In this episode of the Defend Your Ground podcast, Ben Burr and Simone Griffin discuss recent legislative updates regarding public lands, focusing on the Glen Canyon OHV rule and the implications of the Congressional Review Act.
Transcript of Show
Ben (00:01)
Hey everybody, welcome to episode 58 of the Defend Your Ground podcast. This is Ben Burr. I am the executive director of the Blue Ribbon Coalition. I am joined today with Simone Griffin, our policy director, and we have some updates. There’s a lot that’s been going on these last few weeks and we wanted to update you on some bills that have been introduced in Congress and educate you about what they do. mostly they undo some of the closure decisions that were done in the previous administration. So that’s why we’re interested in these. We’ve been talking about the grand reopening of our public land for several weeks now. And these provisions would be the kind of action that we would consider a major part of the grand reopening of our public lands. And so they need some attention. So Simone, let’s start with the first one, the Glen Canyon plan.
Simone (01:01)
Yeah.
So last year, the National Park Service issued a rule for Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. So this is the Lake Powell area, if people don’t know, that it’s going to restrict and it more specifically defines OHVs and which routes they can go on.
The rule also specified at different water levels where they can go and shorelines. And so this was issued at the end of 2024, this rule that it’s going to limit OHVs, not all motorized vehicles, but OHVs specifically.
Ben (01:45)
Yes. So there’s a few main routes. There’s like Crosby Canyon. There’s some routes up near Bullfrog that actually provide water access. So people will use these routes to go and access the lake in a vehicle and camp and recreate on Lake Powell and the Glen Canyon recreation area. It also created some curfew hours and just some new rules around Lone Rock Beach. And in addition to that, though, there’s a trail in the north part of Glen Canyon, and it isn’t really anywhere near the lake. This is up closer to Orange Cliffs and Canyonlands. And there’s a trail up there that most folks in the OHV community refer to as Poison Springs Trail. And this creates a loop with other trails in this system that connect to the Flint Trail and they go down and eventually connect down near Hite.
This is a road that’s well-graded and maintained. It’s traveled by all kinds of vehicles from like a dual sport dirt bike could go and drive this and trail has always been able to. It’s never been restricted. I have a picture of a F350 box truck with, that was taking people on a mountain bike packing tour. The box truck was hauling all the gear while the people biked the trail. And this is a massive full size truck. And so this trail is used by off road vehicles all the time. Where the problem came in was when the state of Utah created street legal laws for OHVs or more specifically like the side by sides. And so it started to allow other vehicles that weren’t full size highway designated vehicles to be allowed on this road.
That’s where this became controversial. And so this has been going back and forth through litigation. The reason this rule was even proposed was a settlement with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. And so that’s probably the most controversial part of this trail that was closed. And the federal register rulemaking, do you remember the part that talked about limiting the discretion of the…
Simone (03:55)
superintendent?
Yeah that’s an interesting one. It basically removes the superintendent’s discretion to make decisions about access in the future because normally the superintendent has discretion to make decisions and it removes their authority to be able to do that.
Ben (04:17)
Which is interesting because the organization that filed this lawsuit, the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance has been one of the most vocal about that we’ve let some of the staff go at the park service. here they are in a lawsuit, like limiting what they can actually do to manage the land. And so in their lawsuit, they’re tying the hands of these managers that they’re on their social media posts. They’re so quick to support because they’re opportunistically to do their job.
Simone (04:42)
But they don’t want them to actually be able to manage and make decisions. Yeah, they want SUWA to be able to make the decisions.
Ben (04:48)
Yeah. And so they would prefer that the land be managed by the judges that agree with them as opposed to letting a land manager have discretion. And to be fair, land manager discretion is up for debate. That’s what Chevron deference is all about. It’s how much discretion should they have? should, like, and so I think
Simone (05:06)
But this is unprecedented. It’s not like this is a normal thing in the national park service that the superintendent doesn’t have discretion on some things like this. This was weird because we’ve never seen it.
Ben (05:14)
I’ve never seen one voluntarily agree to limit their own power.
Simone (05:20)
Yeah, so that’s why this is a confusing, weird part of this. What are the intentions?
