One argument about off-highway vehicles in the Sedona area is that they’re damaging the Coconino National Forest by ripping up the soil. How much damage are they doing?

Deanna Bindley, a resident of Forest Road 152C who has been active in campaigning against OHV use on public lands, was unable to provide an estimate of the amount of land disturbed by OHVs. Neither was the Red Rock Ranger District.

“We do not add up acres of damage across the district,” District Ranger Amy Tinderholt said. The city of Sedona’s two OHV studies from 2019 and 2023 likewise omitted any estimate of the number of acres negatively affected by OHV use.

Cattle Ranch

Dustin and Becki Ross of the Windmill Mountain Ranch, who currently run 370 head of cattle on a 150,000-acre Forest Service lease west of Sedona, are leading the way in documenting sites that they describe as having been destroyed by recreational users.

“These roads were built by ranchers,” Dustin Ross said. “Now they’ve turned into racetracks … They’ve basically ruined the topsoil, maybe for good.”

At the Yavapai Cattle Grower ’s Association meeting on Sept. 7, Becki Ross stated that they had logged 347 locations in the area surrounding Forest Road 525 where they felt the Forest Service needed to mitigate the damage done by OHVs. Some 151 of these were located along the Diamondback Gulch OHV Trail, 130 along the Outlaw OHV Trail and 66 along the Ranch Loop Trail.

“What we call damage is maybe something you wouldn’t even really recognize if you weren’t out here so long,” Dustin Ross said. “We’re used to it being two-track roads in years past with grass in the middle … So when we talk damage, basically everywhere we’ve been, have you seen one blade of grass in the middle of the road?”

During a tour of the affected areas along the Outlaw and Diamondback Gulch trails on Nov. 8, the Rosses pointed out 49 locations as examples of OHV damage. These ranged in size from 560 square feet to 83,431 square feet, with an average of 9,881 square feet, or just under onequarter of an acre, and totaled 11.1 acres.

On this basis, the total amount of OHV damage at all 347 locations the Rosses have documented would come to 78.7 acres. The Coconino National Forest encompasses 1,821,495 acres, putting the counted damage so far at 0.004% of the forest. It is also approximately equivalent to the grazing area needed for one-fifth of one cow, which consumes about 400 acres in a year.

Comparing current satellite footage of the 49 locations the Rosses demonstrated with footage from June 2018 shows that 11 of these locations were visible at that time, 19 were partially visible and 19 did not yet exist. The total area of visible erosion in 2018 was 4.5 acres, indicating a 146% increase in disturbed area in the last five years.

Dustin Ross noted that the OHV problem areas began with some users passing each other, pulling off the road for a bathroom break or stopping to camp. Similar pullouts, usually surrounding a single tree or clump of trees to provide shelter from the road, are common sights in national forests across the country.

It’s not just the pullouts, but also the slow increase in the width of the forest roads due to increased use that the Rosses said they consider part of the damage.

“These roads are eight feet wider than they’re supposed to be,” Dustin Ross said while driving along the Outlaw Trail in his own OHV. “If I were measuring … it would all be two-track. No more than two feet wide per track.”

The section of the Diamondback Trail that the Rosses defined as problematic in their OHV damage count extends for six miles and the similar section of the Outlaw Trail for 6.3 miles.

Reducing the width of these trails by eight feet would restore an additional 12 acres of forest.

“There isn’t a single USFS standard that governs road width,” Coconino National Forest Recreation Manager Brian Poturalski said. “However, the USFS does reference the ‘Guidelines for Geometric Design of Low-Volume Roads’ document from the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials.”

AASHTO’s standards recommend a minimum width of 18 feet for minor access or recreational roads and 22 feet for agricultural roads.

The Coconino National Forest’s travel management plan of 2011 provides that “where dispersed camping corridors are not designated, forest visitors may park up to 30 feet off the road edge to camp or pursue other activities.”

Part Two of this story will discuss the Rosses’ suggestions for remediation and the city of Sedona’s new environmental impact assessment of the effects of OHV use on public lands.