The Trail Ahead: How Trump's Push to Rewrite the Forest Service Travel Management Rule Could Reshape Outdoor Access in America
For decades, the question of who truly owns the American wilderness has simmered beneath the surface of every camping trip, trail ride, and backcountry adventure. Now, the Trump administration has thrown that question into the open — loudly, consequentially, and with a rulebook rewrite that could rank among the most significant changes to how public lands are managed in a generation.
Amid the uproar over the planned removal of the "Roadless Rule," the U.S. Forest Service issued a separate proposal for the most significant changes to how it manages off-road vehicle access on national forest land in 20 years. The proposal cuts right to the heart of a long-standing tension between motorized and non-motorized recreationists — and it does so by flipping the very logic of how trails are classified.
The Rule That Governs 380,000 Miles of American Roads
To understand what the Trump administration is proposing, you first have to understand what's already on the books. The U.S. Forest Service manages more than 380,000 miles of roads and 165,000 miles of trails. The 2005 Travel Management Rule requires national forests to designate the roads, trails, and areas open to motor vehicles and keeps other routes closed.
The Forest Service's approach to all such forms of recreation on trails can be summed up in four words: closed unless designated open. Unless a trail is explicitly designated as open to off-highway vehicles, such as side-by-sides and dirt bikes, it can only be used for non-motorized recreation.
Most national forests have "travel management plans" that outline when a trail is open for non-motorized use like mountain biking, horseback riding, or hiking, and when it's open to off-highway vehicles. These plans tend to be exhaustive and list which types of motorized or nonmotorized access are allowed on every trail, two-track, and road.
Since 2005, all but 6 of the 154 national forest units and 20 national grassland units have established motor vehicle use maps designating roads, trails, and areas open to public motor vehicle use. That network of maps represents years of local deliberation, environmental review, and negotiation between user groups. The Trump administration now wants to scrap the underlying logic that produced them.
Open Unless Closed: A Three-Word Revolution
On August 21, the Trump administration announced it wants to revise the Travel Management Rule, a 20-plus-year-old U.S. Forest Service policy that dictates when motorized use is and isn't allowed. Right now, these vehicles are only allowed on national forest lands specifically designated for them.
The Trump administration could flip that on its head, according to Peggy dePasquale, national forests wildlands director at the Wyoming Wilderness Association. Instead of trails being presumed closed to motor vehicles unless explicitly marked open, they would be presumed open unless explicitly marked closed — a semantic reversal with enormous practical consequences across hundreds of millions of acres of public land.
It would mean forest managers would be expected to prioritize motorized access on service roads, trails, and even backcountry airfields. The word "airfields" stands out: these are remote strips of packed dirt that hunters and bush pilots have long used to reach some of the most isolated wilderness in North America, and their inclusion signals just how sweeping the proposed changes could be.
The U.S. Forest Service plans to publish a notice of intent to prepare an environmental impact statement for amending the existing Travel Management Rule. This proposed revision simplifies the regulatory requirements to enhance quicker local decision-making and increases access for motorized vehicles, including e-bikes, and other mobility devices.
The proposal follows Executive Order 14408, "Removing Unnecessary and Counterproductive Restrictions on Access to Federal Lands," signed May 29, 2026, which directs agencies to replace access-limiting regulations with systems that provide greater recreational opportunity and multiple-use benefit. That executive order was itself part of a broader pattern: it accompanies President Trump's May 29 decision to revoke two executive orders that had protected large areas of public land — including most national parks — from snowmobiles, ATVs, dirt bikes, and other off-road vehicles for decades.
Five Million Acres and the States Most at Stake
The geographic footprint of the proposed changes is staggering. The Trump administration plans to open millions of acres of national forest land to snowmobiles and off-road vehicles, according to a draft directive being prepared for Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins. An undated Agriculture Department secretarial memorandum reviewed by The New York Times instructs the U.S. Forest Service to review closed roads, trails, areas, airstrips, and waterways in each national forest and determine which ones could be opened to year-round recreational use.
