My opinion comes from attending a bunch of meetings, dealing with rangers, attempting to setup volunteer projects, etc. I agree that there is a huge problem, but most of the problems are illegal now and not enforced. So government does what it does best, passes more laws that it has no intention/capacity/will to enforce. This just penalizes the users who know/obey the law and has little effect on those who don’t care (the ones causing the problems now).
One example on enforcement: The forest has been under a high fire restriction, no fires, shooting, etc. In June there were 5 fires in Tonto, 3 proven to be caused by shooters. A few volunteers were out riding, saw shooter groups, stopped had friendly talks about the restrictions and most packed up and left. One group at Sycamore gave them the finger, later they stopped and talked to a ranger gave him the info on the group, said it would be handled, they were ready to leave, so followed the ranger out. When they got to the shooter group, who were still actively shooting, the ranger slowed, looked and kept going, got to Beeline and turned right!
The volunteer was a bit confused, so at the first opportunity called his contact at Tonto and told the story. The reply was; the judges have been throwing out forest shooting citations, so no reason to writing them. Why not stop and have a discussion about the rules? We don’t want to risk a confrontation with armed, drunk, rednecks if we can’t write a ticket! WTF, it’s good if volunteers have the balls to do it, but the paid law enforcement can’t be bothered to do it?
They always claim that budget is the problem. They say they would like to put up more signage, have more brochures, educational outreach, etc, no budget, but they have plenty of $$$ to run bulldozers? They have spent an obscene amount on this travel management boondoggle thingy and love to spend huge $$$ on silly certification training programs.
They are all about certification/training programs, some examples: One of the plans being discussed is civilian patrols, the certification list is huge, including but not limited to; vehicle operation (needed for anything but a truck), radio commutations, conduct, first aid, CPR, correct reporting procedures, etc, etc.
At the last meet there was a report from some who got the quad certification/training. They met at the south Bulldog entrance, the trainer, some fire fighters who were also getting certified and a big trailer with forest service quads. Unloaded the quads, the trainer gave a speech on operation/dangers of the units. Showed how, where to add fuel, check oil, tire pressure, etc, demonstrated how to start/turn them off, where the brakes, throttle, etc, were. Had them get on the quads and rock them side to side to show they could balance them, then rode to the big wash/clearing, ate lunch, back to the trailer and loaded the quads. Reported that it was fun, but felt a bit ridiculous, most are older retired guys, who have been riding motorcycles/three wheelers/quads pretty much forever.
Next up was the expense spreadsheet read by the ranger rep. The private trainer cost ~$800 per person (12-15 were trained), the truck/trailer/quad maintenance, truck driver and helper, etc. Ended in a huge number, but they now only need a few more training days and will have some new “certified volunteers”.
One project mentioned was to repair/open a trail closed by the spring storm/flood. The immediate reply from the ranger was; this will need to be done outside of “official” volunteering, because there is dead fall that will require a chain saw. Some of us were ignorant to what this means, so the question was asked, why? Apparently the chain saw certification/training is a multi step process, the first step requires 40hr of training and that only allows use of a short bar/low power saw on simple, small branches on the ground. To become fully certified takes most rangers 2 years!
You would think that there would be tons of jobs that volunteers could easily do? Like installing the little brown trail sign markers, nope, requires a certification/training day. Pretty much the only thing is picking up trash and I bet they are working on trailing protocol for that! Most of the meeting time is spent on protocol, very little on actual project planning. I doubt that this is unique to volunteer meetings, it seems that this is way of biz for them, so all forest biz works this way, huge $$$ spent on protocol, little on actual projects?
The people people in this club have hundreds of hours of volunteer time with agencies in this and several other jurisdictions and states. 
Otherwise, you might want to establish some credibility before you jump on the soapbox.
