, another decision with the potential to reshape how millions of acres of public land get managed. Two separate actions, same underlying question: who gets a voice in how these lands are run, and how much of that decision-making stays local, science-informed, and open to the public.
How to add your voice and be heard
Backcountry Hunters & Anglers has a campaign built around exactly this moment, called United We Stand for Public Lands. The idea is simple – off-roaders, hikers, hunters, anglers, and everyone else who uses these forests don’t need to agree on every detail to stand together on the basics: responsible management, real public input, and conservation that holds up over time.
BHA’s Action Center makes it easy to submit a comment in support of durable access and a science-informed travel management process. Taking action adds your name to a petition BHA will deliver to the Forest Service on the last day of the comment period, plus a letter to your members of Congress and the White House.
Weigh in now through the Backcountry Hunters & Anglers site: CLICK HERE
If you want to go a step further, you can also file your own individual comment directly with the Forest Service through the Federal Register docket. The more specific and personal that comment is, the more weight it tends to carry.