President Donald Trump rescinded two executive orders Friday from the 1970s that had governed off-road vehicle use on federal public lands, directing agencies to dismantle a regulatory framework he called vague, burdensome, and an obstacle to legitimate access.
The order revokes Executive Order 11644 and Executive Order 11989, which together required agency leaders to manage off-road vehicle use on public lands under a set of subjective criteria—including preventing adverse effects on natural, aesthetic, or scenic values and minimizing conflicts between off-road vehicles and other existing or proposed recreational uses.
The first executive order, signed by President Richard Nixon in 1972, established strict criteria for the use of off-road vehicles on federal lands in an effort to minimize their environmental impact. The second, signed by President Jimmy Carter in 1977, authorized the government to immediately shut down off-road driving if it was causing ecological damage.
Both orders applied to a variety of vehicles designed to drive on unpaved roads—including all-terrain vehicles, dirt bikes, and snowmobiles.
Trump’s order directs relevant federal agencies to rescind or revise the regulations that were adopted to implement the now-rescinded executive orders.
The White House said the standards imposed by the prior executive orders are vague and subjective and have created unnecessary barriers to recreation, energy, and timber production, access to remote areas, and infrastructure maintenance, and have adversely impacted rural economies, permitting, tourism, American manufacturing, organized motorsports, volunteer stewardship efforts, and public confidence in federal land management.
That reasoning mirrors the language the administration applied to the 2001 Roadless Rule—a Clinton-era decree that placed nearly 60 million acres of national forest lands off-limits to road construction and timber harvest.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins rescinded the Roadless Rule in June 2025, opening a public comment period in August to advance the rulemaking. The latest mapping technologies, paired with the rescissions, will allow for off-road vehicle use designations that provide more access, recreational opportunities, and greater benefits to the public, the White House said.
The two rescinded executive orders anchored federal management of motorized recreation for more than 50 years, and their removal represents one of the most significant rollbacks of public lands regulation since the modern environmental movement began.
An estimated 5 million off-road recreational vehicles—motorcycles, minibikes, trail bikes, snowmobiles, dune buggies, all-terrain vehicles, and others—were in use in the United States when Nixon signed EO 11644, and their popularity was increasing rapidly. The order responded to the widespread use of such vehicles on public lands. The Carter amendment, five years later, toughened enforcement by authorizing immediate closures where damage was occurring. Both orders applied across properties managed by the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Forest Service, the National Park Service, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.