Trump Tramples Travel Management Rule

The Trump Administration is proposing sweeping revisions to another important protection for federal forests: the Travel Management Rule. The repeal of the Travel Management Rule has garnered less attention than other recent regulatory gutting—like Trump’s recent Endangered Species Act rollbacks or the Roadless Rule rescission—but this action would reverse decades of work to help address the Forest Service’s failing road network. So what is the Travel Management Rule and why does it matter?

The Travel Management Rule is a 2005 regulation that sought to better regulate the Forest Service’s sprawling road network, over 370,000 miles in length. The Forest Service is incapable of maintaining this amount of roads, with an estimated deferred maintenance of roughly $9 billion. The rule requires each national forest to designate a specific system of roads, trails, and areas open to motorized use—rather than allowing vehicles to travel cross-country wherever they please—and to publish that system on official Motor Vehicle Use Maps. 

The Trump Administration is proposing to rewrite the rule. The Forest Service would no longer be directed to only the “minimum road system” open necessary for the management of the forest. Instead, the Forest Service is directed to manage a broader (and less objective) “adequate and appropriate” transportation system. Instead of presuming that roads are closed unless designated open, the new rule would presume that roads are open unless closed. Off-road vehicle use would be expanded—hunters, for example, would be able to drive OHV vehicles off-road to recover animal carcasses. E-bikes would be allowed to use trails already open to bicycle use. The proposal to rescind the Travel Management Rule comes on the heels of the rescission of the roadless rule—boding a broader shift towards new forest roads to log and mine our public lands. 

Forest roads are permanent scars on the landscape. Forest roads are the number one source of sediment pollution in Northern California, impairing more than 61% of North Coast waterways. Forest roads also promote habitat fragmentation, facilitate more invasive species, and are a vector for anthropogenic fire starts. Loosening rules concerning roads risks returning to the lawless days, where OHV users trampled over sensitive habitats and developed new illegal user-created roads, further deepening the backlog of restoration work necessary for the Forest Service. 

The Forest Service anticipates releasing a draft EIS and proposed regulatory text in Spring 2027.