Fifty years of rules keeping off-road vehicles on designated trails — GONE.
Lifted trucks, ATVs, dirt bikes, snowmobiles.
Anywhere they want. On your public lands.
Nixon protected it. Carter protected it. Trump just erased both quietly on a Friday afternoon.
A grizzly bear will abandon its habitat when there's just one mile of road per square mile. One mile. Now there's no limit on where these vehicles can go.
In the Mojave, desert tortoises have already lost 96% of their population in some monitored areas - partly because off-road vehicles crush their burrows. A federal judge just ordered 2,200 miles of trails closed to protect what's left.
Then Trump signed this.
No designated trails. No boundaries. No framework at all. When vehicles go off trail they shatter habitat into pieces too small for wildlife to survive in. They destroy stream banks. They push predators toward humans. And when that happens, the animals always lose.
There was no vote. No public comment. Just a signature.
Now the agencies tasked with writing replacement rules are the BLM, the Forest Service, and the National Park Service - all under an administration that has spent months dismantling every protection they had.
The Interior Department, led by Doug Burgum, is in charge of most of it. The same Doug Burgum who has opened public lands to drilling, mining, and grazing at every turn.
Don't hold your breath.
When the last quiet place is gone, what do we tell the children who never got to hear it?
#DemsUnited
ALT Mountain landscape with forested ridges and valleys under a cloudy sky. Overlaid text reads: Public Lands News. Trump signs executive order opening protected public lands to unrestricted motorized vehicle use. Smaller text states that for over 50 years, federal agencies have been required to consider impacts to wildlife habitat, sensitive plant species, and user experience, but that is changing.