President Donald Trump on Friday made his latest move to reshape how federal public lands can be used, rolling back prohibitions in place since the 1970s on off-highway vehicles in national parks and other areas.
Conservation advocates immediately slammed Trump’s undoing of the long-standing guardrails, saying it will result in the destruction of wide swaths of public lands.
Trump’s executive order revokes measures issued by President Richard Nixon in 1972 and President Jimmy Carter in 1977.
Both orders were issued to curb the then-growing use of off-highway vehicles — specifically “minibikes, trial bikes, snowmobiles, dune-buggies, all-terrain vehicles, and others” — to protect environmental values and prevent conflict with other recreational users.
But Trump asserted that those orders, which have guided land use for more than 50 years, have halted not only off-highway vehicle users but extractive industries.
“These vague, subjective criteria often result in barriers to energy and timber production and utility maintenance, permit delays, and de facto bans on hiking and other forms of recreation that require accessing remote areas, all while doing little to benefit multiple use of Federal lands,” Trump wrote in the order.
He added that the revocation would also “restore balanced land management by eliminating ill-defined and arbitrary environmental and social standards, thereby ensuring that all public land users will be granted access on equal terms. “
The complaint echoes other recent Trump administration moves.
The Trump administration last month eliminated a Biden administration environmental policy that aimed to put conservation efforts on par with the extractive industry and other public lands uses, and also kicked off a process to overhaul regulations governing livestock grazing and rangeland health to make the process more favorable to ranchers.
One Voice Coalition, which represents various motorized recreation advocacy groups, lauded Trump’s order.
“Almost a decade of detailed work from One Voice and our members on this issue has started to provide benefits,” Scott Jones, vice chair of One Voice, said in a statement issued Friday.
He added: “One Voice and its membership looks forward to working with federal land managers in implementing policies that facilitate public access to public lands rather than creating and expanding barriers to public access.”
Conservationists disputed that enthusiasts of off-highway vehicles have been at a disadvantage on public land.
“The reality is that there are tens of thousands of miles of dirt roads and trails in Utah’s canyon country open today to motorized vehicles,” Steve Bloch, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance’s legal director, said in a statement. “Far from motorized vehicles being kept out of public lands, it’s quite the opposite: it’s the wildlife and visitors trying to picnic or camp with their families that are being chased out at every turn.”
While Trump’s order directs the Interior and Agriculture departments to “rescind or revise” any regulations that implemented the previous executive orders, the process of opening public lands to more vehicles won’t be an immediate change.
Laura Peterson, an attorney at the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, said while the agencies have incorporated the Nixon and Carter orders differently in their respective regulations, new routes and areas for off-highway vehicle use will still have to go through a case-by-case process for approval. Eventually, with fewer restrictions, that access could expand dramatically, conservation groups are warning.
“Existing travel management plans will remain on the books and to the extent those agencies want to change them … they will also have to do that work on a plan-by-plan basis,” Peterson said, referring to the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service regulations developed for specific areas of land.
The Wilderness Society also blasted Trump’s move, arguing it will disrupt the balance between nonmotorized lands users and vehicles.
“Public lands are big enough for hikers, hunters, horseback riders, mountain bikers, motorized users and families looking for quiet places to camp, if we are wise about how we share them,” Alison Flint, the group’s acting vice president for federal policy, said in a statement.
