SALT LAKE CITY – Today the Bureau of Land Management released its final decision for the San Rafael Swell. The plan was released at 3:12 p.m. on New Years Eve, and it announced the closure of 665 miles of off-road routes in one of Utah’s most popular landscapes for outdoor recreation. Located within a few hours driving distance from major population centers, the San Rafael Swell is a popular destination for off-roading, dirtbiking, vehicle-based camping, mountain biking, sight-seeing, hiking, hunting, wildlife viewing, and appreciating cultural and historical sites. In 2019 Congress passed the Dingell Act, which designated 660,000 acres of this landscape as wilderness – the most restrictive land designation for public land.
The closure of 665 miles of routes in this area expands wilderness level protections to thousands of acres of land intended to be managed as multiple-use or special recreation areas. Access to numerous important historical Cold War sites has been closed or limited. Numerous free, primitive, dispersed campsites will no longer be accessible, forcing users to compete for use in a limited number of developed, paid campsites. BlueRibbon Coalition opposes this plan that was released at the last minute as part of a sustained effort to shut down Utah’s public lands.
“After spending weeks in this area doing field work to ground truth the condition of these routes and their recreation value, I was disappointed to review the map of the final decision and find many high value destinations will no longer be accessible to current and future generations,” BRC Executive Director, Ben Burr said. “Because of Congressional wilderness designations, the management of this area is already balanced heavily in favor of environmental protection, and even though we saw through the false promises of the Dingell Act, this announcement of hundreds of miles of additional route closures must be insulting to everyone who worked in good faith with wilderness groups to pass the Dingell Act.”
BlueRibbon Coalition will exhaust all of its options to challenge this plan after thoroughly reviewing the BLM’s analysis to ensure that America’s spectacular public lands remain open for the public to enjoy. With the reversal of Chevron Deference and recent court decisions that validate Utah’s jurisdiction over its roads, this plan is vulnerable to a court challenge. It is also likely that this last minute closure of Utah’s public lands will rekindle interest in Congress to pass the Historic Roadways Protection Act in Congress as part of a budget reconciliation bill. It is not likely that these closures will be permanent.
###
In 2025 BRC will be working to rollback the closures of the last few years by promoting a Grand Reopening of our Public Lands. We will now need to add reopening the San Rafael Swell to our list. You can support our work and enter to win one of these amazing custom dirt bikes.
