The Forest Service Wants to Flip the Script on 200 Million Acres — and Riders Have Until Sept 23 to Weigh In

If you've ever had a trail you ride regularly get closed with barely any warning, pay attention to this one. The U.S. Forest Service just opened the door to the biggest rewrite of how it manages motorized access on national forest land in 20 years — and for once, the proposed direction actually favors riders.

What's actually happening

On August 24, the Forest Service published a notice of intent in the Federal Register to overhaul the 2005 Travel Management Rule, the regulation that governs motorized vehicle access — dirt bikes, ATVs, UTVs, e-bikes — across nearly 200 million acres of National Forest System land (Federal Register; GearJunkie).

The headline change: existing roads, trails, and trailheads would be presumed open by default, flipping the current "closed unless designated open" standard to "open unless closed for a specific, documented reason." The proposal would also drop a requirement that land managers minimize environmental harm and user conflict before opening a route to motorized traffic (Spokesman-Review).

For a rider, that's a real shift. Under the current rule, if a route isn't explicitly designated on a forest's motor vehicle use map, it's closed by default — and getting new routes added is a slow, bureaucratic climb. Flip the presumption, and the burden moves to land managers to justify a closure instead of riders having to justify access.

This is step one, not a done deal

Don't get ahead of yourself — this is the earliest possible stage. The Forest Service is doing "scoping": asking the public what issues, alternatives, and science should shape the actual rule before anyone writes it. A proposed rule and draft environmental impact statement aren't expected until spring 2027, with a final rule targeted for early 2028 (Spokesman-Review).

That means the comment window closing September 23, 2026 matters more than usual. Early scoping comments shape what alternatives even get studied — miss this one and you're reacting to a draft instead of helping write it. Comments go through regulations.gov under docket FS-2026-0100.

Not everyone's on board

OHV advocacy groups like the BlueRibbon Coalition are calling this overdue, arguing the current process buries reasonable route requests for years and locks in outdated maps that don't reflect how forests are actually used (BlueRibbon Coalition). Conservation groups are pushing back hard, warning that dropping the environmental-harm-minimization standard could mean more erosion, more habitat disruption, and more conflict with hikers and equestrians on multi-use trails. Expect this fight to run for the full two years the timeline allows, with plenty of litigation regardless of which way the final rule lands.

Why this matters beyond the news cycle

This is the same pattern we've flagged before with land-access fights — court orders, agency rules, and lawsuits all move faster than most riders can track, and by the time you hear about it, the comment window or compliance deadline has often already passed. A rule this size, covering nearly every national forest in the country, is worth watching closely no matter which side of the debate you're on, because it'll shape which trails show up on maps for the next decade.

If you ride Forest Service land regularly, this is worth ten minutes of your time before the 23rd — submit a comment, even a short one, describing the routes you actually use and why access matters to you. And whatever the rule ends up saying, the riders who log their rides and flag changed conditions on the ground are the ones who'll notice first when a map actually updates. That's exactly why we built ride tracking and hazard reporting into BraapTrax the way we did.

Sources: Federal Register, Spokesman-Review, GearJunkie, BlueRibbon Coalition.