The change would affect roughly five million acres, concentrated in Idaho and Montana. Those two states are home to some of the most prized backcountry riding terrain in the lower 48 — the vast, mountain-ringed forests of the Rockies and the Northern Rockies where elk hunting, snowmobiling, and OHV riding are deeply embedded in local culture and rural economies.
The administration has been explicit about its intentions. Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Stephen A. Vaden stated that "public lands are for public use, yet for too long, Forest Service regulations have stood in the way," and Under Secretary Mike Boren said "the existing travel management scheme creates unnecessary barriers for Americans."
The Case for Change: What Motorized Recreation Advocates Are Saying
Not everyone is sounding the alarm. For riders, overlanders, and off-highway vehicle enthusiasts who have watched access slowly shrink over two decades, the proposed revision feels long overdue.
The Blue Ribbon Coalition said the rule was "overdue for a fix." The nonprofit represents people who ride 4x4s, ATVs, snowmobiles, e-bikes, and more across the country. OHV advocacy groups like the Blue Ribbon Coalition see a proposal that "modernizes the framework without stripping local control."
Changes like this will allow for better access and clarity for visitors on ATVs, e-bikes, and other motorized vehicles. "By making everything open unless posted closed," said one proponent, "it puts a bit more onus on the Forest Service to do due diligence and, if a trail is closed, make sure those signs are posted and maintained and kept in place."
The Forest Service's decades-old Travel Management Rule that decides where you can ride across 380,000 miles of national forest roads is finally getting a revision. The Blue Ribbon Coalition backs the Forest Service's plan to drop the minimization standard, recognize e-bikes, and fix the maps riders can't trust.
The argument for reform is not purely ideological. The TMR provided a complex procedural framework to counter the proliferation of user-created motor vehicle routes and established an inflexible, nationally-driven framework for designating roads, trails, and areas open or closed to public motor vehicle use. Over two decades, that inflexibility calcified into backlogs, inconsistent enforcement, and maps that local rangers couldn't always maintain or update in a timely way — frustrating riders who showed up to find trails unexpectedly closed or signage nonexistent.
The E-Bike Question
One dimension of this debate that often gets lost in the noise is the treatment of electric bikes. For people who access the outdoors via car, truck, dirtbike, ATV, e-bike, or side-by-side, the proposed changes will impact how and where they can access and experience national forests. E-bikes occupy an awkward legal middle ground under the existing rule — they're motorized, but their users often behave like traditional cyclists. The proposed revision specifically addresses this gap, formally integrating e-bikes and "other mobility devices" into the framework rather than leaving their status ambiguous or subject to local interpretation.
The Environmental Counterargument: What's Actually at Stake on the Ground
The environmental pushback is not abstract. There are documented, measurable cases where motorized vehicle access has caused serious ecological harm, even when that access was fully permitted under existing rules.
Chris Edgington, a watershed project manager with Montana Trout Unlimited, witnessed firsthand the environmental damage that can happen from off-highway vehicle use on the Middle Fork of the Judith River, which runs through the Little Belt Mountains of central Montana. Prior to 2023, there were more than 80 entrances and 27 shallow spots along a 6-mile stretch of the river where various types of vehicles, including cars and side-by-sides, crossed. As these vehicles cut across, they caused erosion and an influx of sediment that coats rocks along the riverbed, suppressing insect life and the ability for fish to successfully spawn. By 2020, the sediment runoff had gotten so bad it was choking out nearly all the fish, Edgington said.
That case is particularly striking because the vehicles crossing the river weren't breaking any rules — the Forest Service had designated the area open for motorized use. The implication is clear: even the current, more restrictive system allowed for enough damage to functionally collapse a river ecosystem. A rule that defaults to open access could multiply those situations many times over.
From 2020 to 2023, groups rebuilt 1,000 feet of riverbank, reduced the number of crossings by 80%, and built a new section of OHV/Jeep trail so the area could still be used for recreation, without harming the river. That restoration effort — costly, time-consuming, and requiring the cooperation of multiple stakeholder groups — is precisely the kind of reckoning conservation advocates fear would become far more common under the proposed framework.
