This story was produced as part of the Colorado Capitol News Alliance. It first appeared at coloradosun.com.
For years now on Colorado’s federal dirt roads and single-track trails there’s been an uneasy truce between recreational drivers and preservationists: By default, off-road vehicles are banned unless there’s a special exception.
The Trump administration Forest Service now wants to flip that default switch the other direction: Federal roads and trails would be open to Jeeps, crawlers, dirt bikes and other all-terrain vehicles, unless specific protections are carved out after extensive negotiations and legal action.
The potential for such a perspective-flipping earthquake in the backcountry by 2028 has vehicle clubs zipping up and tying down for long-sought trips, while environmental groups are left reeling and hoping for reversals in Congress or the courts.
Coming just after rescission of the 25-year-old federal Roadless Area Conservation Rule that barred road building and logging across millions of acres of national forests in 39 states, “the administration is now attempting to open up our national forests to more off-road vehicle use that will degrade the landscape and disturb wildlife and other land users,” said Thomas Delehanty, senior attorney with Earthjustice’s Rocky Mountain office. “Some places in our national forests are meant for quiet, undisturbed recreation and protecting sensitive wildlife, including endangered species.”
Conservation and recreation “are not mutually exclusive,” countered Chad Hixon, director of the Trails Preservation Alliance, a coalition of off-roading groups that has fought for access to more of Colorado for years.
“From a motorcyclist’s perspective, there are 28,000 miles of singletrack in Colorado,” Hixon said. “Only 2,800 of those are open to motorized vehicles. So we are interested in expanding that where appropriate.”
Revisiting an old conflict
Under the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Forest Service controls access to hundreds of millions of acres of forest and grasslands, heavily concentrated in the Western U.S. The new assumption of open travel, proposed as a Federal Register publication to start the change process, could impact nearly 200 million acres of forest land, according to a national environmental coalition fighting the change. That’s on top of the “roadless rule” change that will open up 45 million acres nationwide to potential new roads for wildfire fighting, drilling and exploration. (Colorado will be allowed to keep its separately negotiated roadless rule exemption, according to Trump administration officials.)
The switch was flipped to “protected unless you hear otherwise” in 2005, under the George W. Bush administration. Environmental groups and clubs for nonmotorized recreation backed the protections to carve out space for endangered species and migrating animals to thrive, reduce conflicts with hikers, bikers and horses, and to wall off quieter backcountry spaces.
Motorized recreators have long argued that public lands managers dismiss how many people access open spaces through vehicles, and that they can use backcountry roads and trails without ruining the environment. They also say providing more legal spaces eases pressure on the limited-use areas currently allowed, and can head off illegal uses by frustrated drivers.
“Access can deter people from doing the wrong thing,” Hixon said.
Long-term drought and climate change in the West, environmental groups responded, make the reopening of roads and trails even more dangerous.
“Putting hot engines deeper into dry forests during longer and hotter fire seasons will increase wildfire risk, and Western communities will pay for it,” said Center for Western Priorities communications director Kate Groetzinger.
“The existing travel management planning process allows the public to meaningfully weigh in on where vehicles do and don’t belong in our national forests,” Groetzinger said. “Repealing this rule hands that decision to political appointees in Washington, D.C., who have decided that every road, trail, and meadow should be open to motorized use, no matter the conflicts with other users or wildlife.”
Hixon said he does not expect federal officials to complete the proposed new rule language and get it through the public comment and revision process before 2028. Mapping tools are much more precise now than during the last great debate over trail access for motorized vehicles in the early 2000s, Hixon said, and many more important wildlife studies have been done defining what still needs protection.
Many parties will weigh in now, Hixon said, and the results will not be a chaotic “go anywhere” policy, he said. “That’s not what this does,” he said. “It’s not just a free-for-all.”
