The Battle for the Backcountry: Trump Wipes Out 50 Years of Off-Road Rules — and the Mojave Is Ground Zero
On the evening of Friday, May 29, 2026, one of the most consequential shifts in federal land-use policy in a generation landed without fanfare. The White House quietly dropped a move that reshaped how tens of millions of acres of American public land would be governed for years to come. President Donald Trump rescinded Executive Orders 11644 and 11989, signed by Presidents Nixon and Carter, which had set strict criteria for off-road vehicle use on public lands. For the ATV community, the overlanding crowd, and the dirt bike culture that has long staked a claim on the American West, it was the biggest policy development in memory. For conservationists and desert ecologists, it was an alarm bell ringing across millions of acres of fragile terrain. And nowhere is that collision more raw, more legally complex, and more emotionally charged than in California's Mojave Desert.
A Friday Night Policy Drop Five Decades in the Making
The first executive order, signed by President Richard M. Nixon in 1972 and known formally as Executive Order 11644, established strict criteria for the use of off-road vehicles on federal lands in an effort to minimize their environmental impact — a product of an era when the environmental movement was reshaping American politics at a remarkable pace. In 1969, Congress passed the National Environmental Policy Act, marking the beginning of a new federal approach that emphasized environmental review and planning, and Nixon's order was a natural extension of that momentum.
The 1972 order established clear guidelines for off-road vehicle regulation and enforcement on the ground — asking agency employees to designate OHV and non-OHV trails, carve out exceptions for official use, and incorporate public comment. Executive Order 11989, issued by President Carter in May 1977, amended Nixon's order and strengthened federal agencies' authority to manage OHV use. Under it, an agency head was required to close areas to OHV use if data showed that off-road vehicles were causing considerable adverse effects on soil, vegetation, wildlife, wildlife habitat, or cultural and historic resources.
When Nixon's order was signed in 1972, it mentioned just 5 million off-road vehicles as a growing problem even though they were often used for "legitimate purposes." Nixon's directive recognized that OHVs were "in frequent conflict with wise land and resource management practices, environmental values, and other types of recreational activity." While exact modern estimates of OHV use on federal lands aren't immediately available, it is clear the number of OHVs in the U.S. has grown substantially since the 1970s. Some states, such as Arizona, have experienced a 347 percent growth in OHV usage over the course of a single decade, according to a report from the Congressional Sportsmen's Foundation.
The announcement came on the evening of Friday, May 29, 2026. The timing was not accidental. "Rescinding guidance meant to reduce conflicts in the backcountry and protect wildlife habitat isn't popular; that's why Trump tried to bury it by putting this order out on a Friday evening," Kate Groetzinger, a spokesperson for the Center for Western Priorities, said in an email. The White House offered no press conference, no primetime statement — just a presidential signature and a fact sheet.
What the Order Actually Does — and Doesn't Do
The executive order, entitled "Removing Unnecessary and Counterproductive Restrictions on Access to Federal Lands," repealed the two past executive orders. But the practical mechanics of what changes on the ground are more nuanced than either the celebration posts or the outrage headlines suggest. The order does not automatically open every closed road, trail, or public land area to OHV use. Instead, it directs federal agencies to review and revise the regulations built around the Nixon and Carter orders. The practical effects will likely depend on how agencies handle those rulemaking processes and how existing travel-management plans are changed or challenged.
The executive order does not automatically reopen closed trails. It does not erase existing BLM travel management plans. It does not wipe out Forest Service route designations. It does not remove wilderness boundaries, national park restrictions, state rules, seasonal closures, permit requirements, or local land-use restrictions. If a trail was closed on May 28, it was probably still closed on May 30. If your local Motor Vehicle Use Map says a route is closed, that map still controls until the agency formally changes it. If a BLM route is not designated open, it does not become legal because of a headline. And if a gate is locked, this order is not permission to go around it.
Rather than leaving the landscape completely unregulated, federal land management will instead rely on a network of existing statutory laws passed by Congress, including the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, and the Federal Land Policy and Management Act. Trump determined that these modern statutory frameworks provide enough oversight to manage federal land "without retaining the additional specific designation criteria" of the previous executive orders.
