Most days at Friends of Cedar Mesa, our motivation comes the internationally significant landscapes we work to protect. The beauty of the scenery, the depth of the history, and the people we work with provide plenty of “juice” for us to keep working hard.
Some days, however, motivation comes from a different place – anger, frustration, and disbelief at the behavior of irresponsible people who act like the land is “theirs” not “ours.”
In 2014, FCM organized a trail project, rerouting the hiking trail to avoid a sensitive archaeological site – through which ATVers drove this weekend.
Over the weekend, a FCM board member reported extensive new damage from off-trail ATV abuse in the Lower Fish Creek area. You might recall this is where FCM organized a
hiking trail rerouting project to protect a Pueblo I archaeological site (rare for Cedar Mesa). Following an archaeological clearance, volunteers that day worked hard to make a responsible hiking trail into Lower Fish Creek Canyon.
On Sunday, April 3rd, ATV riders completely disrespected the work that had been done and rules prohibiting cross-country riding. The rider or group of riders tore up the trail we built and rode directly through the archaeological site we were protecting, as well as another, larger archaeology site. The riders drove right past “no vehicles” signs to travel cross country through fragile soils, pulling doughnuts in cryptobiotic crust and thrashing riparian habitat – almost all within a Wilderness Study Area.
Here’s the spaghetti like path the ATV riders took tearing around cross country and on the hiker trail.
This incident comes on the heels of another new illegal road, which was created the weekend before (March 26-27) in the Green Spring area. In that instance, a larger vehicle, probably a jeep driven by a rancher checking on cattle, drove more than 1.5 miles off of highway 276 cutting in and out of a wash, again through fragile riparian areas and soil crusts.
Just a week earlier, we witnessed a camper trailer parked off of another illegal road in the middle of an archaeological site, where the campers trampled a rich lithic scatter and dense area of soil crust.
So that makes three weeks in a row of in-your-face damage caused by irresponsible drivers.
These spring-time events follow a winter where FCM found several miles of new roads in Wilderness Study Areas on Cedar Mesa, made by wood cutters who also drove through and caused damage to archaeological sites.
Some would argue these incidents are the acts of a few “bad apples” giving anyone with a 4×4 or ORV a bad name. We contend this is happening far too often to be an isolated problem.
But what’s the solution? What can we do to engender adherence to the rules and respect for the land? Most of us value road access to get where we want to recreate. And you can’t post “no vehicles” signs everywhere, and even when you do, some people just drive right over them.
We believe the answer has two important elements: enforcement and education.
Some people will only respond to fear of punishment, which is why we need more than one law enforcement officer focused on public lands for all of San Juan County. (The BLM has one law enforcement ranger for San Juan County, but the Forest Service has none. A Park Service ranger is stationed at the Hite Marina, but rarely has time away from Lake Powell).
The other side of the coin is education and partnerships. When people get involved with working together, they are invested in making sure “bad apples” don’t spoil the bunch. Responsible ATV riders need to band together with “quiet recreationists” like hikers to send a united message about staying on the roads and designated routes. On the technology front, FCM has started work on an iphone app that will show people designated routes they can enjoy traveling on (rather than relying on old, bad topo maps).
Overarching all of this is the need for permanent protection, in the form of a National Conservation Area or National Monument. Such a designation sends visitors and managers the message that conservation and preservation of resources is the priority for the area. Certainly, protection on paper doesn’t stop the irresponsible drivers, campers, looters, or uneducated visitors. But it is the start we need.
This area should have been protected 100 years ago. By getting it right now, we can get started on the real, hard, on-the-ground work of collaborating to protect this special place.
Images from the damage in Lower Fish Creek: