The United States Forest Service is eyeing revisions to longstanding rules that govern off-road vehicle use on the 380,000 miles of roads under the agency’s management. If implemented, the proposal will fundamentally change motorized vehicle policies in National Forests, opening areas that have been closed to vehicles for over two decades. The policy shift would also open the door for e-bike use on non-motorized trails in National Forests.
Announced via press release on Friday, August 21, the plan would rewrite the Forest Service’s Travel Management Rule. Crafted in 2005, that rule is the framework for determining where ATVs, dirt bikes, snowmobiles, trucks, and other vehicles can legally travel on National Forest lands. Foresters across the country use it to designate route restrictions, create official public maps, and to mitigate environmental damages associated with motorized travel in backcountry areas. It also mandates the public input that is used when determining which roads should be active and which defunct or deteriorated road systems should be decommissioned.
In its press release, the Forest Service said the proposed revisions will simplify regulatory requirements, not just for traditional motorized vehicles, but for e-bikes and other mobility devices. “The Forest Service administers more than 380,000 miles of road, exceeding the length of the U.S. Interstate Highway System by nearly eight times, and 165,000 miles of trails,” reads a statement in the press release from Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz. “This action provides the legal foundation to streamline and modernize the Travel Management Rule and align Forest Service policy with administration priorities to increase access and protect private and commercial interests, while conserving natural resources.”
Opposition Mounts
The proposal has sparked strong backlash in the hunting-and-fishing conservation community, most notably from Backcountry Hunters & Anglers (BHA). That organization sees it as a far-reaching attempt to de-regulate motorized uses on public lands long used as sanctuaries for fish and wildlife.
According to BHA President and CEO Ryan Callaghan, the proposal has troubling implications for National Forest elk herds in particular. “Travel Management Plans are developed on a forest-by-forest basis with ample input from the locals who use these areas most frequently,” Callaghan tells Field & Stream. “They can be contentious, but they work, and they’re one of the most important tools we have in the wildlife management tool box. Where and how we travel across public lands directly affects migration corridors, calving and wintering areas, and our ability to keep public wildlife on public land.”
Major Policy Shifts
With its proposed revisions, USFS wants to implement an “open-unless-closed” policy for motorized vehicles on all existing roads and trails. That’s a 180-degree change from the “closed-unless-open” framework that the agency has used since 2005.
The change would revert to a paradigm that existed more than two decades ago when off-road vehicles could travel freely through sensitive wildlife habitat on National Forest lands, Callaghan says. That’s because it eliminates a “national minimization criteria” that was designed to protect watersheds, soil health, and wildlife habitat—like wetlands, fish-bearing streams, and elk calving grounds.
“There are certainly areas that are appropriate for expansion in motorized use,” Callaghan says. “People just need to be informed and understand the associated costs. Motorized roads and trail densities directly correlate to where and how long public wildlife stays on public land. So expansion in one area should come with the expectation of providing [wildlife] sanctuary in another. These revisions don’t do that.”
How Motorized Use and Road Building Impact Elk
The move comes on the heels of the Forest Service’s plan to completely rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, opening some 45 million acres of USFS backcountry to industrial road building and development. And it stems from an Executive Order that Field & Stream previously reported on called “Removing Unnecessary and Counterproductive Restrictions on Access to Federal Lands”. Opponents of these policy changes say they’re a direct threat to important wildlife habitat on National Forest lands across the country. When it comes to elk habitat, the science seems to back that argument.
An exhaustive study published by USFS in 2004, for example, shows a direct mathematical link between motorized road activity and elk habitat loss. Known as the Starky Experimental Forest Studies, this decades-long research effort found that elk completely abandon highly productive meadow habitat when there’s an active road nearby. It also showed that elk exhibit higher stress and increased movement rates in areas of higher road density. Overall, the Starky studies and mountains of similar scientific findings have proved what most hunters know intuitively: elk tend to flee for non-pressured areas when motorized vehicles move in. According to USFS’s own data, the Starky studies played a foundational role in the formation of the current Travel Management Rule.
BHA isn’t alone in its concerns about proposed revisions to the Travel Management Rule. In a recent press release, the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership (TRCP) said high [motorized] route densities can cause big game to avoid otherwise productive habitat and that USFS’s “proposal needs refinement to ensure the revised travel management rule supports quality recreation experiences, minimizes user conflicts, and helps avoid fragmentation of important habitat.”
The Blue Ribbon Coalition, on the other hand, a non-profit advocacy group that lobbies for expanded motorized access on public lands, is applauding both the repeal of the Roadless Rule and the proposed Travel Management rollbacks. They say that the environmental mitigation criteria built into the travel management rule has been abused to push motorized users off public lands in favor of non-motorized uses.
Callaghan sees it differently. “If these revisions go through the way they’re listed in the Federal Register, and then you take that in conjunction with the wholesale recision of the Roadless Rule and the OHV Executive Order, it’s not hyperbolic to say that we’re going to be heading into elk-less elk woods on our National Forests by the time hunting seasons open up,” he says. “We’re going to have public land hunters staring at public wildlife on private ground with no way to get to them.”
The agency’s announcement kicked off a 30-day comment period in the federal register. If you’d like to weigh in, you can do so here.
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