There are plenty of activities to attract visitors to Utah’s Red Fleet State Park: hiking through incredible desert vistas, fishing and rafting in the deep blue waters of the reservoir, and camping among red rock cliffs.
One popular activity, however, is causing a major problem for park managers, and for one of the park’s main attractions. Visitors have been picking up 200-million-year-old dinosaur footprints, and tossing them into the reservoir.
Red Fleet’s Dinosaur Trackway Trail runs through an area that was a wet, muddy bog hundreds of millions of years ago. Today, the tracks of dinosaurs who once walked the same paths can be seen along the rocky slopes. The trail takes visitors along many of the site’s most visible footprints, but prying up the sandstone slabs (http://www.sltrib.com/news/environment/2018/05/04/some-visitors-at-this-utah-state-park-are-prying-up-dinosaur-tracks-imprinted-in-the-sandstone-and-throwing-them-into-a-nearby-reservoir) is certainly not a recommended activity in the park’s brochure.
It may sound like a malicious act of vandalism, but the situation is made worse by the fact that many people may not even realize what they’re doing. Though they’re hurling chunks of priceless paleontological history off a cliff, park manager Josh Hansen believes that the only motive for most is wanting to watch the stone splash into the water below. Others may be prying up the stones knowing exactly what they are, however; acts of vandalism have become increasingly common at Utah’s state parks, with visitors having carved their names into cliff faces, spray-painted graffiti, and toppled geological formations.
The vandalized footprints range from small shards to large slabs, and the impact against water can be devastating for them; they may shatter, or the soft sandstone can dissolve entirely. And the damage is intensifying: park managers estimate that at least ten of the park’s larger, more visible tracks have disappeared entirely over the past six months. Though existing signage informs visitors of the value and delicacy of the site, park officials plan to add additional signs asking visitors not to touch the tracks, as well as spreading the word (https://stateparks.utah.gov/2018/04/30/stop-vandalising-the-dinosaur-tracks-at-red-fleet/) about the impact on the site..
It’s common wilderness wisdom to “take only memories, leave only footprints,” and in this case park-goers should take the advice a little more literally, leaving these dinosaur footprints exactly where they are.
