Speak Up for Travel Management
Do you bird watch, snowmobile, ride an ATV, hunt, fish, camp, ski, mountain bike, or hike on public lands?
Whatever your mode, you depend on travel management to help ensure your public lands remain safe, accessible, and enjoyable.
Unfortunately, this administration is taking another swing at the wild landscapes that make Central Oregon and the rest of our national public lands so special.
This time, they want to revise the US Forest Serivce’s Travel Management Rule to make it substantially less protective of wildlife habitat, ecosystem function, and non-motorized recreation.
Your access to public lands is better and safer thanks to the Travel Managment Rule. Tell this administration to leave the rule alone. Photo: James Holk
What is the Travel Management Rule, and why does it matter?
For outdoor enthusiasts, the Travel Management Rule ensures access to designated routes without unnecessary closures. Among other benefits, the Rule:
Provides certainty about where recreating is allowed
Reduces safety risks, noise, and user conflicts
Leads to better-maintained roads and trails
Improves the overall recreation experience
Travel management also plays a critical role in protecting the landscapes that make these places worth visiting. By directing motorized use to appropriate routes, it helps prevent:
Damage to wildlife habitat and winter range
Soil erosion, wetland destruction, and water pollution
Fragmentation of sensitive ecosystems and spread of invasive species
Increased human-caused wildfire starts
SPEAK UP TODAY
Urge the USDA to abandon these revisions and ensure that the Travel Management Rule continues to support protections for wildlife, water quality, and non-motorized forest users.
Personalized comments have the greatest impact. If you can, share why smart management of roads and motor vehicles in our National Forests matters to you.
Submit your unique comment by the deadline on September 23, 2026.
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I strongly oppose weakening the Travel Management Rule through the revisions proposed in the Federal Register Notice of Intent to prepare a Draft Environmental Impact Statement.
The Travel Management Rule ensures that we have clear rules of the road on 193 million acres of US Forest Service lands while also guaranteeing that hikers, hunters, anglers, horseback riders, mountain bikers, families, and wildlife are not pushed aside by unmanaged vehicle use. The proposed revision would eliminate this clarity by establishing an “open unless closed” presumption, requiring less public input on changes to motor vehicle use rules, and exempting certain categories of vehicles or uses from the motor-vehicle designation requirements.
Roads already dominate Central Oregon’s National Forests, providing thousands of miles of sanctioned access for all kinds of motor vehicle uses on top of thousands more miles of unauthorized routes. The Travel Management Rule is one of our only safeguards against further road-based forest degradation.
Travel management has many benefits, including:
Placing a check on fragmentation of sensitive ecosystems
Enabling winter range closures that give mule deer the space and resources they need at a critical time of year
Containing some of the worst ecological and biological effects of roads, including soil erosion and water pollution
Limiting human-caused wildfire starts and the spread of invasive species along roadways
By eliminating the guardrails in the current Travel Management Rule, the proposed revisions would further prioritize motorized access at the expense of wildlife, ecosystems, and human-powered recreation.
This revision inappropriately applies a one-size-fits-all lens to travel management, rather than allowing for local discretion and decision-making.
I urge the US Forest Service to abandon the Travel Management Rule revision.
