The Off-Roading Executive Order Is A Land Sell-Off In Disguise. Don't Be Fooled
The Trump White House has issued both an executive order on off-roading, as well as rescinding a prior executive order, to "remove unnecessary and counterproductive restrictions on access to federal lands." It's a land sell-off in disguise.
Last week, the Trump White House issued a late Friday evening executive order (EO) and rescinded older EOs involving off-road access to federal public lands. And upon first reading, many would likely be led to believe that the EO and rescission are good for the multi-use nature of our federally managed public lands.
After all, they're both meant to Remove Unnecessary and Counterproductive Restrictions on Access to Federal Lands and rescinding oneous bureaucracy and legislation are good things. SEMA and its companion off-roading group, ORBA, both "applauded" the move.
But as with everything this administration does in regard to our public lands, if you aren't skeptical at this point, you really haven't been paying attention to the administration's very publicly stated goals of public land management; i.e, selling it off, strip mining it, and delivering it to foreign billionaires on a silver platter.
And you'd best believe that this latest "good thing" for public land users is a wolf in sheep's clothing, as it does nothing for you or I, but it does give the Department of the Interior (DOI) to further its attacks on our public lands. Off-road trails everywhere, as is being reported by a number of outlets? Not for you and I, but what this order will likely do is make it easier for the DOI to sell public lands to developers, mining operations, and be used as mass surveillance tools.
Don't believe me? The EO emphatically states that this was designed to reduce the"barriers to energy and timber production." That's the game, folks, not more off-roading. And shame on both SEMA and ORBA in pretending this is a win, though they both supported the folks in charge of selling off your public lands.
We must be good stewards.
Don't Believe The Government
To back up and give context to this latest EO and rescission, we need to go back to an EO dropped on day 1 of the Trump administration's second go around, in the Unleashing American Energy delivery. This executive order lays out the incoming administration's public lands priorities, in that it's no longer prioritizing public lands' multi-use requirement, and nor is there a need for the American public to get a good return on its investment, so long as there are possible resources to exploit.
As such, the EO states, "America is blessed with an abundance of energy and natural resources that have historically powered our Nation’s economic prosperity. In recent years, burdensome and ideologically motivated regulations have impeded the development of these resources, limited the generation of reliable and affordable electricity, reduced job creation, and inflicted high energy costs upon our citizens. These high energy costs devastate American consumers by driving up the cost of transportation, heating, utilities, farming, and manufacturing, while weakening our national security."
What that's amounted to since that EO dropped has been a full-on assault on our nation's public lands, with mining and other extractive industries, along with a host of quote-unquote security needs, being prioritized over the public's continued use and stewardship.
In practice, we've seen the Ambler Road mining project—owned by the Canadians and its minerals likely only going to China—get the greenlight, along with the recision of protections around the Dalton Highway so as to further support mining those pristine areas, and likely destroy the famed off-road highway itself. Then there was the Twin Metals Mine approval at the headwaters of Minnesota's Boundary Waters Wilderness area, which is owned by a Chilean billionaire.
There was also the secretive process by which the Department of Homeland Security awarded a contract for a physical border wall to go right through Big Bend National Park, which only came after officials said it wasn't going to happen. And planning for the wall's barriers would go right through some of the best off-road trails in the park. In that same vein, there's been a concerted push to rescind the Roadless Rule, which, in the administration's pitch to the American people, both impedes border security and can lead to devastating wildfires.
Both aren't true, as nearly every wildfire is actually human-caused—85%, in fact—and our security services have memorandums of understanding with our nation's natural resource officers. And there have been countless other small attacks on our nation's public lands that don't always make national news, including proposed takeovers of public lands, the gutting of the DOI and Forest Services, reducing avalanche mitigation, furloughing wildland forest firefighters—my neighbor is one and was out for months—and the moving of the entire Forest Service to the lion's den that is Salt Lake City. There's a litany of others, too.
Yet, we have to talk about this latest attack, because that's absolutely what this is.
