Blue Mountains Forest Plan Revision FAQ: Motorized Recreation, Public Access and How to Comment
Malheur, Umatilla and Wallowa-Whitman National Forests Comments due September 30, 2026
Last verified August 24, 2026
By Jeff Knoll
If you have hunted outside John Day or Prairie City, camped near Baker City or La Grande, ridden around Ukiah or Heppner, explored from Enterprise or Joseph, or used Pendleton, Walla Walla, Pomeroy or Hines as a base camp, the Blue Mountains Forest Plan Revision involves public lands you may know well.
The planning area covers about 4.9 million acres in the Malheur, Umatilla and Wallowa-Whitman National Forests across eastern Oregon and southeastern Washington. Hells Canyon National Recreation Area is excluded because it operates under a separate comprehensive management plan. The existing Forest Plans date to 1990.
The Draft Environmental Impact Statement, or DEIS, is a large and complicated document. This FAQ is intended to make the major recreation and access questions easier to understand, correct misinformation where the record is clear, and help people participate. It is not a substitute for the DEIS. If a particular road, trail, watershed, management area, or recreation setting matters to you, we encourage you to read the relevant portions—and, when possible, the entire document—before commenting. The Forest Service's formal comment period closes September 30, 2026.
What is a Forest Plan, and why should recreationists care? A Forest Plan establishes long-term management direction rather than deciding whether a particular trail is open next weekend. The DEIS says site-specific designation of roads, trails, and motorized areas occurs through later Travel Management or project-level decisions. Still, those future projects must be consistent with the Forest Plan. In plain language, the Forest Plan does not lock the gate, but it can write the policy that makes locking—or maintaining—the gate easier later.
Does the Blue Mountains Forest Plan close roads or motorized trails? No, not directly. Claims that adoption of this Forest Plan immediately closes specific OHV, four-wheel-drive or motorcycle routes are inaccurate. This decision does not automatically rewrite existing route designations. The legitimate access concern is longer term: recreation settings, management areas, standards, guidelines and land classifications adopted now can influence future route maintenance, reconstruction and Travel Management decisions. The DEIS itself says the trail system should accommodate current and reasonably foreseeable motorized and nonmotorized recreational needs.
Is this really one Forest Plan for three very different national forests? Not exactly. The Forest Service is using one regional DEIS and a largely shared planning framework for the Malheur, Umatilla, and Wallowa-Whitman. Still, after the Final EIS, each forest supervisor is expected to produce a draft Record of Decision and a specific Land Management Plan for that forest. The important question is whether the common regional analysis leaves enough room for meaningful forest-specific direction. Nearly five million acres stretching across three national forests contain different communities, transportation systems, recreation patterns, and management needs. Regional consistency can be useful, but consistency should not erase local differences. One Voice is asking the Forest Service to clearly show where recreation conditions, access needs and management direction differ among the three forests and allow the final plans to differ where the evidence supports it. The DEIS itself recognizes individual forest plans while using one EIS for the regional analysis.
What is One Voice recommending among Alternatives 1, 2 and 3? One Voice does not endorse any alternative as currently written. Alternative 1 continues the existing 1990 plans. Alternative 2 is the proposed action and generally provides greater flexibility for active forest management and multiple use. Alternative 3 retains much of the new planning framework but adds additional resource protections, including Recommended Wilderness and Roadless Area management. Alternative 2 appears to provide the better starting framework in several areas important to active management and motorized recreation, but a better starting point is not an endorsement. Use public comment to improve the final forest-specific plans rather than treating it as a vote for one alternative exactly as written.
Does Alternative 2 open hundreds of thousands of Roadless acres to OHVs? No. Alternative 2 provides greater management flexibility on lands currently affected by Inventoried Roadless Area direction. Still, it does not automatically designate hundreds of thousands of acres for cross-country motorized travel or create new OHV routes. Route designation remains a separate process. Claims that Alternative 2 instantly “opens” roughly 722,000 acres confuse land-management flexibility with motorized Travel Management. Another important development is underway. On August 20, 2026, USDA published a separate proposed rule to rescind the 2001 Roadless Rule and return more decision-making over Inventoried Roadless Areas to individual national-forest planning. That proposal is not yet final. If adopted, it could make the direction written into individual Forest Plans even more important because the national Roadless Rule would no longer provide the same uniform management framework.
