Stakeholder research recommends roughly $11 million a year for enforcement and resource mitigation

A research summary presented by Arizona Sportsman for Wildlife Conservation laid out a plan-size estimate for enforcement and natural resource mitigation associated with off‑highway vehicle use.

Chuck Podolak said the group surveyed county sheriffs and applied federal travel‑management and EIS data to estimate need. He summarized the findings: an annual target of about $3.5 million for additional, reliable law enforcement funding and approximately $7.5 million per year for natural resource mitigation, for a combined target of roughly $11 million annually. Podolak cautioned the numbers are an estimate and depend on scope and methodology.

Podolak described one analytic approach that estimated 12,000–17,000 miles of user‑created roads might require decommissioning statewide; using per‑mile cost estimates from National Forest projects, the total one‑time cost for decommissioning could range from about $35 million to $115 million. "If we did that over 10 years," Podolak said, "now we're looking at a number 3 and a half to about 11 million dollars a year." He emphasized the group was agnostic about which agency would serve as fiscal agent.

Committee members and agency staff discussed potential funding channels and administrative implications. Sawyer Bessler read the statutory distribution for the Off Highway Vehicle Recreation Fund and explained that indicia amounts are set through ADOT rulemaking in cooperation with Game and Fish and State Parks. Officials noted that shifting revenue streams (for example, from fuel‑tax allocations or VLT adjustments) would require statutory or rulemaking steps and that some distribution shares (70% of indicia to the fund vs. 30% to highway funds) affect available totals.

The committee did not appropriate funds but used the research to frame a discussion about how to target mitigation projects, pair restoration with law enforcement and consider prevention strategies going forward.