With the release of the travel plan for the San Rafael Swell, which announced the closure of 665 miles of routes for motorized recreation, there have now been over 1,000 miles of routes closed in the state of Utah in the last four years. These closures are a result of the BLM’s legal settlement with wilderness groups in 2017 that required BLM to review over ten thousand miles of routes.
After 317 miles of popular routes were closed in Moab, elected leaders in Utah reached out to see what they could do to help roll back this shutdown of Utah’s public lands. We educated their staff about the problems we are seeing with these travel plans, and in response they introduced the Historic Roadways Protection Act. Senator Mike Lee was the sponsor in the Senate, and Representative John Curtis sponsored the bill in the House of Representatives.
The bill restricts the BLM from using any funds to continue reviewing or implementing these plans until certain lawsuits are resolved where the state of Utah is contesting ownership of the roads. Hundreds of miles of these contested roads have already been closed. The bill specifically applies to all of the travel plans that have been completed and several others that are still under review.
We expected the legislation would be a tough sell in the previous Congress, and would also be threatened by a veto from President Biden, and it was not passed in the last Congress.
We are excited to announce that this bill was reintroduced this week with Senators Mike Lee and John Curtis uniting to support this bill in the Senate. We also appreciate Utah’s newest member of Congress, Representative Mike Kennedy, for introducing the Historic Roadways Protection Act as his first piece of legislation in the House of Representatives.
The prospects for passing this bill in the current environment in Washington DC, and really good, but…
These members of Congress are going to be flooded with requests and feedback during the upcoming months. When we spoke to the staff from these offices, they said the reason this legislation was reintroduced so quickly was because they heard from so many of you when it was originally introduced after the Moab closures. The closures in the Swell have only escalated the urgency to get this passed.
However, there are many new members of Congress who don’t know how important this legislation is. It is also crucial that we a send strong message of support to ensure that this bill is introduced in a vehicle like the budget reconciliation bill that is guaranteed to pass and be signed into law.
If we are silent now, we can be sure that this bill will be crowded out by other priorities.
This is why we need you to recommit to joining us in supporting this bill and reopening our trails.
Through the end of the year, we sent many emails to announce that we would be leading a Grand Reopening of our public lands.
The time for the full court press is now, and the Historic Roadways Protection Act is the first order of business.
We need your voice today, and then we need you to share this message with others. We already made a difference once before, and if everyone steps up, we will prevail.
Add Your Voice
Swell Yeah! Support our Fight to Reopen the Swell by Entering to Win a custom Dirt Bike
Enter Using Promo Code: SWELLYEAH and we will send you a Conquered Trails sticker to show your support and you’ll get bonus entries.
