Possible charges against Utah ATV protest riders

SALT LAKE CITY — The Bureau of Land Management has begun an investigation that could lead to charges against nearly 50 people who rode ATVs on an off-limits trail Saturday in Utah to show their displeasure with the federal government.

The agency is working to determine who broke the law and what happened Saturday, BLM spokeswoman Megan Crandall said. A damage assessment is planned of Recapture Canyon, home to dwellings, artifacts and burials left behind by Ancestral Puebloans as many as 2,000 years ago before they mysteriously vanished, she said.

The agency had warned riders to stay out, vowing prosecution against those who ignored a law put in place in 2007 after an illegal trail was found that cuts through the ancestral ruins. The canyon is open to hikers and horseback riders.

BLM law enforcement officers were at the protest in plain clothes recording and documenting who was there, said Crandall, who added that the agency remains committed to holding the riders accountable.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Salt Lake City is waiting to see what information the agency sends before commenting on possible charges, a spokeswoman said.

San Juan County Sheriff Rick Eldredge said 40 to 50 ATV riders went on the trail, many of them waving American flags and some carrying weapons. There were no confrontations or arrests during what was a peaceful protest. The canyon is about 300 miles southeast of Salt Lake City near junction of Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado, known as the Four Corners.

The protest organizer, San Juan County Commissioner Phil Lyman, said the ride was a demonstration against the federal government’s overreaching control of public lands. He and others want the trail re-opened to ATVs.

Great Old Broads for Wilderness, a Colorado-based group that opposed the ride and believes the trail should remain off limits to preserve the ecology and artifacts, called on federal prosecutors to send an important message and level charges against the protesters.

Utah ranchers and county leaders recently threatened to break federal law and round up wild horses this summer if the BLM doesn’t do it first. Last week, an employee of the federal agency in Utah was threatened while driving on the highway by two men with a weapon holding a sign that read: “You need to die.”

The federal government owns two-thirds of Utah’s land. The Republican-dominated Legislature passed a law in 2012 that demands the state be given control of those lands before 2015, excluding national parks.