The U.S. Department of Agriculture has proposed rewriting the rule that governs where you can legally drive on national forest land, and the public comment window closes on September 23, 2026.

The proposal, published in the Federal Register on August 24, would revise the Forest Service’s travel management regulations at 36 CFR part 212. It is paired with an environmental impact statement, meaning the agency is studying alternatives rather than simply amending text.

What the rule would change

The core of the proposal is a reversal of the default. USDA describes it as establishing a national policy with a presumption that existing roads, trails, airfields, trailheads and other access routes on National Forest System lands are open to appropriate public use, unless closure is required by law, valid existing rights or another governing instrument — or is supported by specific, documented and justifiable reasons.

Those reasons are limited in the proposal to science-based resource conditions, public safety, conflicts among uses, and maintenance or administrative capacity. In other words, a closure would need a stated, documented basis rather than being the starting position.

The proposal would also require annual review of every trail, road, airfield and trailhead that is currently closed or highly restricted.

Off-route use gets an explicit process

The proposed rule sets out processes and conditions for limited off-route motor vehicle use — specifically naming downed big-game retrieval, firewood collection and dispersed camping — and for designating areas for over-snow and other motorized recreation.

These are exactly the activities that have generated the most friction under the current framework, because they involve leaving a designated route for a defined purpose. Putting them in the regulation rather than leaving them to forest-by-forest interpretation is a meaningful structural change.

What it would not do

This is where the proposal is easy to overstate, and worth reading carefully.

USDA states that the presumption would guide future decisions and would not itself change the legal status of any road, trail, airfield, trailhead, area or other access route. Existing motor vehicle use designations and the Motor Vehicle Use Maps that carry them would remain in effect until they are revised under the amended regulations.

So nothing opens the day the rule is finalised. A route that is closed today stays closed until a forest revisits it under the new framework.

The proposal also addresses evidence. Commonly available public data sets, including aerial imagery, could be used to show that a route physically exists or existed — but the agency is explicit that imagery alone would not establish that a feature is part of the forest transportation system, that the Forest Service has jurisdiction or legal access, or that it is open to any particular use.

Why this matters beyond national forests

Travel management is where most access disputes actually get decided. It is not glamorous, and it moves through comment periods rather than headlines, but it determines which routes appear on the map you are legally bound by.

Federal land agencies have been active on this front. The Bureau of Land Management issued interim guidance in July 2026 requiring state and field offices to coordinate with the Director’s Office before signing travel-management decisions — a procedural change that affects how pending decisions move. Individual plans continue on their own timelines, from route inventories in Utah to court-ordered closures in the Western Mojave.

How to comment

The proposed rule, the docket and the comment mechanism are on the Federal Register listing for Travel Management; National Forest System Lands. Comments close September 23, 2026.

Comments that identify a specific route, forest or condition tend to be more useful to an agency building an environmental impact statement than general statements of support or opposition, because the EIS has to evaluate alternatives against documented conditions.

This article was researched and drafted with the assistance of AI tools and reviewed, fact-checked and edited by Leonidas Clark before publication. Regulations change; verify current rules with the relevant agency before you go.