Why all the dates, deadlines, and breathless appeals for advocacy this summer? Because the Trump regime is taking a wrecking ball to decades of American conservation policy all at once: bulldozing National Parks, dismantling National Monuments, pointlessly running the Border Wall across rugged wilderness, gutting the Endangered Species Act, repealing the Roadless Rule, etc., all with the intent of confusing and overwhelming you with dates, deadlines, and appeals. If you’re overwhelmed, we get it. That’s what the bad guys want. So follow and support environmental outlets you trust, and listen up when they tell you to write your congressperson or submit a comment.
Basically, when we say it’s urgent — we’re not kidding. And this is urgent.
When motorized vehicle operators are given free rein in the wild with zero regard or consequences for their destructive impact, the result is destroyed habitat, polluted water and watersheds, increased wildfire risk, injured and abjectly traumatized wildlife, and the further erosion of tranquility in our National Forests.
To that end, I’d ask that you please submit comments and testimony right now, ahead of the close of an insultingly short comment deadline this Wednesday, Sept. 23rd, to preserve the U.S. Forest Service’s long-standing Travel Management Rule in our National Forests. While the current iteration of the Travel Management Rule dates to 2005, the policy actually goes back much further.
Not that any of this matters to MAGA or the Trump regime. Close as they may be to an electoral wipeout in November’s midterms, the regime continues to throw one needless nightmare scenario after another at America’s conservation legacy and heritage. Why? Because the cruelty is the point. This is a regime that exists to punch down and cause chaos where there is none so they can privatize our federal public lands after claiming they’ve become “ungovernable” due to their own willful neglect, misconduct, and malevolence. The fact that it also enables them to engage in planet-hating evil, it seems, is icing on the cake for them. From hikers to hunters, no one has asked for any of these changes to our long-standing, often beloved, and effective public lands policies.
ORVs, ATVs, dirt bikes, and other thrillcraft already have access to thousands of miles of Forest Service roads every day, 365 days of the year. In some cases, hiking trails have been widened and regraded (essentially becoming roads) to accommodate ORVs, as the Wenatchee National Forest did in the Mad River area in the mid-1990s so forest managers could charge greater sums of money for ORV passes to cover lost timber revenue following the implementation of the Northwest Forest Plan. Because when it comes to destruction, they’ve got an excuse for everything.
But the Trump regime’s environmental nihilists are up to something even more calamitous. No doubt smelling “wokeness” in basic environmental policy, they want to allow thrillcraft to have full and complete to access to each and every trail in National Forests throughout the United States, whether it’s approporiate for ORVs or not, breaking with decades of sensible, effective policy that no one is asking to reverse — not even off-roaders. And this isn’t isolated to Alaska or National Forests in public lands-hostile western states, this is coast to coast.
It doesn’t take a genius to realize the results of this will be a destructive free-for-all of environmental douchebaggery, and a pointless calamity in our backcountry for species, habitat, trails, anglers, hunters, campers, and all users of our National Forests, as the regime eagerly gins up conflict between forest users as ORVs smash their way through campgrounds and meadows, splash down the length of rivers and streams laden with salmonids and other juvenile fish, motor across quiet hunting grounds and terrify wildlife rearing their young, all accompanied by the noise, noise, noise the rest of us retreat to our National Forests to get the hell away from. That is what the Trump regime seeks to intrude upon and puncture — with malice.
Please utilize this Sierra Club page to submit your testimony to tell the Forest Service to preserve the Travel Management Rule, or utilize this Oregon Wild page. Just do it immediately.
I’ll have more to say about the Roadless Rule comment deadline coming up on Oct. 6th and the gutting of the federal Endangered Species Act, but the deadline to submit comments to preserve the Travel Management Rule is on the front burner. Submit your comments by this Wednesday, Sept. 23rd! If you’re reading this, do it now. 🇺🇸
Banner photo of Coconino National Forest gate by Tommy Hough.