‘One-Two Punch’: After Attacking Roadless Rule, Trump Targets Off-Road Vehicle Limits

One critic said the administration clearly plans to weaken restrictions requiring “the Forest Service to carefully manage our natural resources and listen to the public, then open the gates to industry and extraction.”


Pristine Boulder Creek flows from the Selway Bitterroot Wilderness toward the Lochsa River in the Clearwater National Forest of northern Idaho.
(Photo by Don and Melinda Crawford/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Jessica Corbett
Aug 21, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

Still under fire for attacking the Roadless Area Conservation Rule this week, President Donald Trump’s administration provoked a fresh wave of criticism on Friday by targeting another policy meant to protect public lands.

The US Forest Service announced Friday that it was moving forward with a proposed revision to the Travel Management Rule that “simplifies the regulatory requirements to enhance quicker local decision-making and increase access, including for motorized vehicles, e-bikes, and other mobility devices.”

While leaders at the Forest Service and its parent agency, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), framed the pending changes as progress, Defenders of Wildlife called out the administration for trying to “gut” the rule managing off-road vehicles.

“The USDA’s announcement to gut the Travel Management Rule and the roadless rule in the same week is a one-two punch that together deals a tremendous blow to wildlife,” said Vera Smith, who directs the advocacy group’s national forests and public lands program, in a statement.

“The Travel Management Rule states simply that motorized vehicles must stay on routes and areas designated locally for that use,” Smith said. “The Forest Service issued the rule over 20 years ago to curb damage from unmanaged recreation, reduce user conflict, and protect public safety. Rescinding it now is irresponsible and reckless.”

Hilary Eisen, federal policy director at the organization Wild Montana, was similarly critical, explaining that “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.”

“Just two days after doubling down on repealing the roadless rule, this announcement makes the administration’s plan obvious: Gut the rules that require the Forest Service to carefully manage our natural resources and listen to the public, then open the gates to industry and extraction,” Eisen warned.

“Forest Service leadership has already shown during the roadless rescission how much it values public input, science, and expert management: not at all,” she added. “Agency leadership has lost the public’s trust, and should expect the public to hold them accountable.”

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins confirmed Tuesday that the administration was working to fully rescind the 2001 roadless rule that blocked road building and commercial logging on about 30% of all national forest land. She attempted to frame it as a move to prevent wildfires, but conservation groups contested her claims.

Josh Hicks, director of conservation campaigns at the Wilderness Society, declared that “opening our backcountry forests to more roads and development, and therefore more ignitions, is... not a wildfire solution, and never will be.”

Criticism of that pending rollback had continued throughout the week, with the Wilderness Society’s senior director of native lands partnerships, Starlyn Miller, calling out the administration’s “failure to engage in meaningful government-to-government consultation with tribal nations,” which she said “undermines tribal sovereignty and federal trust responsibilities.”

“This failure disregards tribes’ deep cultural, historical, and ongoing connections to these roadless lands and the clean water and wildlife they sustain,” said Miller, a Little Shell Chippewa citizen who is of Menominee and Mohican descendant. “We stand with tribal nations and Indigenous communities in defending their freedom to shape and manage forests that are vital to their cultures, identities, and future generations.”

National Congress of American Indians executive director Larry Wright Jr. also spoke out on Friday, saying that “tribal nations possess an inherent and legally recognized relationship with these lands, which remain the foundation of our cultural identities. Attempting to fast-track the removal of the roadless rule circumvents the mandatory government-to-government consultation process required by federal law.”

Wright, who is from the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska, added that “upholding the federal trust responsibility means honoring our treaty rights and ensuring that the protection of sacred sites is recognized as an uncompromisable legal obligation, not an afterthought.”

Conservationists Say Trump Gutting of Roadless Rule Is Corporate Giveaway, Not Wildfire Prevention

Trump has cleared the way for 45 million acres of protected forest to be opened for logging and construction in what one conservation group called the “largest evisceration of public lands protection in American history.”


