BILLINGS (AP) -- Hundreds rallied Saturday at a U.S. Forest Service office against proposed road restrictions in south-central Montana's Beartooth and Pryor mountains.

''We're tired of being shut out of our public lands," Bryan Cook told the cheering crowd in the parking lot of the Custer National Forest's headquarters.

Cook said environmental groups' efforts to close off land will keep the elderly, young children and the disabled from enjoying wilderness areas. He said such concerns have helped bring 4,000 members into the ranks of the rally's organizing group, Families for Outdoor Recreation, in its first two months of existence.

Group Chairman Ed Melcher told the crowd about taking his grandmother into the Little Belt Mountains to a place that she said was still as beautiful as it had been 50 years earlier.

''The land hadn't changed," he said. ''We haven't affected it. We can solve any problem Mother Nature throws at us."

Beartooth District Ranger Rand Herzberg said the plan is only a proposal and that no decision will be made until all public comments have been collected.

Herzberg encouraged all the people at the rally to write about their thoughts about the proposal, but said comments needed to be specific and refer to particular locations and the reasons for keeping them open.

''Your rationales will help me," he said.

The Beartooth Ranger District Travel Management Proposal is a document of more than 100 pages that breaks the 600,000-acre district into eight areas. Forest Service officials have said the travel plan has not been updated since 1987. Increasing use of the land since that time has caused damage to some areas, they say.

The rally also drew political attention.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Ken Miller read a letter to the crowd from U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg, R-Mont., and said Rehberg had gotten the public comment period extended 120 days, to Sept. 1.

''We live in Montana so we can enjoy the outdoors," Miller said.

Pat Davison, another GOP gubernatorial candidate, read a letter from Gov. Judy Martz and then added some words of his own that drew cheers from the group.

''We are good stewards of our own resources," Davison told the crowd. ''Let us do that."