The Sand Flats Recreation Area last month suffered what staff members are calling the “worst damage from motorized recreation vehicles” to occur in the area throughout 2009. The incident occurred on Thanksgiving weekend, according to Sand Flats officials.

Sand Flats staff reported that dirt bikes had ridden off-road and off-trail in backcountry areas, “ruthlessly” destroying vegetation that Sand Flats officials said has been carefully nurtured over the years as workers have attempted to recover the area from extensive vehicle damage that occurred in the early 1990s.

Staff members said the vehicles that caused the damage were dirt bikes. Some members of Sand Flats Stewardship Committee said they believe those bikes were motocross bikes because about 240 motocross riders were in town that weekend for sanctioned races at the Red Rock Raceway south of Moab.

Raceway officials said they are convinced the damage was not caused by people from their group. Instead, they say, the riders in questions were trials bike riders who gather for informal events on public lands – without permits – at places including Sand Flats.

Motocross bikes are high-powered vehicles designed to travel at fast speeds over jumps on tracks. Trials bikes are designed to go slowly over obstacles with emphasis on balance rather than speed. Both types of bikes are capable of travel through sensitive terrain, according to area dirt bike riders.

Sand Flats management was caught unawares, officials said. With only a limited staff on duty during Thanksgiving weekend, workers were busy managing the entrance station and campgrounds and had little time to patrol the backcountry where the damage occurred, said Andrea Brand, Sand Flats director.

The damage was not discovered until the Monday after Thanksgiving, when it was too late to determine who or what kind of motor bikes were involved, Brand said. The issue was not brought to the Stewardship Committee until the second week of December. Grand County Council member Audrey Graham, who represents the council on the Sand Flats Stewardship Committee, then made the county council aware of the problem.

A large number of off-road motorcycles “did more damage on one weekend than happened the rest of the year,” Graham told the county council on Dec. 15.

The Sand Flats Recreation Area is managed by Grand County in cooperation with the Bureau of Land Management. The Red Rock Raceway operates on land owned by Grand County that is located in San Juan County.

Brand said another, smaller incident, which still, she said, had similar impacts also occurred at Sand Flats in 2008, when Red Rock Raceway held its first annual Thanksgiving race.

“They go up there and raise hell,” said Kim Schappert of the stewardship committee. Schappert and Sand Flats staff believed the motocross riders are the guilty parties, she said, until they talked to Jason Parriott, a member of the Moab-based Red Rock Dirt Riders, and a founder of the raceway.

“I can say without a shadow of doubt it wasn’t our group,” Parriott said. “Our group was completely contained [at the raceway] and people don’t leave.”

Parriott said the participants in the raceway events can’t leave because they must compete in several races, or “heats,” throughout the day.

Schappert said her impression of who was responsible for the damage was based on initial information from Sand Flats staff members, who reported that the dirt bikes they saw had paper decals with numbers on them attached to the vehicles.

Motor vehicles participating in races or other competitive events include identifying numbers so that judges can assign points or penalties to the right rider.

Parriott said that paper decals are evidence that the offending riders were trials riders because motocross bikes sport their numbers on graphic displays painted on the machines.

“I wish the organized groups that come to Moab would follow the rules,” Parriott said, referring to trials rider groups. He said trials riders call their events “gatherings” and do not obtain permits from land management agencies.

Parriott said he did not know how to contact the specific groups that he believes may have been responsible for the Sand Flats damage, but he said he would be willing to write letters, in cooperation with the BLM and Sand Flats management, to trials groups he knows about asking them to respect “our backyard,” and to not “destroy what we’ve worked to put together.”

Brand and Parriott strongly agreed on one thing – the need for more law enforcement capability at Sand Flats during Thanksgiving weekend.

“When a few tickets are written, it really makes a difference,” Brand said.

Parriott predicted that Thanksgiving weekend will soon draw more people to the area than Labor Day.

“That weekend we need more [law enforcement] patrol on Sand Flats,” Parriott said.