Trump Revokes Nixon- And Carter-Era Off-Road Vehicle Protections On Public Lands, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That Wildlife Habitat Was Still Off-Limits To Dirt Bikes

WASHINGTON. In a move the administration hailed as the long-overdue liberation of American soil from the tyranny of being left alone, President Trump last Friday signed an executive order rescinding Executive Orders 11644 and 11989, the half-century-old framework that had required federal agencies to decide where dirt bikes, all-terrain vehicles, snowmobiles, and jet skis could operate on public land without destroying it.

The rescinded orders, issued by President Nixon in 1972 and amended by President Carter in 1977, directed the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and other agencies that collectively oversee roughly 30 percent of the nation's land to route off-road vehicles so as to minimize harassment of wildlife or significant disruption of wildlife habitats. Under the new order, titled "Removing Unnecessary and Counterproductive Restrictions on Access to Federal Lands," agencies were further instructed to rescind or revise the regulations that carried the old rules out, resolving the long-standing concern that someone, somewhere, was still required to think about it.

The White House characterized the previous protections as "outdated and burdensome," explaining that operational and technological developments over the past 50 years had eliminated any need to plan for where heavy machinery is driven across desert tortoise habitat. Officials did not address the fact that today's off-road vehicles are considerably more powerful than the ones Nixon was worried about, an omission that sources within the administration described as intentional.

"The old orders forced land managers to look at a map and consider where the vehicles actually went, which everyone here agreed was a great deal of work," said one official familiar with the order, noting that the requirement to minimize conflicts with hikers, birdwatchers, anglers, and horseback riders had been quietly removed along with it. "Now the access is unrestricted, which is the same as managed, only easier."

Conservation biologists noted that the rescinded framework had protected species for which habitat fragmentation is a leading threat, including the snowy plover, the Canada lynx, and the greater sage-grouse. Bull trout typically cease to occur where road density exceeds 1.7 miles per square mile, and grizzly bears begin abandoning areas above one mile per square mile, thresholds the administration resolved by relieving agencies of any duty to track them. The order further asserts that existing environmental laws are sufficient to manage off-road vehicles on their own, a claim advanced by the same administration currently weakening those laws under a running series of energy, timber, and border emergencies.

At press time, a snowmobile idled at the edge of a wilderness that, as of Friday, retained no federal reason to ask it to stop.