Last summer, the Republican Congress and the President were attempting to push through a massive omnibus spending bill dubbed the "One Big Beautiful Bill" that was put together to do about a trillion things. And within that text was a portion all about federal land sales and how they'd only be done within a certain mileage of undefined population centers, as sponsored and written by Captain Planet villain, and Utah's senator, Mike Lee. The amendment, however, became beyond toxic and was pulled after every single public land owner—i.e., us—made such a ruckus that no one but Lee supported it, and the amendment was pulled.
We enjoy public lands differently, and that's OK.
Yet, it's important to note that the language used in that BBB text, specifically how vague both population centers and the mileage from them were defined, as based on my reading of this latest EO, and could be applied here in the not-too-distant future. In other words, because off-road trails will be constructed, due to the vaguness of a population center, as well as how vague zones around it are defined, you could theoretically use the same concept to then denote those lands as potential sell-offs.
Moreover, within that actual text of the new EO, it quite literally states its want to exploit these wild places, in stating, "Executive Order 11644 and Executive Order 11989 direct agencies to promulgate regulations providing that, where off-road vehicle use is permitted on Federal lands, roads, and trails, such use designations must be made in accordance with ill-defined criteria purportedly intended to minimize resource impacts and conflicts between different users of Federal land...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."
There you have it. Plain and simple English. Energy and timber.
The administration doesn't care about your off-roading. It doesn't care that you own a dirt bike or ATV or UTV or snowmobile. It doesn't care about your recreation over others. It doesn't care that you want to ride while another person wants to hike and thinks you both should be able to cut through wilderness zones. It cares about mineral extraction. It cares about housing development. It cares about lining the pockets of its billionaire donors and selling off our public lands for a song. There's no stewardship here, it's grift, plain and simple, and you're all smarter than that.
And let's not forget SEMA and ORBA's role in this coup upon the American people and its land. According to its press release, the groups state, "SEMA and ORBA applaud President Trump's new executive order, which is a significant step toward modernizing how federal agencies manage off-highway vehicle access and recreation on public lands," adding, "Trump has rescinded Executive Orders 11644 and 11989, which have shaped the regulatory framework used in federal route designation and travel management decisions across millions of acres of public land for close to 50 years now. Their rescission begins a process that could fundamentally reshape how agencies approach access, recreation, infrastructure and multiple-use management moving forward."
That reshaping of regulatory framework as shown above, however, is one designed to reduce your public land access in the long term. It does not reopen closed trails. It does not make new ones. It puts together the framework that the DOI and Forest Service, under Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, and newly installed Forest Chief Steve Pearce, who have unequivocally called for the sell off of our public lands. And to deny that reality is not just misleading your supposed constituents and members, it lies to the American people about what is actually happening: the wholesale destruction of the regulatory methods we use to manage multi-use public lands.
And that includes off-roading. I understand we want to help support the things we love, but these lands aren't just ours. They're every public land users. The more we separate ourselves into different camps, it hands the whole freakin' game over to those who are playing us for fools. Divide and conquer.
Right now, according to my friends at onX Maps, we have over 500,000 miles of off-road trails in the United States. And that covers hundreds of millions of acres across the country, zigzagging their way through national and state parks, USFS land, around the boundaries of wilderness zones, and everywhere in between. Moreover, onX says that the mileage is likely larger than reality, as the brand is constantly mapping new or existing trails that it hasn't yet scanned or confirmed. This is all to say that our nation has so much off-road access, it boggles the mind. And there's more added through easements and other land swaps each year, as showcased by Backcountry Discovery Routes.
I've done a lot of public lands riding and driving in recent months, and through a handful of states. These are lands we must protect. They're lands we must be good stewards to. They're lands that we've been entrusted with, not just for our own enjoyment now, but for future generations' enjoyment, too. They're ours, but not.
So what can you do? Call, write, and email your congressional representatives both in the House and the Senate. You can write to your local delegations, too, as based on the wording of this EO, they'll likely be the ones involved in management these upcoming projects and sell-offs. And, just like the Stratos data center fight here in Utah, the American people can stand up and tell these politicians that they represent us, not just their billionaire donors.
The fight ain't over, folks. I fear it'll be tooth and nail. But based on our success with the Big Beautiful Bill, we've shown that when we come together, when we put aside our differences, when we show up, we can fight this and win. And we will.
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