Peggy dePasquale pushed back, saying the existing Forest Service policy has never been about restricting access. "It's about making access sustainable and well understood by everybody," she said. DePasquale added that she worries allowing more vehicles in national forests could mean recreators creating more routes and damaging habitats and wildlands nationwide.
Wild Montana's federal policy director Hilary Eisen was even more pointed in her assessment of what the existing rule actually accomplishes. "The Travel Management Rule is why dirt-bikers and snowmobilers can share national forest lands with hikers and backcountry skiers without conflict. It's why our national forests provide habitat to support thriving wildlife populations. It is built on local decision-making, with a designation process that ensures that no user group gets steamrolled and all our national forest values are protected."
A Broader Rollback
These changes are occurring alongside the Trump administration's rollback of a myriad of the nation's bedrock environmental protections, including changes to the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. Critics argue the Travel Management Rule revision doesn't exist in isolation — it is one piece of a coordinated effort to reduce federal oversight of public lands access.
Just days after moving forward with the repeal of the Roadless Rule, the administration is now taking aim at gutting the Forest Service Travel Management Rule. Together, these back-to-back actions mark a significant escalation in the administration's broader effort to dismantle longstanding public lands protections.
Environmental groups claim the proposed changes would "gut protections for fish and wildlife and create chaos for public lands users" as part of a "systematic dismantling of public lands management of our national forests."
The Public Responds — Overwhelmingly
When the Forest Service opened a 30-day public comment period, the response was volcanic. A new analysis by the Center for Western Priorities found that 99.0 percent of the 134,312 public comments posted on the U.S. Forest Service's proposed revision of the Travel Management Rule oppose the Trump administration's plan. The 30-day comment period closed September 23.
The Trump administration asked the public whether every road and trail in our national forests should be open to motorized vehicles by default, and the answer was a resounding no.
The short public comment periods have received backlash. On September 11, the Forest Service announced it was adding an additional 15 days to the comment period. The extension offered some relief to advocacy groups scrambling to mobilize their members, but the lopsided comment tally — 99 percent in opposition — raises serious questions about whether the administration intends to be moved by public input at all.
This level of opposition is not unprecedented in the current political environment. In September 2025, more than 99 percent of approximately 183,000 comments opposed repealing the Roadless Rule. In November 2025, 98 percent of comments opposed rescinding the Bureau of Land Management's Public Lands Rule. Across multiple high-profile public lands decisions, the administration has consistently received near-universal opposition in public comment periods — and has largely continued its course regardless.
The Roadless Rule Shadow
To fully appreciate the scale of what's in motion, the Travel Management Rule revision must be read alongside the simultaneous attack on the 2001 Roadless Rule. The Forest Service is currently accepting public comments on the proposal to rescind the 2001 Roadless Rule, which protects the more than 44 million acres of national forest land outside of Colorado and Idaho, where state-specific roadless rules apply.
The Roadless Rule prohibits road construction, reconstruction, and most timber management on almost 45 million acres of national forest land, and its repeal would give federal forest managers significant flexibility to manage forests in accordance with local need. The much-debated revocation of the 2001 Roadless Rule could open up millions of acres to new roads and trails.
The Forest Service is proposing a repeal of the 2001 Roadless Rule and drastic revisions to the 2005 Travel Management Rule. Taken together, these proposals could upend over 50 years of precedent and access that hikers have relied on across national forests. The Roadless Rule itself was no minor policy — it was adopted with massive public support to protect 58.5 million acres of roadless national forest land in 39 states and was the result of years of work and public input. The public comment period set a record with 1.6 million public comments submitted.
Historical Parallels and the Long Arc of OHV Policy
This is not the first time the question of motorized access to national forests has landed at the center of American political life. From Washington to Arizona, off-road vehicle use began skyrocketing decades ago. Nationwide, there were 36 million OHV riders in 2000, seven times as many as there were 30 years before. That explosion of popularity drove a chaotic patchwork of local rules that the 2005 Travel Management Rule was designed to rationalize.