The order directs the Secretary of the Interior, the Secretary of Agriculture, and the heads of any other relevant agencies to initiate rulemakings to rescind or revise the regulations previously adopted to implement those executive orders. That process — formal notice-and-comment rulemaking — takes time, invites litigation, and unfolds at different speeds at the BLM versus the Forest Service versus the National Park Service. For riders hoping to unlock trails by summer, the reality is a slower burn.
The White House Argument: Modernize, Simplify, Open Up
The White House argued that the executive orders were issued roughly 50 years ago, before modern technologies could be paired with a comprehensive statutory land management framework, and that the latest mapping technologies, paired with the rescissions, would allow for off-road vehicle use designations that provide more access, recreational opportunities, and greater benefits to the public.
The administration maintained that the vague and subjective standards imposed by these prior executive orders created unnecessary barriers to recreation, energy and timber production, access to remote areas, and infrastructure maintenance, and that the "minimization criteria" had adversely impacted rural economies, permitting, tourism, American manufacturing, organized motorsports, volunteer stewardship efforts, and public confidence in federal land access planning.
The administration specifically called out the criteria as "difficult for agencies to operationalize due to vagueness," including requirements for minimizing harassment of wildlife or significant disruption of wildlife habitats, minimizing conflicts between off-road vehicle use and other existing or proposed recreational uses, and ensuring that off-road vehicle use in given locations would not "adversely affect [the location's] natural, aesthetic, or scenic values." The White House framed these as subjective judgment calls with no clear standard for compliance — which, predictably, made them fertile ground for litigation.
Supporters of the new Trump order argue that those old standards became vague, outdated, and too often used as a one-way ratchet toward closures. The White House position is that modern environmental laws and land-management statutes already give agencies the tools they need to manage federal lands without relying on the old executive-order criteria.
The Mojave: America's Off-Road Epicenter Under Legal Siege
No landscape in America makes this debate more concrete than the Western Mojave Desert. The Western Mojave planning area is one of the most important public-land recreation regions in Southern California, encompassing vast desert terrain used by OHV riders, overlanders, dual-sport riders, families, campers, hunters, and off-road clubs. It is also, by any ecological measure, one of the most sensitive.
On January 25, 2026 — just weeks before Trump's executive order was signed — U.S. District Judge Susan Illston ordered the Bureau of Land Management to close over 2,200 miles of off-road routes in the Western Mojave Desert. This court fight had been brewing since 2006. The Western Mojave planning area covers 9.4 million acres, of which the BLM manages 3.1 million. Before the fight started, there were approximately 16,000 miles of routes providing access to the region.
The BLM had already closed 10,000 miles through its 2019 travel plan, leaving roughly 6,000 miles open. Judge Illston's order eliminated another 2,200 of those remaining miles. Three of the nine travel management areas were closed entirely. The total loss: 76% of all routes. That is not a trimming at the margins. That is the near-total erasure of a riding landscape that generations of Southern California families have navigated on weekends for decades.
Judge Illston ruled that off-road vehicles are "a significant ongoing cause of harm" to the tortoise population, ordering the BLM to shut down 2,000 miles of trails. In her order, she wrote that tortoise populations in the area had declined precipitously since she began presiding over the litigation decades ago. She gave the BLM until 2029 to come up with a new network of off-road vehicle routes.
The Desert Tortoise at the Center of Everything
The desert tortoise — a once-resilient reptile and keystone species in the Mojave on which other animals depend for the burrows it digs — is imperiled in California thanks in part to off-road vehicles that race through thousands of miles of trails, official and unofficial, crisscrossing millions of acres of tortoise habitat. Environmental groups challenged BLM's route plan, arguing that the agency failed to adequately protect sensitive habitat and species, including the threatened desert tortoise and the endangered Lane Mountain milk-vetch.
The list of threats to local tortoises includes upper respiratory tract disease, habitat loss, military maneuvers, livestock grazing, and offroading. Vehicle access is linked to more vegetation destruction and soil disturbances, which in turn leads to the spread of invasive weeds that can crowd out the plants tortoises eat and fuel wildfires. People are also more likely to dump garbage alongside established roads, which can attract ravens that feed on baby tortoises.