Do Roadless Areas, Recommended Wilderness and Wild and Scenic Rivers automatically prohibit motorized recreation? No; these are different classifications with different effects. Inventoried Roadless Area status does not by itself erase existing designated motorized routes, although limits on road construction, reconstruction, and management can affect long-term access and infrastructure. Recommended Wilderness is not congressionally designated Wilderness; only Congress can make that designation, but management intended to preserve wilderness characteristics can constrain motorized or mechanized uses. Wild and Scenic River eligibility is likewise not congressional designation, but interim management can affect transportation, recreation development, and motorized use when necessary to protect identified river values. The public should ask what recreation already occurs within each proposed management area and what practical effect the proposed direction could have before making future route-level decisions.
Why do Oregon's SCORP and 2026 Recreational Trails Plan matter? Because recreation is not an incidental use of national forests, Congress has expressly listed outdoor recreation alongside range, timber, watershed, wildlife and fish as a purpose of national-forest management since the Multiple-Use Sustained-Yield Act of 1960. The 2012 Planning Rule also requires forest plans to consider sustainable recreation, including recreation settings, opportunities and access. Oregon's 2025–2029 Statewide Comprehensive Outdoor Recreation Plan, or SCORP, is the state's five-year outdoor-recreation plan. It guides Land and Water Conservation Fund and other state recreation programs and specifically provides recommendations for federal, state, and local governments and the private sector. The 2026 Oregon Recreational Trails Plan is the state's ten-year plan for motorized, nonmotorized and water trails and is also intended to inform federal land-management decisions. For OHV recreation, the Trails Plan is especially relevant. Its motorized section says Oregon OHV users want greater access and more variety while also valuing responsible use, safety, and trail quality. Recommended actions include maintaining existing systems, creating new Class III motorcycle and Class IV side-by-side opportunities, providing camping near staging areas, developing connectors and loops, recognizing shared-use roads, improving mapping and real-time closure information, and using balanced enforcement focused on harmful behavior. These state plans do not dictate Forest Service decisions. However, 36 CFR 219.4 requires the Forest Service to coordinate with related state and local planning efforts, review relevant state policies and objectives, consider compatibility and opportunities for joint objectives, and display the results of that review in the EIS. Appendix F of the Blue Mountains DEIS provides a broad summary of consistency with other planning efforts and says more detailed information is in the planning record. Still, One Voice has not located a clear discussion in the DEIS itself showing how Oregon's current SCORP and 2026 Trails Plan influenced recreation direction. We are asking the Forest Service to make that connection explicit in the Final EIS and the three final Forest Plans.
Does the public have enough recreation and access information to evaluate the proposal? That remains one of One Voice's central concerns. The DEIS contains recreation analysis and Recreation Opportunity Spectrum maps. Still, the Forest Service also concludes that a more detailed quantitative recreation analysis is unnecessary because site-specific Travel Management occurs later. That conclusion deserves another look when the planning decision itself establishes the framework those later decisions must follow. The public should be able to understand the existing road and trail systems, motorized opportunities, over-snow use, dispersed camping, trailheads, route condition, maintenance needs, and important recreation settings forest by forest before evaluating changes to long-term management direction. Oregon's own SCORP identifies the lack of standardized and accessible recreation-facility data as a planning barrier and is working toward better statewide recreation data. The State Trails Plan likewise emphasizes access, connectivity, mapping, maintenance, and current information about closures. Those priorities reinforce the value of a clear recreation baseline in the Blue Mountains.
What happened with the DEIS supplemental-information references? Forest Access For All (FAFA) identified an important shortcoming in the DEIS, and the Forest Service has now acknowledged it. The agency says the Draft EIS mistakenly refers readers to supplemental information on pages 16, 33, 38, 63, and 69; that supplemental-information documents were not published with the DEIS, and that the agency considers the DEIS itself to contain the substantive analysis for public comment. FAFA deserves credit for identifying the problem. For commenters, the useful question is straightforward: if information referenced in the DEIS was needed to understand a particular analysis, identify what you could not evaluate and ask the Forest Service to provide or clarify it in the Final EIS.
