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Keep Destructive Off-Road Vehicles Out of Big Cypress
Final signature count: 63
63 signatures toward our 30,000 goal
Sponsor: The Rainforest Site
A federal proposal would open 147,000 acres of protected Florida wilderness to off-road vehicles — and the damage could be permanent.
Big Cypress National Preserve in South Florida is one of the last truly wild landscapes in the eastern United States — a vast expanse of cypress strands, prairies, and wetlands that shelter species found almost nowhere else. Now a federal proposal threatens to unravel protections that have been in place for nearly four decades.
What the Proposal Would Do
In October 2026, the National Park Service published a proposed rule in the Federal Register that would amend the boundary maps governing off-road vehicle (ORV) access inside the preserve.2 The target is the Addition Lands — roughly 147,000 acres incorporated into Big Cypress in 1988 that have been closed to recreational ORV use ever since. The NPS framed the move as expanding recreational access,3 but the ecological record tells a different story.
The Science Is Clear
Research from the University of Florida documents what happens when off-road vehicles enter ecosystems like Big Cypress: soil compaction, vegetation destruction, degraded water flow, and direct displacement and death of wildlife.1 These effects accumulate over time and across seasons. Recovery, even after vehicle use stops, is slow and uncertain.
The Florida panther has fewer than 300 individuals left in the wild, and the Addition Lands form a critical part of their remaining habitat. Every undisturbed acre carries outsized weight for a population this small. Wading birds, gopher tortoises, and many other species depend on the same ground. ORV use brings noise, habitat fragmentation, and physical danger into territory these animals have nowhere else to find.
This Is Not the First Attack on Big Cypress
This proposal arrives alongside a string of other threats to the preserve. Earlier in 2026, Senate Bill 446 sought to block any future wilderness designation for portions of Big Cypress — a move that would permanently eliminate the strongest legal protections available to the land. A broad coalition of conservation groups came out in opposition.4,7 Separately, a lawsuit challenged large-scale development activity threatening panther habitat in and around the same region.5
The National Park Service completed a comprehensive environmental review of backcountry access as recently as late 2024, producing a Record of Decision that reflected the complexity of balancing access and conservation.6 Advancing this boundary amendment ahead of that careful record, and without full weight given to the ecological evidence, risks permanent damage to one of Florida's most significant federal lands.
The Addition Lands Were Protected for a Reason
The wildlife that depend on the Addition Lands have no alternative refuge. The Florida panther cannot simply relocate. Neither can the dozens of other species that rely on this habitat. The public comment period on this proposed rule is the moment for outside voices to be heard by decision-makers — and right now, those voices are urgently needed.
Sign the petition to urge the Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks to withdraw this proposal and keep the Addition Lands closed to recreational off-road vehicles.
