Sweat is gushing down our faces, pooling on our chins, and dripping onto our handlebars. My hunting buddy and I are pedaling up an old Forest Service logging road, loaded down with rifles and three days of camping gear. It’s unusually hot for a spring day—especially in Montana—but with only a week left of bear season, there’s no time to waste. We’re in a good spot, but better yet, it appears to be virgin country. Not a single tire track or boot print marred the path in. Who else would go through this much effort to get back here? Or so we thought, anyway.
That’s when we heard the unmistakable whirrrrr sound coming up the trail behind us. “How’s it going, guys?” the rider chirped gleefully. My buddy and I both acknowledged his greeting with a grunt, but not much else. “Good luck up there!” he exclaimed, as his pedal-assist motor kicked in and rocketed past us—rifle and day-pack bristling off the back of his e-bike.
Once the hunter was out of sight, my partner and I threw our bikes down and collapsed on the side of the trail in defeat. To have made it this far, the guy must’ve skirted the Forest Service gate with the huge sign reading: “Electric bikes prohibited,” and another warning sign a few hundred yards further up the road.
Our encounter was just one of many in the growing conflict between e-bikers and other recreators on public lands. On forests across the country—and especially in the West—tensions are coming to a head as National Forests and regional BLM offices establish official e-bike protocols and seek to open more trails.
In some ways, the debate over e-bike use is similar to that of an argument presented by Edward Abbey in his classic book, Desert Solitaire. Living at an off-grid ranger station in Arches National Park in the 1950s (which, at the time, was a rag-tag system of dirt roads that were impassable for days at a time following rainstorms), Abbey argued that vehicles shouldn’t be allowed in National Parks. In his eyes, they spoiled the pristine nature of the very areas and features that National Parks were designated to protect. Instead, he proposed, people should be allowed to hike, bike, or ride mules into the parks from designated staging areas. Children who were too young to do so would just have to wait until they were older, and elderly people, well, too bad.
Now, nearly 70 years later, the arguments over e-bikes boil down to a similar question: how much access is enough? The motorized machines undoubtedly expand accessibility for those who otherwise might be unable to enjoy the outdoors, which in turn, produces more people who care about the resource and are willing to fight for it (when, for example, Utah senator Mike Lee proposes selling off public lands and all the associated trails.) It’s a win-win, right?
Maybe, but maybe not. We should be advocating for the young and infirm, says MeatEater’s Director of Conservation, Ryan Callaghan, but let’s not forget about the average or athletes of the group who can use e-bikes to push the limits of where they can go and what they can do—all of which have impacts on wildlife. E-bikes zipping further into elk winter range to shed hunt or increasing visitation to remote, alpine basins can intensify pressure on animals. This is especially problematic in states like Colorado, which has a high urban density in the mountains.
Another issue that Cal pointed out is that e-bikers really aren’t benefiting the trail systems in any way.
“E-bikes don’t pay into the system,” he said. “You cannot put taxed OHV fuel into them, and they do not require an OHV sticker, which funds trails and campgrounds. E-bikers and manufacturers should be advocating for the OHV sticker requirement for their motorized machines, instead of trying to convince everyone that they are the same as mountain bikes, just better for the feeble, young, and infirm.”
The cost of an OHV sticker varies by state, but on average is around $10 to $35 annually per vehicle. This year, Colorado allocated $6.7 million to trail-improvement projects funded by OHV stickers and gas taxes. In Oregon, there are about 129,000 registered ATVs. At $10 for a two-year permit, that’s roughly $645,000 in revenue generated annually. Additionally, Oregon also allocates $100 in fuel tax for every permit sold to trail maintenance. According to the most recent data from Nevada in 2022, there are about 50,000 OHVs registered in the sagebrush state. At $20 a vehicle, that’s $1 million annually to improvement projects—all of which e-bikers are benefiting from.
In essence, you can’t have your cake and eat it too. E-bikers already have free access to over 400,000 miles of roads in the Forest Service and BLM systems, and 47,000 miles of motorized trails in the Forest Service system alone. Not to mention all the non-motorized trails that they’re already poaching. And yet, they’re still chomping at the bit for more, no doubt driven in part by e-bike manufacturers.
In central Oregon, for example, the Deschutes National Forest has a proposal open to allow Class 1 e-bikes (pedal assist up to 20 mph) on 67 non-motorized trails near the towns of Bend and Sisters. Further south in Moab, Utah, the BLM is currently seeking public input on a motion to open 200 miles of mountain-bike-only trails to e-bike use. On the southern end of the Teton Mountains in Wyoming, forest managers are tossing around the idea of a trail “swap,” in which new e-bike trails are built in exchange for closing or reclassifying other sections of trail.
For the average hunter, there’s likely little gain from expanded e-bike access. For one, the machines are cost-prohibitive to most hunters, with starting price tags of around $2,500 for electric mountain bikes up to $8,000 for higher-end models.
Then, there’s the issue of increased access to tough-to-reach hunting spots, which in part remain special because of their remoteness. While “access” is a hot topic in public-land discussions right now, is there a flip side of the coin?
Can we improve access so much that anyone can get anywhere, regardless of age or ability level? Should there be a greater reward, like untouched hunting grounds, for those willing to work harder? And how can we protect those areas from people who happily ignore regulations, like the Class 1 asshat on that Montana logging road. E-bikes might be the case study to look at these exact questions—and everyone has an opinion on it.
“I don’t know why we are going through the mental—and legislative—gymnastics to find a way to categorize a bike with a motor as something other than a motorbike, a.k.a., motorcycle. Especially when this class of ‘motorcycles’ circumvents the funding mechanisms that all other motorcycles chip into for trails,” Cal said. “Why are we in years-long discussions to add or subtract recreational opportunities for a certain class of technology in 2025 that first hit the scene in the 1890s? Grow up and get a gas bike. Keep the e-bikes where they safely belong: paved pedestrian pathways full of, oddly enough, the old and infirm. Or at minimum, put a damn OHV sticker on your e-bike.”
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