Open the Mighty Five

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How would you like to drive your street legal OHV from the parking lot of your hotel in Moab to the trailhead of Delicate Arch?

Have you ever wanted to cruise down Highway 191 from Moab for a day-trip to Canyonlands?

Perhaps you would enjoy loading the family into your street-legal machine to travel State Highway 24 from Torrey across Capitol Reef to Factory Butte.

You might as well add Bryce Canyon and Zion National Park to your bucket list and join the millions of other Americans who travel to Utah’s Mighty 5 National Parks in vehicles of all shapes and sizes.

If you’re familiar with the rules and regulations of the National Parks in Utah, you will know that street-legal OHVs are not allowed.

Members of UTV Utah know, that we have led the fight to open street-legal access to Utah’s roads and highways. We are disappointed that the National Park Service has failed to update their regulations to comply with our state laws, and we’ve decided we’re not going to stand for it.

Earlier this week we sent a letter to Secretary Bernhardt to ask for his help in getting the National Park Service to lift the unnecessary prohibition of street-legal OHVs on the publicly accessible roads of Utah’s National Parks.

We’re ready to fight this fight, but we don’t want to do it alone. In fact this is the kind of fight that we believe we can win if we all unite together.

Here’s why we need the help of tens of thousands of OHV owners in Utah:

In 2008 the supervisor for Canyonlands and Arches published the original decision to ban OHVs from those two parks. The other National Parks in Utah soon followed the lead of Arches and Canyonlands.

One year after the National Park Service made this decision, the state of Utah passed the first laws allowing for street-legal OHVs.

Even though National Park regulations say the National Park Service should update their rules to comply with state law, the National Park Service has dug in on their position and refused to budge. The result is that the National Park Service is now unfairly discriminating against UTV users wanting to access the parks like everyone else.

One of the biggest reasons the superintendents believe this discriminatory prohibition is OK is because they claim there is no public demand for street-legal OHVs to have access to roads in our National Parks.

Let us repeat that! They claim there is no public demand, for OHV access into National Parks.

If you read our letter to Secretary Bernhardt, you will notice that we made a commitment to prove to him that there is demand. UTV Utah is starting a petition to get our tens of thousands of followers to tell Secretary Bernhardt that we want him to open our parks.

Let us put it this way, if you, your family, and your friends who also ride don’t sign this petition, you are agreeing with SUWA and their allies in the Park Service that OHVs should be shut out of National Parks.