Our Story
Arizona Backcountry Explorers is a pro-motorized access blog dedicated to promoting adventure and engaging the outdoor community in policy decisions threatening motorized access in Arizona.
Arizona Backcountry Explorers originally started as a Facebook group in 2016 by Kevin Allard to find new friends to explore the Arizona Backcountry. We have since grown to become the most engaging motorized access advocacy group in the United States. We are the only pro-motorized access advocacy group in Arizona with the ability to engage hundreds of thousands of motorized users.
We built this operation to engage motorized public land users in policy changes like Travel Management Planning, Resource Management Planning, National Recreation Trails, and other federal designations and decisions over local public lands.
In late 2018 we set our crosshairs on radical environmental policies threatening thousands of miles of Arizona backroads and recreation areas. During this time, we played an instrumental part in a collaborative effort to stop over 10,000 miles of permanent road closures. We engaged thousands of people across the country, and with the help of local politicians and 4×4 clubs, the issue eventually ended in Washington, DC, with congressional nullification of the Bureau Of Land Management Resource Management 2.0.
Our first website AZBackcountryExplorers.com was developed to penetrate the digital world and establish a new approach to pro-motorized access advocacy. By promoting adventure, we have established ourselves among local adventure seekers. We have built a passion for preserving motorized access to dispersed campsites, active mining claims, private property, and other vital RS 2477 roads. By doing so, our website has become a central hub for land use policy engagement for all of Arizona.
Making the public participation process easy for motorized users
We recognize that federal land managers make public participation in land management policies as inconvenient as possible. With nearly two decades of engaging in land use policy and studying radical political ideology, we can identify inconsistencies, evaluate data, and put it into a conceivable format for all to understand. While we have facilitated nationwide engagement in these public policy processes, numerous local 4×4, Motorcycle, and UTV clubs have been involved in these procedures for decades.
Our work is admired by local political leaders, pro-access organizations, and several media outlets across the west.
Our Goals
Promote
Promote adventure and establish our backroads as an economic resource for rural Arizona communities.
Engage
Engage motorized users and establish opposition to policy decisions that threaten rural Arizona.
Unite
Unite agriculture, small miners, and outdoor recreation to shape state and federal policy outcomes.
Empower
Empower our community and provide the tools to stand guard for the traditional Arizona way of life.
Outdoor recreation is vital to rural Arizona
We believe that outdoor adventure is the best way enthusiasts can support rural Arizona. By promoting adventure, we establish the knowledge and recreation value of our backroads among motorized users. This allows us to generate opposition to future closures and turn our backroads into a vital economic resource for rural towns across Arizona.
We acknowledge that land use policy is shifting from land-use rights to environmental protection. As this takes place, motorized users are losing the legal right to use motorized roads on public lands. By working with other groups like Ranchers, Miners, Landowners, and others who own real property, we establish legal standing for motorized users to defend our right to way over the earth.
Who we are
Simply put, we are a group of ordinary people who call Arizona home. We are the rural working-class of offroad enthusiasts, hikers, wildlife photographers, hunters, anglers, miners, ranchers, and private landowners, who all have one thing in common. Our natural right to way across and occupy the earth.
Our Principles
Following the teachings of our Founders, we can examine a time in U.S. history when land use was dominated by a handful of wealthy families nurtured by special contracts with King George III. The Landed Gentry, similar to today’s land management agencies, dominated massive swaths of land and prohibited the settlement of the land, use of its resources, and freedom to travel west of the proclamation line.
We believe that the use of the unclaimed land of the United States is a natural and inalienable right endowed by our creator. We are advocates for the local and exclusive jurisdiction of federal land, states’ rights, and the US Constitution. By applying these principles to land use advocacy, we touch on the foundations of western American society to preserve the fundamental states rights we hold as citizens of the United States of America.
Right to Way
We believe that every person has the natural right to freely travel across the unclaimed land and water of the United States by foot, boat, motor vehicle, or beasts of burden.
Right to Occupy
We believe that every person has the natural right to occupy the unclaimed land of the United States and be secure in their persons, papers, and effects.
Right to Use
We believe that every person has the natural right to use the resources provided by the unclaimed land of the United States in a balanced manner.
Right to Assemble
We believe that roads are a fundamental part of the First Amendment and the right to assemble, and have, from ancient times, been used by the public to facilitate modes of communication and commerce.
