{"id":7105,"date":"2013-10-21T07:48:26","date_gmt":"2013-10-21T07:48:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=7105"},"modified":"2013-10-21T08:26:09","modified_gmt":"2013-10-21T08:26:09","slug":"goblin-valley-state-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2013\/10\/21\/goblin-valley-state-park\/","title":{"rendered":"Pure geovandalism &#8220;justified&#8221; as rockfall prevention in Goblin Valley State Park, Utah"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=AYFD18BwmJ4\">The video below<\/a>, which was taken in <a href=\"http:\/\/stateparks.utah.gov\/park\/goblin-valley-state-park\">Goblin Valley State Park<\/a> in Utah,\u00a0 appears to have been posted on the Facebook site of these three individuals, who are called Dave Hall, Glenn Taylor and Dylan Taylor.\u00a0 These rock formations, which are known as hoodoos, are unusual and of course irreplaceable:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Illegal activity? Men destroy rock formation in Goblin Valley, Utah\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/AYFD18BwmJ4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>After the Hoodoo was destroyed by Glenn Taylor (as shown in the image below), the person filming this crass act of geovandalism said:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Some little kid was about ready to walk down here and die and Glenn saved his life by getting the boulder out of the way, so it&#8217;s all about saving lives here at Goblin Valley.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2013\/10\/Goblin-Valley-1.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-7106\" alt=\"Goblin Valley State Park\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2013\/10\/Goblin-Valley-1.png\" width=\"633\" height=\"358\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2013\/10\/Goblin-Valley-1.png 633w, https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2013\/10\/Goblin-Valley-1-300x169.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 633px) 100vw, 633px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>..<\/p>\n<p>So the justification for this act, undertaken by three Scout leaders, seems to have been risk reduction from rockfall hazards.\u00a0 So, does this justification hold water?\u00a0 In a word, no.\u00a0 The likelihood of this block toppling off its pedestal at the time that a small child was walking past is almost infinitesimally small.\u00a0 Eventually the stone would have fallen naturally (though probably not for a very long time); the likelihood would be that this would occur as a result of a combination of strong winds and wet conditions, when the park would have been mostly empty.\u00a0 Even if it had occurred spontaneously on a calm day, the probability of someone being in the very small area at risk would be low, and even then they would have stood a good chance of moving.<\/p>\n<p>In other words, there is no justification for this act in terms of a meaningful reduction in rockfall hazard.\u00a0 This was nothing less than an act of pure vandalism.\u00a0 Fortunately, this has received considerable publicity (the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=AYFD18BwmJ4\">Youtube video<\/a> has received 4 million hits, and the comments left by viewers are mostly critical (e.g. &#8220;They aren&#8217;t Scout Leaders, they&#8217;re leaders in stupidity, vandalism, and who lack common sense&#8221;), plus it has been covered by the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/travel\/10387792\/Scout-leaders-film-themselves-vandalising-Utahs-Goblin-Valley.html\">international media<\/a>.\u00a0 Fortunately, <a href=\"http:\/\/stateparks.utah.gov\/\">Utah State Parks Authority<\/a> are planning to take action.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Three men who destroyed a natural rock formation in Goblin Valley State Park, Utah justified their act of vandalism as rockfall protection.  It was not.<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on wp_trim_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on wp_trim_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":7106,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[469,744,48,535,745],"class_list":["post-7105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-featured","tag-goblin-valley","tag-usa","tag-utah","tag-vandalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}