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Two members of a Canadian lifestyle group will be banned from America's public lands and will have to pay thousands in fines for their antics in national parks and on Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats.
Members of High on Life attracted the Bureau of Land Management's attention earlier this year after sharing photos of three costumed men wakeboarding on the flooded Bonneville Salt Flats behind a blue bus emblazoned with the High on Life logo.
The BLM cited Parker Heuser and three other men for creating a hazard to public lands or its users; operating passenger OHV off of designated areas or trails; and failure to obtain a special recreation permit. Commercial videographers are required to obtain a permit before filming on the Bonneville Salt Flats.
Heuser pleaded guilty to the citations and agreed to pay roughly $1,000 in fines, according to Thomas Fleener, a Wyoming-based defense attorney who represented five members of High on Life during their initial court appearance.
Kimberly Finch, a spokeswoman for the BLM, said $610 of that penalty covered citations associated with the Bonneville Salt Flats; the rest was related to the group's activities in California's Death Valley National Park.
Fleener said a second client, Hamish Cross, pleaded guilty to citations from Yellowstone National Park and agreed to pay some $6,000 in penalties. Cross was not involved in the Bonneville Salt Flats case.
Heuser and Cross will be placed on probation for five years, during which time they will be banned from all public lands managed by the U.S. Department of Interior, U.S. Department of Agriculture, or U.S. Amy Corps of Engineers.
Three other High on Life members — Charles Gamble, Alexey Lyakh and Justis Brown — have pleaded not guilty to various citations out of a desire to contest the penalties, Fleener said.
"All three are good young men who want to take responsibility for their actions and who have come down voluntarily from Canada to subject themselves to U.S. court proceedings," he said. "They are looking forward to moving on with their lives and putting this behind them."
Fleener said he will not represent any member of the High on Life group at future hearings; a conflict of interest caused him to withdraw, he said.
Driving off-road on the Bonneville Salt Flats is prohibited when the salt crust is wet. When dry, the salt flats form a hard, pavement-like surface, but when wet, the weight of a vehicle can cause the layers of mud and salt to collapse, potentially causing irreversible damage to the salt crust's structure.
The BLM launched an investigation in May when the agency was forwarded photos from the Bonneville Salt Flats that High on Life had posted to its Facebook page. During the course of investigations by the BLM and the National Park Service, rangers used social media and tips from the public to identify the individuals in the photographs and to investigate the groups' activities on other federal lands, according to a park service press release.
Four members of High on Life were first reported by a concerned citizen in Yellowstone National Park, who said he had seen the individuals leave the boardwalk to walk into Grand Prismatic Spring.
Five individuals associated with the group received violation notices from Zion National Park, Death Valley National Park, Yellowstone National Park and Mesa Verde National Park. In addition to the violations associated with the Bonneville Salt Flats, the BLM also cited members of High on Life for violating a temporary closure order at Corona Arch.
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