It will take public lands agencies time to promulgate new rules for off-roaders
As the importance of protecting the environment was starting to gain wide acceptance in the late 1960s and early 1970s, evidence was also building that off-road recreational vehicle (ORV) use was taking a toll on U.S. public lands. Erosion, noise pollution, and disturbance of endangered species were all concerns as there were no policies in place to restrict the use of ATVs, motorcycles, snowmobiles, and other vehicles.
The long-gone era of bi-partisanship
In 1972, President Nixon signed Executive Order (EO) 11644, which directed U.S. government agency heads to issue regulations designating where ORVs would be and would not be permitted. A few years earlier, Nixon and Congress had created the Environmental Protection Agency and the following year he would sign the Endangered Species Act, all actions that responded to public demands at that time for reducing negative human impacts on the environment.
EO 11644 specified that ORV use areas and trails should minimize damage to soil and water, harassment of wildlife, and conflicts between ORV users and other recreation, and clarified that they should not be allowed within the National Wilderness Preservation System. There was expected push-back from ORV users groups and mining interests, but generally the EO was well received.
Carter brings clarity to Nixon policy
In 1977, President Carter went further with EO11989, directing agency heads to prioritize wildlife and habitat protection over ORV recreational use. He did this as part of a landmark speech to Congress on May 23 exclusively focused on the environment.
“In 1972, federal agencies began to control the use of such vehicles on the public lands under Executive Order 11644…I am today amending this Executive Order to exclude off-road vehicles from certain portions of the public lands where their use has caused (or seems likely to cause) considerable environmental damage.”
Agency heads had said that it was unclear what was expected of them under EO 11644 issued by Nixon. Carter’s EO provided this clarification and became the foundation of policy regulating ORV use on public lands for subsequent decades.
Fifty years and counting
For the 50+ years since then, ORV users and manufacturers have fought against what they saw as unfair restrictions on public use, and other groups fought to preserve the regulations. When President Trump first took office in 2017, groups like the Blue Ribbon Coalition sensed an opportunity. But it’s been during Trump’s current term in which lobbying groups have been rewarded.
On May 29, President Trump rescinded both EOs, saying that modern technology has eliminated the need for them and that other environmental laws and regulations were sufficient to manage ORVs. This recission has raised concerns.
“Public lands are big enough for hikers, hunters, horseback riders, mountain bikers, motorized users and families looking for quiet places to camp, if we are wise about how we share them,” said Alison Flint, Acting Vice President for Federal Policy at The Wilderness Society. “This is a cynical attempt to pit public land users against one another while weakening the rules that protect the land itself.”
What next?
At the same time, according to the New York Times, the Department of Agriculture is preparing an order allowing ORV use on millions of acres of National Forest land that had previously been closed to them, including in areas that the USFS had recommended Congress designate as wilderness. Environmental groups say that this order and the recissions could change the way recreation is managed on public lands, both USFS and Bureau of Land Management, nationwide.
“For decades off-road vehicles have had an outsized impact on BLM-managed lands and that’s especially true today as faster and louder vehicles blanket the landscape,” said retired BLM Director Jim Baca (1993-94). “Undoing Nixon and Carter-era Executive Orders that directed BLM to ‘minimize’ the impacts these vehicles have on public lands and resources is only going to make BLM’s job harder.”