A waterfall on Baranof Island in Tongass National Forest, Southeast Alaska, USA.
(Photo by Wolfgang Kaehler/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Stephen Prager
Aug 18, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

The Trump administration is moving to reverse a decades-old rule that protected 45 million acres of forest lands from logging and construction, in what the Center for Biological Diversity called the “largest evisceration of public lands protection in American history.”

On Tuesday, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced that the US Forest Service had filed a proposed rule to fully rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, enacted under former President Bill Clinton, which had prevented road building and commercial logging on about 30% of all national forest land.

Rollins described the “roadless rule” as a barrier to government wildfire prevention efforts. “Across the country, we’ve watched preventable conditions—overgrown stands, insect outbreaks, and disease—turn healthy landscapes into tinderboxes,” she said. “For too long, outdated restrictions have kept tens of millions of forested acres off-limits to the very treatments that improve forest health and reduce wildfire risk to our communities.”

But conservation groups argue that the administration’s reversal of the roadless rule has little to do with wildfire prevention and everything to do with opening up protected lands to logging interests and other extractive industries, which have long pushed for the rule to be weakened.

Increasing logging on federal lands has been a major goal of Trump’s second term, and repealing the roadless rule is part of that effort. An executive order signed in March 2025 calling for the “immediate expansion” of timber production said that federal policies had made the country unable to “fully exploit our domestic timber supply.”

In June2025, when the US Department of Agriculture first announced plans to rescind the roadless rule, it said that increasing timber production would be one of the benefits. The USDA said the rule hurt “jobs and economic development” and that repealing it aligned with Trump’s goal to eliminate “barriers that hamper American business and innovation.”




Earthjustice has argued that, contrary to what the administration says, repealing the roadless rule will actually lead to more wildfires, not fewer.

It points to findings from the Forest Service that 9 in 10 wildfires are caused by human activity, including throwing cigarettes out of windows, leaving campfires abandoned, and driving cars on grassy areas, causing them to ignite.

A peer-reviewed study published in January in the journal Fire Ecology by researchers with the Wilderness Society found that fires are about four times as likely to start near a road as in roadless forests.

Another study by the Forest Service in 2020, during the first Trump administration, examined two decades of data and found that roadless forests actually received more fuel-reduction treatments per square kilometer than areas elsewhere in the National Forest System.

“Speculation that eliminating road prohibitions would improve forest health is not supported by nearly 20 years of monitoring data,” the study concluded.

Josh Hicks, director of conservation campaigns at the Wilderness Society, said Tuesday, “Opening our backcountry forests to more roads and development, and therefore more ignitions, is... not a wildfire solution, and never will be.”

While doing little to curb the recent increases in wildfires exacerbated by climate change, conservationists argue that repealing the roadless rule will pose other harms to communities and wildlife across the country.

“Roadless forests supply clean drinking water for tens of millions of Americans, are home to irreplaceable wildlife, and store enormous amounts of carbon,” said Gabrielle Berthel, forest advocate at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Repealing the Roadless Area Conservation Rule would allow for the fragmentation of some of the last intact forest ecosystems in the country, with irreversible consequences for the communities that rely on these forests and the people who seek out these special places for recreation.”

The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) noted that these forests serve as habitats for numerous threatened species that risk being disrupted, including American wolverines, Canada lynx, grizzly bears, and northern spotted owls.

Randi Spivak, the public lands policy director at the CBD, emphasized that “these are some of the last truly wild forests left in the country... Once you start bulldozing roads for commercial logging and industrial development, there’s no getting them back.”

More than 625,000 public comments have been submitted to the Forest Service since plans to rescind the roadless rule were announced last June. The USDA will accept public comments on the proposal until September 21, after which the administration is expected to move toward a final rule later this year.

Motorized Wreckreation Outfit Lists the Alliance for the Wild Rockies as the Nation’s Most-Feared Environmental Group

Mike Garrity

 August 11, 2026

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Clearcut on the Helena-Lewis & Clark National Forest, Montana. Photo: Steve Paltt.

The Alliance for the Wild Rockies is proud to announce that the Blue Ribbon Coalition, an anti-environmental group of motorized wreckreactionists and industries, claims the Alliance is responsible for stopping more logging projects and protecting more wildlife habitat on public lands than any other environmental group in the country.

They’re right.