Before the 2005 rule, there was a confusing mishmash of regulations across the national forest system: some forests restricted riders to designated trails; others allowed unrestricted cross-country riding. Sound familiar? The Trump administration's proposal risks recreating exactly that patchwork — except this time, with a thumb firmly on the scale toward access rather than conservation.
It's also worth noting the political irony at the center of this story: the current Travel Management Rule was created and implemented by the Republican Bush administration. The 2005 rule was not a product of liberal land management philosophy — it was a bipartisan attempt to impose order on a chaotic situation that was damaging both the land and recreational user experiences. For a Republican administration to now target its own party's legacy policy reflects how dramatically the political calculus around public lands has shifted.
What It All Means for the Guy Who Just Wants to Ride
For the average American outdoorsman — whether he's a weekend warrior who trailers his dirt bike to the nearest national forest, a snowmobile enthusiast from Montana, or an overlander planning a summer expedition through Idaho — this debate is both highly practical and deeply personal.
The changes proposed to the Travel Management Rule would change how the USFS manages their existing network of 380,000 miles of roads and 165,000 miles of trails. On paper, the prospect of more trails opening to OHV use sounds like a win for access. But the reality on the ground may be more complicated. If the default shifts to "open unless closed," the burden falls on an already-underfunded and understaffed Forest Service to actively mark and maintain closures — a task that will require significant resources the agency doesn't currently have.
The proposed changes don't explicitly prescribe more roads or mandate specific openings or closures, but reflect a shift to an "open-unless-closed" attitude toward USFS roads and trails. That distinction matters. This is not a rule that will automatically unlock every trail on day one. What it does is change the baseline assumption — and from that new baseline, the consequences will play out over years, one local forest plan at a time.
The Travel Management Rule was put in place to ensure long-term sustainable use by motorized and non-motorized recreationists, de-escalate user conflicts, and minimize the potential negative consequences of such use including impact to wildlife, watersheds, fisheries, and other recreational uses of our national forests. Whatever one thinks of the current administration's approach, those goals — sustainable use, conflict reduction, ecological protection — aren't ideological abstractions. They're what makes a trail rideable year after year, decade after decade.
The men who ride these trails the hardest are also often among the most invested in their long-term health. A river choked with sediment doesn't produce trout. A blown-out trail doesn't produce good riding. The best argument for thoughtful trail management isn't environmental — it's recreational. And it's one that the loudest voices on both sides of this debate would do well to remember as the rulemaking grinds forward.
What Comes Next
The U.S. Forest Service plans to publish a notice of intent to prepare an environmental impact statement for amending the existing Travel Management Rule. That environmental impact statement — known as an EIS — is required under the National Environmental Policy Act and will involve additional rounds of public comment, scientific analysis, and agency review. The process is unlikely to produce final rules quickly, and legal challenges from conservation groups are all but certain to follow.
The public can continue to enjoy motorized access to national forests throughout this process. Existing plans and related maps will remain in place until updated by local line officers. In the near term, that means life on the trail continues largely as it has — but the legal and regulatory ground beneath it is shifting fast.
The administration has framed its agenda in plain American terms: "As the United States marks 250 years of independence in 2026, we must shine a light on our nation's greatest natural treasures and ensure every American can recreate on these majestic lands," the memo said. It's a sentiment that's hard to argue with on its face. The argument — and it is a serious one — is about what "ensure every American can recreate" actually requires. Because if the trails are trashed, if the rivers run brown with sediment, and if wildlife is pushed out of the last remaining quiet corridors, then the next generation of riders won't have much left to access.
The fight over who gets to use America's forests has never been simple, and it won't be resolved by a rule change alone. But that rule change — if it survives public opposition, legal scrutiny, and the environmental impact statement process — will set the terms of the debate for the next twenty years.