Ben (05:27)
And so the good news is Representative Celeste Malloy has introduced a bill – because that is who should be making these kinds of decisions is Congress. That is who does have discretion and the full lawmaking authority to determine how public lands should be managed. Certainly no doubt about that. And so tell us what this legislation introduced by Representative Malloy would do.
Simone (05:49)
Yeah, I mean, I’ll just read it because it’s really short. It just says that Congress disapproves the rule submitted by the National Park Service of the Department of the Interior relating to Glen Canyon National Recreation Area motor vehicles, and such rules shall have no force or effect. So it’s basically saying that Congress disapproves of the rule that’s been proposed. And it’s just as simple as that, that it won’t go into an effect.
Ben (06:12)
And the reason it’s this simple is because it’s an application of the Congressional Review Act. And the Congressional Review Act is basically an act that enables Congress, like whenever an agency finalizes a rule like this, they have to submit a report to Congress and then within a certain window of time, it says 60 days, but it’s like 60 days that the House and the Senate are in session.
And then they submit what’s called like a joint resolution of disapproval. And the reason this vehicle is often an attractive way to shape policy is because it can’t be filibustered in the Senate. It’s not subject to what is normally the Senate needs 60 votes to pass things. A Congressional Review Act joint resolution can pass with 50 votes. So during the first term of the Trump administration, they rescinded 16 Obama era regulations using the Congressional Review Act. And so I’m not surprised to see these coming out of the woodwork. They do have a clock that’s ticking before they can get these done. And so this is one that we support because we’ve been involved in this Glen Canyon decision. We’ve been part of the coalition of off road users that want that poison springs trail open. We do believe having motorized access to the lake in a national recreation area is appropriate and should be allowable. We do support that this needs to be done on designated routes and that the park service should be able to manage that experience. Like that’s fine, but we don’t want heavy handed restrictions and we don’t want people getting penalized and ticketed for enjoying a national recreation area responsibly.
But most importantly, this closure of that poison spring loop is a huge problem. And this huge open question about limiting the superintendent’s discretion is really weird. And so we think it’d be a good idea for the Congress to rescind this rule through the Congressional Review Act. It also means that the agency cannot put forward another similar rule making. for like 20 years, I’d have to check the time on that. But it prevents them from… if another administration comes in in four years and they wanna reinstate this rule, they really won’t be able to, it’s off the table because Congress has spoken.
Simone (08:31)
Yeah, well, and let’s also just point out the fact that there are things happening with it because after they issued the final rule, then they also posted in the Federal Register later that they’re going to pause actually putting this rule into effect. And so that was interesting that
Ben (08:46)
postpone.
Well, that was a result from like President Trump, one of his first executive orders was any rule that had been done within like some sort of period of time prior to the inauguration was subject to a 60 day pause. And this was one of those that they rushed out at the last minute. so that’s, so it is being delayed, it’s implementation, but I think if we’re not past
Simone (08:57)
Mm-hmm.
Oh, well, and here’s an interesting part was just posted today actually. So March 14th, 2025, I just checked. Um, they actually are delaying it. The decision even longer. Um, yeah. So it says as of March 14th, 2025, the effective date of the rule, um, is delayed or is postponed indefinitely pending judicial review.
Ben (09:22)
Really?
Simone (09:45)
The National Park Service will publish a document in the Federal Register announcing a new effective date or other dates the public may need to know.
Ben (09:52)
Yeah. Well, I know one group at least that filed an appeal on this decision and that was us. So, well, I suspect the state of Utah is possibly also involved in that. So we’re to have to research what’s going on there. but either way, I think hopefully the Congress, I think going through court on this one, it’d be much cleaner if the Congress were able to get this passed. They have the votes.
Simone (09:57)
Well done, BRC!
I think so.
Ben (10:17)
They have enough people in each body to pass this. And there’s a handful of others that I think they could do this way. And when we went to DC and we met with several of the congressional staff, we know that there were a lot of debates happening around what plans and things could be pursued through a congressional review act action. And this was definitely one of them. And now it’s happening. It’s moving forward. But then Congressman Hurd, he’s the new congressman in western Colorado, so Grand Junction area, that western slope side of the state. He introduced a piece of legislation with several other members and it addressed many of the plans we’ve worked on, but from what we could tell, it doesn’t look like it’s an application of the Congressional Review Act, but it still is Congress weighing in on a bunch of these administrative plans that the Biden administration released at the last minute. So why don’t you tell us which plans this legislation by Congressman Hurd will address.
