The Beauty of Boundaries: Why Closed Unless Designated Open Is a Useful Policy for National Forest Lands
The framework that keeps winter landscapes protected, recreation balanced, and conflict in check.
March 27, 2026
In the early years of the National Forest system, forests operated under an “open unless designated closed” paradigm, meaning that visitors could drive or camp anywhere unless there was a sign specifically closing an area. While our public lands are designed to be for everyone, unfettered access to National Forest lands under this paradigm came with costs and threatened the longevity of the landscapes we all love.
In 2004, Dale Bosworth, the head of the U.S. Forest Service at the time under President George Bush, identified four major threats facing national forests, one of which was unmanaged outdoor recreation. 1
Bosworth said,
“My belief is the day that we can take off-highway vehicles across the national forest, across the country, wherever you want, is over. Motorized vehicles need to be limited to designated roads and trails or areas.”
This sentiment helped catalyze the shift to a “closed unless designated open” management paradigm. Some benefits of the closed unless designated paradigm that our national forest system operates under are:
- Closed unless designated open helps keep things manageable. It focuses activity in specific, clearly identified areas so the Forest Service can realistically maintain, monitor, and enforce use.
- Closed unless designated open helps balance recreation and use with ecological integrity and longevity by regulating use in ways that protect natural ecosystems and wildlife habitat.
- Closed unless designated open helps everyone share the landscape. Clear designations reduce use conflict and support the Forest Service’s multi-use mandate, so all users can have a positive experience.
In 2005, after a formal rulemaking process involving significant public input, the Forest Service published a final rule entitled Travel Management; Designated Routes and Areas for Motor Vehicle Use to govern off-road vehicle systems in the summer. While this initial rule exempted over-snow vehicles from the mandatory requirement to designate roads and trails in accordance with specific criteria, in 2013, a court determined that the rule needed to include OSVs, and Subpart C was added to the travel management rule to govern over-snow vehicles in the winter.
The Trump administration’s deregulatory agenda is threatening to overturn the closed unless designated paradigm that we all enjoy when getting out on our national forest lands. There have been baby steps toward opening up public lands for motorized use since the administration’s first months. For example, in spring 2025, President Trump signed a resolution to expand motorized access around Lake Powell, opening areas of the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area that were previously closed to off-road vehicles. In October 2025, Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) introduced two bills that would open national parks to off-road vehicles: the State Motor Vehicle Laws in National Park System Units Act and the OHVs in Capitol Reef National Park Act. More recently, Representative Jeff Crank (R-CO) introduced the Public Lands Access Restoration Act, which aims to mandate that BLM and Forest Service land remain open unless closed (overturning our current closed unless designated open paradigm).
This recent legislation, combined with anticipated threats to the Travel Management Rule all indicate that the current presidential administration is trying to overturn the closed unless designated open paradigm and the benefits associated with that system.