When "minimize" has no endpoint, every decision can be challenged — and for decades, an open-ended regulation became a weapon for perpetual litigation. The last time the court set a "rigid timeline," BLM took from 2011 to 2019 to comply. The agency spent a decade, analyzed every route, closed thousands of miles — and the court still said it wasn't enough. From the OHV community's perspective, the minimization criteria were never a tool for balance; they were a ratchet that could only ever turn one direction: toward more closures.
The Litigation Machine and Its Human Costs
In 2019, after lawsuits from conservation organizations, the BLM evaluated multiple alternatives for the WEMO travel plan. The option they ultimately chose was a preferred alternative pushed by anti-access groups that closed 10,000 miles of routes. Then in 2026, after further lawsuits, the court closed another 2,200 miles. After the 2019 plan was finalized, the Center for Biological Diversity sued again. Biden had appointed Nada Wolff Culver, a former Wilderness Society attorney who helped bring the original WEMO lawsuit, as BLM's second-in-command. Judge Illston then ruled that BLM's 2019 plan still violated minimization criteria.
On May 5, 2026, BlueRibbon Coalition and BRC member John Stewart filed a motion to intervene in the Ninth Circuit appeal involving the Western Mojave closures. BRC said it was seeking to represent OHV users directly in the case because the federal government's role is to defend the agency process, not necessarily to advocate for rider access.
There is legitimate frustration in the OHV community that federal land managers, lawsuits, and vague standards have sometimes made access harder rather than easier. Riders have seen routes used for generations disappear from maps with little practical replacement. They have watched agencies talk about "balance" while reducing motorized opportunity year after year. That frustration is real, and it has built for decades — which is precisely why Trump's executive order landed with such force across the off-road world.
The Voices on Both Sides
The reaction from recreation advocates was swift and enthusiastic. "This is a historic win for every American who values their right to access public lands," said Ben Burr, executive director of BlueRibbon Coalition, in a press release. One Voice Coalition, which represents various motorized recreation advocacy groups, also lauded Trump's order. "Almost a decade of detailed work from One Voice and our members on this issue has started to provide benefits," said Scott Jones, vice chair of One Voice.
Conservation groups took the opposite view with equal conviction. The Wilderness Society objected strenuously. "For more than 50 years, common-sense safeguards have helped land managers reduce conflicts, protect clean water and wildlife habitat, and make sure public lands can be enjoyed by everyone. This administration is working to destroy this foundation, which has been in place since Richard Nixon," said Acting President for Federal Policy Alison Flint. "This is a cynical attempt to pit public land users against one another while weakening the rules that protect the land itself."
Steve Bloch, legal director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, offered a pointed rebuttal to the narrative that motorized users have been shut out. "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," he said. "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."
The Center for Western Priorities warned that without the old guidance, fragile ecosystems — including those inside national parks — are at risk of unmitigated OHV use, which can degrade streams, displace wildlife, and significantly damage soil and vegetation. Beyond ecological damage, allowing more OHV use in the backcountry will increase dust and noise pollution and lead to conflicts between off-roaders and other user groups.
Where This Goes Next: Agencies, Courts, and the Long Game
Trump's order directs agencies including the Department of the Interior and Department of Agriculture to begin rulemaking to revise or rescind regulations enforcing the revoked orders. This process will determine how OHV designations are handled going forward and could significantly alter trail maps, access rules, and enforcement priorities. Stakeholders from off-road communities to environmental advocates are expected to lobby heavily as the new framework takes shape.
Laura Peterson, an attorney at the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, noted that while 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. In other words, the executive order removes the philosophical framework that justified closures — but it does not dissolve the specific regulatory architecture built on top of that framework overnight. Those rules will need to be rewritten, one rulemaking at a time.
The biggest impact will likely show up in future agency rulemaking and local travel planning. The BLM and the U.S. Forest Service manage vast areas of public-land riding opportunities in the West. When they revise a resource management plan, update a travel management plan, review a trail system, or respond to lawsuits, the policy framework matters. This new order tells agencies to move away from the old executive-order criteria and build a new approach around existing statutes and multiple-use management.
