STATEMENT: New evaluation finds 99.0 p.c of public feedback oppose Travel Management Rule rewrite

DENVER—A brand new evaluation by the Center for Western Priorities discovered that 99.0 p.c of the 134,312 public feedback posted on the U.S. Forest Service’s (USFS) proposed revision of the Travel Management Rule oppose the Trump administration’s plan. The 30-day remark interval closed September 23.

USFS manages greater than 380,000 miles of roads and 165,000 miles of trails. The 2005 Travel Management Rule requires nationwide forests to designate the roads, trails, and areas open to motor automobiles and retains different routes closed. The proposed revision to the rule would reverse that, presuming present roads, trails, airfields, and different entry routes are open to motorized automobiles by default except a closure is required by legislation or justified by documented useful resource, security, use-conflict, or upkeep issues. It would additionally require annual overview of each closed or extremely restricted route, and permit aerial imagery to function proof {that a} route existed. It additionally proposes new guidelines for e-bike use and off-route motorcar use for big-game retrieval, firewood assortment, and dispersed tenting.

Key findings:

• 99.0 p.c of posted feedback opposed the revision

• 0.4 p.c supported it

• 0.6 p.c have been impartial or off-topic

• Of the 0.4 p.c of feedback supporting the revision, practically a 3rd supported it solely due to the proposal to reclassify Class 1 e-bikes as non-motorized automobiles

The Center for Western Priorities launched the next assertion from Creative Content and Policy Manager Lilly Bock-Brownstein, who carried out the evaluation:

“Once again, Americans have shown up in overwhelming numbers to oppose reckless actions on public lands. The Trump administration asked the public whether every road and trail in our national forests should be open to motorized vehicles by default, and the answer was a resounding no.

“There are places where motorized vehicles belong and places they don’t. The American public clearly gets it. But the Trump administration either doesn’t understand, or doesn’t care.”

The outcomes align with earlier CWP analyses that discovered common opposition to the Trump administration’s public lands rollbacks. In September 2025, greater than 99 p.c of roughly 183,000 feedback opposed repealing the Roadless Rule. In November 2025, 98 p.c of feedback opposed rescinding the Bureau of Land Management’s Public Lands Rule. The Forest Service is presently accepting public feedback on the proposal to rescind the 2001 Roadless Rule, which protects the greater than 44 million acres of national forest land outdoors of Colorado and Idaho, the place state-specific roadless guidelines apply. The company extended that comment period deadline to October 6. Comments could be submitted on regulations.gov.

Methodology:

CWP downloaded all 134,312 feedback posted to docket FS-2026-0100 on rules.gov as of September 24, 2026, 07:57 AM MT. Each remark was labeled as supporting, opposing, or impartial/off-topic utilizing a mixture of key phrase matching and a big language mannequin. CWP employees manually audited the labels on a random pattern of 300 feedback, which oversampled for “support” and “neutral/off-topic” feedback. The audit revealed a labeling accuracy price estimated at 99.9 p.c correct.

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