One might wonder why this group is so enamored of logging our public forests.  Simply put, they love logging because whenever the Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management wants to clearcut our national forests, they first bulldoze in more logging roads, which means more roads their members can drive ATVs, dirt bikes, and four-wheel drives.

The Alliance was recognized as the top environmental group to hate because we stopped an astounding 80 of the162 federal logging projects that were stopped nationwide.

Let that sink in. The Alliance for the Wild Rockies, with one employee and an annual budget of less than $250,000 stopped 49.38% of all the logging projects stopped by environmentalists.

Compare that to the big Gang Green groups such as the Sierra Club, with its 1,700 employees and a $300 million a year annual budget, stopped 19 logging project. The Wilderness Society, with a $93 million endowment, $43 million annual budget, and over 200 employees, stopped five logging projects.

Yet the Alliance protected more habitat for fish and wildlife and stopped more logging and road bulldozing projects than all the big weenie-greenie environmental groups combined.

Like the Alliance, it’s the small environmental and conservation groups such as Native Ecosystems Council, Conservation Congress, and Friends of the Clearwater that are actually stopping the vast majority of deforestation projects on public lands.

The Trump administration’s horrendous anti-environmental policies are keeping us very busy fighting to protect habitat for native species in the Rockies with our lawsuits in Montana, Idaho, Washington, Nevada, and Utah.

But because we operate on limited funds and there are so many bad logging projects we can’t stop them all.  So we focus on the worst projects that bulldoze in logging roads and clearcut dwindling old growth forest habitat for threatened and endangered species such as grizzlies, lynx and wolverine.

Just one great example: The Hanna Flats logging project in northern Idaho.  We have been fighting and winning in court for seven years now — and the old growth forest is still standing and still providing great habitat for grizzlies, lynx, and wolverines.

Think of how many grizzly cubs, lynx kittens and wolverine kits were born there over the last seven years, how much carbon the old growth forest has sequestered out of the atmosphere, and how much wetter and cooler the forests are than clearcuts baking under the sun with no trees left to provide shade.

But it’s neither easy nor cheap to beat the unlimited funds and power of the federal government.  As one of the smallest environmental groups in the country it’s a true David and Goliath battle.  But just like David, the Alliance wins.

We win because we do the hard work to analyze the projects, submit salient comments, and hire the best environmental attorneys in the country to force the federal government to follow the law. 

We’re in the world’s sixth great extinction period, primarily caused by humans destroying wildlife habitat, and there are always more cases than we have funds to hire attorneys. 

Bottom line: We need your help. If keeping our forests standing and recovering Endangered species by protecting their habitat is important to you, please join us by making a donation to the Alliance for the Wild Rockies today.   Please also consider donating to Counterpunch so they can keep the public informed.

We fight and win more than any group in the nation — but like David, we need stones in our sling, and that’s what your donation provides.  Thank you!

Mike Garrity is the executive director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies.

Back Room Deals and Dead Bears

John Carter

 August 11, 2026

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View into the Tosi Creek watershed and Gros  Ventre Wilderness, part of the Elk Ridge Complex.  Photo: John Carter.

In a couple of sentences buried deep in so-called “annual operating instructions”, the Bridger Teton National Forest decided to allow cattle from the Upper Green River allotment, an area of 170,000 acres in the Forest, to enter the vacant Elk Ridge  Complex.    The Elk Ridge Complex of 30,000 acres is partly within the Gros Ventre Wilderness.

The Elk Ridge allotments were bought out a decade ago to remove domestic sheep from conflicts with bears.  Even after a decade of rest from livestock grazing, the Elk Ridge area remains highly degraded with plant communities that produce less than a quarter of what should be there.  Soil erosion and stream damage remain evident.   The last time it was reviewed for capacity to graze cattle was in 1978.  The Forest  Service determined then that it lacked water and livestock infrastructure needed to support cattle.