For the Mojave specifically, the tension between Trump's deregulatory push and Judge Illston's January ruling creates a genuinely uncertain legal landscape. The court order closing 2,200 miles of Mojave routes is grounded in federal environmental law — not in Nixon's executive order alone — meaning the Trump rescission does not automatically undo that ruling. The court gave the BLM until 2029 to complete a third analysis of the route network. Whether the Trump administration will direct the BLM to appeal those closures, or to begin a new travel planning process with a dramatically different standard, remains one of the most consequential open questions in Western land management.
The Broader Pattern: Land Access as a Culture War Front
Immediately upon returning to office, President Trump signed an executive order to unleash American energy that opened hundreds of millions of acres of federal lands and waters to energy development and streamlined permitting to increase production. In February 2025, Trump's Council on Environmental Quality rescinded its NEPA regulations, clearing the way for agencies to reform their own environmental review policies. The Department of Agriculture also took action to rescind the 2001 Roadless Rule that prevents road construction, reconstruction, and timber harvest on nearly 45 million acres of the National Forest System. The OHV order fits neatly into a broader campaign to roll back the regulatory architecture of the environmental era — one executive order at a time.
The repeal could open more Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Forest Service, and even some National Park System areas to OHVs, reversing decades of restricted access. For the tens of millions of Americans who own ATVs, dirt bikes, overlanding rigs, and snowmobiles — and who have long chafed against a system that seemed to multiply restricted zones year after year — the announcement landed like a signal flare over the American backcountry. That constituency is large, politically engaged, and economically significant. The OHV industry generates billions of dollars annually in parts, accessories, guided trips, fuel, food, and lodging in rural communities across the West.
Most riders are not out there trying to destroy habitat. They are families camping in the desert, veterans finding peace on public land, parents teaching kids to ride responsibly, clubs doing cleanups. Local businesses depend on fuel sales, parts, service work, lodging, food, and tourism. The culture of off-road recreation is deeply American — part of the same tradition as hunting, fishing, and hiking — and those who practice it resent being cast as vandals by default.
What Riders Need to Know Right Now
The move is significant for ATV riders, dirt bikers, side-by-side owners, and anyone who uses off-road vehicles on public land. Federal agencies like the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service have long used those earlier orders as the legal basis for restricting where off-road vehicles can operate. That framework is now gone. But gone is not the same as instantly replaced with open gates.
Riders should not assume trails and areas that were previously closed are now open. The legal framework has changed, but the on-the-ground regulations have not been updated yet. Riding in closed areas before agencies officially revise their rules could still result in fines. Watch for regulatory updates from the BLM, Forest Service, and National Park Service in the coming months.
This is the biggest shift in the federal framework for off-road vehicle access in generations. It does not open every gate overnight, but it removes the legal structure that kept many of those gates locked. The follow-through from federal agencies will be what actually changes conditions on the ground for riders. The trail map you have today is still the trail map that governs you. The map that exists in three years, after rulemaking, litigation, court rulings, and agency decisions play out — that is the one that will look different.
A Desert at the Center of It All
The Mojave is not an abstraction. It is the focal point of the latest battle between conservationists, off-roaders, and other interests in a long-running war over who gets to access the desert and how. The desert tortoise has been at the center of Western Mojave land-use battles for decades, and environmental groups argue that BLM failed to do enough to protect fragile habitat from the impacts of motorized recreation. The Center for Biological Diversity says the court found that BLM violated federal environmental laws in approving the route network.
Both things can be true simultaneously: the desert tortoise is genuinely imperiled, and the minimization criteria framework was genuinely broken as a management tool. The question is what comes next. The Trump administration has handed federal agencies a blank check to rewrite the rules — but agencies are slow-moving institutions, courts remain active, and conservation groups have shown they are willing to litigate every inch of the process. The Mojave will not be settled by a presidential signature on a Friday evening. It will be settled, if it is ever settled, through years of rulemaking, comment periods, appeals, and possibly another round of courtroom battles.
For now, the signal flare has gone up over the American backcountry. What the landscape looks like when the smoke clears is the question that will define off-road access — not just in the Mojave, but across the entire American West — for the next generation.
