On December 31, 2024, just as the sun was setting on the final hours of the Biden administration, the BLM released a new Travel Management Plan for the San Rafael Swell. For generations, the Swell had been a place where families, explorers, and motorized recreationists forged deep connections with Utah’s rugged backcountry. Many of the routes had been traveled for decades, offering access to remote canyons, historic sites, and the wide-open spaces that define the region’s heritage.
But with the new plan, more than 665 miles of motorized routes were closed, including many that held deep meaning to the off roading community. Riders who had spent lifetimes exploring the Swell suddenly faced locked-off landscapes. Long-used trails, some of the only pathways into remote areas, were erased from the map with the stroke of a pen.
For those of us at the BlueRibbon Coalition, this wasn’t just another policy dispute, it struck at the heart of how public lands are meant to serve the American people. We have spent decades defending responsible access to these treasured places. When the BLM’s plan shut down hundreds of miles of historic routes, we took action.
As with our challenge to the Labyrinth Rims/Gemini Bridges plan in Moab, we filed suit arguing that the BLM had unlawfully expanded wilderness restrictions far beyond what Congress ever authorized. Although only Congress has the power to designate wilderness, the agency effectively created vast wilderness “buffer zones”, i.e., huge swaths of land treated as if they were wilderness simply because they sat near designated wilderness boundaries. These buffer zones became the justification for closing route after route, even when the roads predated wilderness designations by decades.
This was the core issue at stake: BLM cannot manufacture de facto wilderness through management plans, yet the San Rafael Swell plan did exactly that. Instead of evaluating routes based on their actual impacts or legal status, the agency relied on broad, inconsistent rationales that often prioritized predetermined closure outcomes over transparent analysis. Trails that had existed for generations were suddenly labeled incompatible solely because they fell within these newly invented buffer areas.
Our lawsuit also included a more personal fight. We filed a preliminary injunction on behalf of Paul Wells, a lifelong resident of the region whose family’s historic Marsing Ranch has always been accessed by dirt bike. The new plan closed the routes he relied on, leaving him effectively cut off from the homestead that embodies his family’s history. For Paul, this wasn’t an abstract policy issue, it was the loss of a living connection to his heritage.
Today, we are still awaiting the court’s ruling on that preliminary injunction, and the broader case is still unfolding. But despite the challenges ahead, we remain optimistic. We believe BLM can engage constructively to correct the overly restrictive nature of this plan, and we are committed to ensuring that public lands remain truly public.
While the road ahead may be long, our dedication has never been stronger. We will continue fighting to protect not only access, but the principles at the heart of balanced public-land management.
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Our legal work is possible because of individual members and supporters like you. With your support, we were able to hire our first full-time attorney last year—leading to the most impactful period of legal success in our organization’s history. Your backing has empowered us to win critical battles for public access, but there’s more to challenge and anti-access groups continue to file lawsuits at an unprecedented rate. Continued support ensures we have the legal strength to defend our rights and keep our public lands open.