Grizzly bears find refuge and security in Elk Ridge with no livestock and few people.  However, the die-off of whitebark pine increases the stress for bears to find food.  Whitebark pine seeds are a vital high-fat, food for grizzly bears.  Whitebark pines in Wyoming are dying primarily due to a combination of an invasive fungal disease called white pine blister rust, outbreaks of native mountain pine beetles, and accelerating climate change. These combined threats led to the tree being listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act

In the fall, bears eat massive amounts of these nuts to gain fat before winter hibernation, which directly improves their survival rates and female reproductive success.  Another food source is the plants – grasses, flowers, roots, and berries that occur here. Without livestock in the Elk Ridge area, what remains of the residual plant community after decades of abuse by sheep, is available for the bears.

Dead whitebark pines in the Elk Ridge Complex.  Photo:  John Carter.

To now allow cattle into this place clearly creates a major conflict as well as a rich food source for the bears – cattle.  So, bears die for being bad actors and killing livestock, while  the real culprits are the ranchers and agency people that unethically place the livestock into these places in spite of their own data showing it is not needed.

Yellowstone to Uintas Connection, Sage Steppe Wild,  Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Native Ecosystems Council, and Council on Fish and Wildlife filed a Notice of Intent to Sue the Bridger Teton National Forest over this decision that allows the livestock permittees from the Upper Green allotment to bring cattle into the vacant Elk Ridge Complex of allotments.    The decision was based on the Forest Service claim that the recent Dollar Lake Fire burned pastures in the Upper Green River allotment and caused a forage deficit.

In a decision in 2019, grizzly bear conflicts in the Upper Green allotment were resolved by the US Fish and Wildlife Service allowing up to 72 bears  to be killed for conflicts with cattle.  The ranchers were given “voluntary” conditions.  So,  there are no real consequences to the ranchers for saturating the landscape with cattle in prime grizzly habitat.

The Elk Ridge  Complex in dark blue adjacent to the Upper Green allotment in light blue.  The footprint of the Dollar Lake Fire is shown in red.  Map by John Carter.

The Elk Ridge allotments have a history of grizzly bear conflicts with livestock as well.  In 2016, conservation organizations funded a voluntary buyout of the permittee, who had experienced problems with bear conflicts.

The permit was waived back to the Forest Service with the understanding that domestic sheep would not return in order to protect bighorn sheep that are susceptible to disease carried by domestic sheep.   The Forest Service acknowledged in a letter to the permittee that no cattle would be brought into those allotments until an analysis of capacity and infrastructure was conducted through a public process or Forest Plan revision.

 

Now, without that analysis, the Bridger Teton NF, the Sublette County Conservation District, the Nature Conservancy, and the livestock permittees who graze cattle in the Upper Green allotments decided to rest those burned pastures and graze the vacant Elk Ridge allotments.

This was done in private without any public notice or input. This is the Back Room Deal.   One of those permittees is running to represent the people of Sublette County in the State Legislature.  I asked him to oppose this but nothing.  I  thought Republicans were fighting these “Deep State” tactics.  But, here in Wyoming we will elect anyone who wears a cowboy hat.

Aside from the ethical issues, there are other problems.

The Forest Service said it would rest the burned pastures.  Yet inspection of the burned areas shows that the areas used by cattle, that is, valleys and open areas, did not burn.   The fire was mostly limited to forested areas the cattle don’t use.   And yet the Forest Service still planned to graze those “burned” pastures with over 1200 cattle.  As I write this, cattle are in those “burned” pastures.  (Liar, liar, pants on fire!).

Twenty years of monitoring done by the Bridger Teton National Forest Range conservationists, the Sublette County Conservation District, and the permittees showed the average use in that period was 11% while allowable use is 50%.  So, their data shows there is no deficit in forage.  This says there is no need for more grazing on the Elk Ridge allotments.   We have repeatedly asked them to explain this forage deficit. They are too cowardly to answer.

The legal hook is that the Forest Service told the Fish and Wildlife Service that the burned pastures would be rested, i.e., not grazed by livestock.  Yet they scheduled 1,245 cattle into the two pastures and they are grazing there now.  That is not rest, so any decision by the US Fish and Wildlife Service based on this false information invalidates any biological opinion they might produce.

It’s time for the Forest Service to respect the public trust, our wildlife, and their habitat, and stop this now.  This is clearly a failed wish in today’s world of corrupt politics and sold-out agencies.