Complaining about bumpy roads? Blame a vandal

Vandals recently destroyed two gates on the Flathead National Forest’s Cedar Flats Road and have also had a hey day hitting new signs with paintball guns.

The new gates at Cedar Flats were installed last year to enforce a motorized winter closure in an area designed to protect wintering elk and deer herds. The road is open in the summer months, noted Jack David, road engineer with the Flathead National Forest.

Each gate was completely destroyed and then replaced at a cost of about $1,100 to $1,200 per gate. David said vandals typically run into gates or hook a chain onto them and try to pull them out.

Vandals have also gone around shooting the new signs put up with federal economic stimulus money with paintball guns. The paint looks fairly innocuous, David said, but it won’t simply wash off — it’s permanent. The paint can be removed with thinner, but that would damage the sign itself, he said.

“In one week, we had $4,000 in signs paintballed,” he said.

All told, David said, the Flathead Forest sees about $25,000 a year in damage caused by vandals.

“It seems like there’s an increase every year,” he said.

The money for repairs comes out of the Flathead Forest’s road budget.

“For that amount, I could grade the road around the Hungry Horse Reservoir,” he said.

Vandals are tough to catch. Forest Service law enforcement personnel have ways to set up surveillance, but the damage is often random. One area might see a lot of vandalism for a few weeks, then nothing for years, David said.

The sheer number of roads and gates is daunting. The Flathead Forest has 507 gates, 81 of them protecting administrative areas and 426 for seasonal closures. The Forest has 3,388 miles of roads, of which 1,068 miles are open all year long and 360 are open seasonally.

The Forest is seeking help from the public to stem vandalism, most of which is fueled by alcohol use. David recalled one incident along the Hungry Horse Reservoir where vandals were running over signs and leaving beer cans as they went. When they ran out of beer, the vandalism ended.

If someone sees something, they’re asked to report it by calling the Forest at 758-5200.