Why is monitoring still a central One Voice recommendation? Because completing a management action is not the same thing as achieving the intended result, the DEIS already describes monitoring as part of adaptive management and includes questions addressing ecological conditions, visitor use, visitor satisfaction, recreation objectives, and multiple-use opportunities. One Voice wants to strengthen that framework so restrictions and management actions can be evaluated against measurable outcomes. If a road closure is intended to reduce sediment, measure sediment. If a seasonal restriction is intended to improve wildlife conditions, measure the relevant wildlife or habitat result. If active treatment is intended to reduce wildfire risk, measure treatment completion and performance. If recreation is causing unacceptable damage, monitoring should reveal it; if a restriction fails to achieve its purpose, monitoring should reveal that too. A closure should not be counted as success merely because the gate remained closed. For recreation, we also recommend measuring the condition of access itself: miles of designated roads and trails available by use and season, miles maintained, routes made unusable by fire or deferred maintenance, over-snow opportunities, dispersed camping, trailhead condition, volunteer stewardship and maintenance backlog. The DEIS already contemplates biennial monitoring reports and adaptive-management recommendations, providing a structure on which this stronger accountability can be built.
What is One Voice asking the Forest Service to improve? One Voice is not asking the Forest Service to choose public access over healthy forests, wildlife or clean water. We are asking the final plans to protect those needs better. Our comments should focus on five improvements:
Make the three final plans genuinely forest-specific. Show the recreation, access, infrastructure and community differences among the Malheur, Umatilla and Wallowa-Whitman rather than assuming the same direction is appropriate everywhere.
Use the best available recreation planning information. Explicitly review and reconcile the Oregon SCORP, 2026 Oregon Recreational Trails Plan and other current recreation and economic information with the final plans.
Provide a useful recreation and access baseline. The public should be able to see what opportunities exist today, where they are, their condition, and how proposed management direction may affect them.
Preserve meaningful management flexibility. Motorized recreation, roads and trails should be recognized as legitimate multiple uses and as infrastructure supporting recreation, wildfire response, grazing, search and rescue, stewardship and rural communities.
Measure outcomes and adapt. Connect significant restrictions and management actions to a stated purpose, measurable indicators and a process for reconsideration when the evidence changes.
What does “standing” mean, and why should I care? The Forest Service commonly calls it standing, while the regulation describes it as eligibility to file an objection. An individual or organization that submits substantive formal comments during an appropriate formal comment opportunity may later object to the proposed decision, and the objection generally must be based on concerns that the objector previously raised. Importantly, a comment submitted by an organization establishes eligibility for the organization, not automatically for every member. If you want the ability to object as an individual, submit substantive comments in your own name. The Forest Service says each forest supervisor will eventually issue a specific draft plan and draft Record of Decision, followed by a 60-day objection period for eligible participants.
What makes a comment substantive? Federal regulations define a substantive formal comment as one that is within the scope of the proposal, specific to it, directly related to it, and supported by reasons for the Forest Service to consider. You do not need legal language. A useful comment answers four questions: What do you observe? Why does it matter? What experience, evidence, or local knowledge supports your concern? What specifically do you want the Forest Service to change, retain, explain or measure? If an issue may matter enough for you to object later, raise it clearly now.
Should I copy a form letter? A form letter is not automatically invalid, but this planning process is not an election. The Forest Service analyzes the substance of comments rather than awarding a decision to whichever side collects the most identical messages. A personalized comment that explains your connection to a place, identifies a specific concern, and gives the agency a useful request is generally more valuable than simply repeating someone else's words. If you use a drafting tool or an organization's suggested language, read it, change it, and make sure the final comment represents your own experience and beliefs.
Is there an easier way to write my own comment? Yes. Forest Access For All offers a free Blue Mountains comment-writing tool that helps users organize their experiences and concerns into a draft. FAFA's approach is useful because the commenter remains responsible for reviewing and personalizing the final language. The resulting comment still needs to be submitted through an official Forest Service method.