Simone (11:17)
Yeah. Um, the majority of them are Colorado, but you also have some in Montana in different areas. Um, so let’s go through them. So they’ll all, it basically nullifies resource management plans that they have just decided, um, like end of 2024. So you’ve got the Buffalo field office resource management plan, the grand junction resource management plan.
Colorado River Valley resource management plan, the Mile City resource management plan, the Rock Springs resource management plan, and the Royal Gorge resource management plan, Lakeview resource management plan, Gunnison Sage Grouse resource management plan, big habitat for oil and gas management in Colorado resource management plan. Yeah.
That’s all of them. So you’ve got Wyoming, you’ve got Montana, you’ve got Oregon, and you’ve got Colorado Resource Management Plans all lumped in there. And you’ve got representatives from all of those states that are co-sponsoring this bill.
Ben (12:17)
Oregon.
Yeah, and as you’ve listed that list, I’m pretty confident BRC commented on all of those except for maybe the big game oil and gas one, because that’s…
Simone (12:38)
so I did initially submit comments on that one. The one that I was not familiar was what the Miles City resource management plan, but what I can tell from that one, they did all the EISs and stuff before we were involved in that type of thing. And then they issued the decision. and that’s a Montana one. I still need to get up to date on that one. Yes. Yeah. So it’s not my fault.
Ben (12:58)
So before you were hired basically, yeah.
Yeah, well,
you’re good. And so that’s a bill that we I mean, those are all like, especially Lakeview, Rock Springs, Royal Gorge, those ones in western Colorado are all ones that would have affected recreation access. We’ve been heavily involved in all of those, and so if this law were to pass, it would.
Simone (13:15)
Colorado River Valley. We submitted protests on all of those.
Ben (13:27)
very quickly reduce the need for what could potentially be a decent amount of litigation. We participate in the objection process to preserve our legal standing. So the fact that we’ve been in the objection process on those plans means they’re ones that we would potentially litigate at some point. And so this is all part of watching what’s unfolding right now, but we’ll see. So Simone, we’ve…
I want to, so I want to stress the urgency on first of all, the Glen Canyon plan. I think their clock is ticking. We have Congress debating spending bills and there could be a government shutdown right now. Like I’m, I, I’m confident that they’re watching the clock on this, but if they don’t get things done by a certain date and I’m not quite clear what the date is because it only counts like the days they’re in session. So it’s never quite clear like what’s the 60 day mark, but they’ve got it. It always seems like.
Simone (14:18)
Yeah.
Ben (14:21)
They had to get these done by April in the first, during a new administration. And so I want, I think it’s important that our members, so if you’re listening to this and you haven’t contacted your member of Congress to support the congressional review act disapproval resolution on the Glen Canyon OHV rule, that’s your top priority. You need to do that today and make sure they know that this is something you care about and that you would like to see that get done because it could get done tomorrow if they put it up for a vote.
Simone (14:52)
And then Hurd’s bill that we said that’s going to nullify all those resource management plans, that’s called the Productive Public Lands Act. So that’s another one that we need you to contact your representatives and encourage them to support the Productive Public Lands Act.
Ben (15:08)
Perfect. And we will have links to those and the notes on the show. We’ll have them out on our social media links. It’ll be in our newsletter this weekend. And so reach out to your members of Congress. This is the time they need to hear from you. They’re getting a lot of communication on thousands of different things. And so if we just sit by and are silent about this stuff, then it won’t get their attention. It just won’t. Not because they don’t care about the issue, but there’s so many other things crowding up the room.
And so we do need everybody to take 30 seconds, our forms, our action alerts, make it really easy to do, go ahead and get this one done, support this so that we, it’s just the cleanest, most permanent way to reverse a lot of these closures that happened during the last four years. And so we’d love to see everybody become part of this project. So anything else on these issues or I feel like this could be a shorter episode, but we just need people to get to get their butts in gear and get some of it, take some actions. So.
Simone (15:58)
that basically covers it.
Ben (16:05)
Go do it, defend your ground, and we’ll be back next week with more updates.
