Twenty-five years ago, efforts to protect the 1.85 million acres of the Coconino National forest was an overwhelming challenge. However, a group of Sedona volunteers were determined to lend their support. The Friends of the Forest was established in 1994 and 2019 marks a quarter century of award-winning service.
Hiking and exploring done by the nearly 3 million visitors to Sedona each year put stress on trails and infrastructure and Friends of the Forest works to preserve the land. Since the start, members have volunteered nearly a half-million hours of service in the Red Rock Ranger District. Critical to the success of FOF is an active membership of volunteers — from those first few in 1994 to over 550 today.
“Every year we were growing 5% to 10% over the last year,” Bill Kusner, one of the early volunteers of FOF, said. “The number of workers was increasing, but the number of hours was increasing, as well. We had some thousand-hour type people.” “There was a critical mass of folks that was large enough that the momentum kept up,” Friends of the Forest president Craig Swanson said.
One of the aspects of increased tourism is the damage done to the red rocks due to vandalism and graffiti. In 2010, 16 Friends of the Forest hours were spent erasing and cleaning away graffiti on the trails. By 2018, the problem had increased 100 times over, occupying 1,500 hours of volunteer time, by far the most time-consuming commitment.
“That means every report that comes in about graffiti in the Red Rock [Ranger] District that I see — one thing I can tell you — it is literally exploding, to the point where I see, every week, an absolute minimum of 20 to 30 reports, sometimes much more,” former president Spence Gustav said. Graffiti scarred petroglyphs thousands of years old at Sedona cultural sites. Damage to these, mixed with crude initials, is historic art of generations lost.
“For years, basically nothing ever happened, because they didn’t have the time, there wasn’t a reporting system,” Gustav said.
“Graffiti is a perfect example. It has to go through a series of approvals, the biologist, the landscape architect … the final approval in the Red Rock [Ranger] District is by the district archeologist,” Gustav said.
Gustav is that district archeologist and has taken control of and restored confidence in these historic sites. Hours spent by Friends of the Forest helped remove graffiti and restored the cultural experience for visitors, he said.
“Its a very small percentage of visitors, hardly anybody that does the damage, but it’s so visible to everyone … its heartbreaking to see it,” Swanson said. “If it’s in a spot where we can’t remediate it, it’s permanent.” But as well as responsibility for the past, FOF is invested in protecting the future as well.
Volunteers have recorded and recovered samples of water and air since 1999. The samples are used to implement Federal Clean Air Act regulations, tracking conditions and documenting improvements.
“It started out as a project that [the U.S. Forest Service] needed to have done … they had to bring rangers down from Flagstaff all the way to Fossil Creek just to change the filters on the air quality monitoring station, and we took their Jeep and pretty soon it became a committee, which means our teams go down there once a week,” past president Manny Romero said.
“It frees up Forest Service resources from having to do that task so they can do other things,” Swanson said.
The Red Rock Visitors Center and Ranger Station south of the Oak Creek Village sees 1.5 million visitors a year, as many as 2,500 a day. FOF volunteers serve as docents to educate visitors at the station.
The Forest Service offered their gratitude on a video promoting the cause of Friends of the Forest.
“I want to thank the Friends of the Forest. They’re a tremendous resource for us. This is a very fragile and special landscape that we want to preserve for future generations and we could not do it without their help,” former District Ranger Heather Provencio says in the video.
Since its founding in 1994, FOF has continually expanded the scope and extent of their support for the Red Rock Ranger District of the Coconino National Forest. “At the end of the day, you can see that you’ve made a significant improvement in an area, compared to going to work in the morning and coming back at night and saying what the heck did I do today?” Bill Kusner said.
All these efforts have not gone unnoticed. Friends of the Forest has won numerous awards from the USFS. The National Volunteers award in 2017, and just recently, Gustav won the Arizona Governor’s Archeology award for his efforts in archaeology.
“The Forest Service put in the nomination. I’m disappointed that it’s in my name,” Gustav said. “I have 20 people, more than a dozen are very active. It wouldn’t happen without a team. It’s only expanding … new techniques, new areas, new responsibilities.”
After 25 years, the membership continues to grow.
“When we’ve been put in contact with other similar organizations, smaller, larger, whatever, it is my understanding that the average participation of members in most organizations around the country is less than 10%. We are still about 50%. When we tell other organizations that, they are just incredulous,” Gustav said.
For the group of present and former Friends of the Forest presidents, the reward of their work is hard to measure.
“Every one of us, whether we’re working on a trail or working in the visitors center, we are in an education role in our contact with every visitor,” past FOF President Jennifer Young said. “The trail patrol group is specifically that, out on the trails talking to people. That’s how we keep up with efforts towards good stewardship.”
“The visitors who you interact with are so grateful for getting that information,” Swanson said. “You see the smiles on their faces, you see them light up when they understand how long the history is, how rich the history is and its incredibly satisfying.”
“There’s a value for the [cultural] site and there is a value for the volunteers at the site, and they’re not getting paid for this,” past FOF President Justine Kusner said “But they’re getting the satisfaction that what they’re carrying away with them makes them happy and really changes their life.”
Don Eicher can be reached at 282-7795 ext 126 or email deicher@larsonnewspapers.com