A simple comment structure A useful comment does not need to be long. Start with your connection to the forest, identify the issue, explain why it matters, and make a specific request. Repeat that structure for each subject important enough that you may want to preserve it for a later objection.
Sample Blue Mountains Forest Plan Comment Do not copy this word-for-word. Personalize it. Delete issues you do not share and add the roads, trails, communities, uses and concerns that actually matter to you.
Subject: Blue Mountains Forest Plan Revision DEIS — Recreation, Access and Forest-Specific Planning
Dear Blue Mountains Forest Plan Revision Team:
My name is [NAME], and I live in [CITY, STATE]. I use the [Malheur/Umatilla/Wallowa-Whitman] National Forest for [OHV recreation, hunting, camping, snowmobiling, fishing, hiking, grazing, volunteer work, business, etc.]. Areas particularly important to me include [ROADS, TRAILS, DRAINAGES, CAMPGROUNDS OR COMMUNITIES]. I support healthy forests, clean water, wildlife habitat, wildfire resilience, and responsible public recreation. I ask the Forest Service to ensure the final Forest Plan treats sustainable access as part of that shared outcome. I understand that this Forest Plan does not directly close individual motorized routes. My concern is that the management direction adopted now will guide future Travel Management and project decisions. Please ensure that the final plan accurately identifies existing recreation opportunities and does not unnecessarily predetermine later route-level decisions. I also ask the Forest Service to make the final plan specific to the conditions of the [NAME] National Forest. The three Blue Mountains forests cover a very large and diverse area, and recreation opportunities, transportation systems, and community needs should not be assumed to be identical across all three forests. Please explain how the 2025–2029 Oregon SCORP and 2026 Oregon Recreational Trails Plan were considered in developing the final recreation and access direction. In particular, I ask the Forest Service to address Oregon's identified needs to maintain existing OHV systems, improve mapping and closure information, create appropriate new riding opportunities, provide trail-system connectivity, and support responsible recreation. For [YOUR SPECIFIC AREA OR ISSUE], my concern is [EXPLAIN THE CONCERN] because [YOUR EXPERIENCE, OBSERVATION OR EVIDENCE]. I request that the Forest Service [SPECIFIC CHANGE, CLARIFICATION OR ACTION]. Finally, please strengthen monitoring so significant management actions are connected to measurable outcomes. If access is restricted to achieve a wildlife, watershed, safety, or other resource objective, identify the expected result, monitor it, and report whether it was achieved. The same monitoring should track the condition and availability of recreation access over time. Thank you for considering my comments as you prepare the Final Environmental Impact Statement and the specific Land Management Plan for each national forest.
Sincerely,
[FULL NAME]
[CITY, STATE]
[OPTIONAL ORGANIZATION]
How and where do I submit my comment? The current deadline is September 30, 2026. The Forest Service provides three official submission methods and identifies CARA as its preferred online method. Online — Forest Service CARA:
Submit a Blue Mountains Forest Plan comment through CARA Email — attach a written comment letter:
sm.fs.bluesforests@usda.gov
Mail:
Umatilla National Forest Supervisor's Office
Attn: Blue Mountains Forest Plan Revision
72510 Coyote Road
Pendleton, OR 97801
Questions for the Forest Service:
541-278-3716 Need help drafting your comment:
Forest Access For All Blue Mountains comment help A phone call can help answer questions, but it is not a substitute for submitting your formal written comment. Whatever method you use, save a copy of the exact comment you submitted, along with your confirmation or proof of delivery. The strongest public record will not be built by asking people to repeat the same slogan. It will be built by thousands of people explaining what they know, what they value, what they see in the proposal, and what they are asking the Forest Service to improve. Healthy forests and meaningful public access do not have to be opposing goals. The task before the Forest Service is to write three plans that protect resources, serve communities and recreationists, and show the public—through measurement rather than assumption—whether today's decisions will work tomorrow.
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By Jeff Knoll Find me on LinkedIn @ https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-knoll-b5632437/
Originally published at: OneVoiceRec.org
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