Gavin Hoban with the Prineville district of the Bureau of Land Management points out paintball splotches on rocks near the Badlands Flathead Trailhead. The paint can get into the holes of the lava rocks, leaving marks indefinitely.

Two weekends ago, a visitor to the Flatiron trailhead in the Badlands found an information kiosk riddled with bullet holes and paintballs.

Last weekend, a hiker drove into the parking lot to find people shooting paintballs at each other and at rock formations, leaving paint splatter on the rocks and dozens of spent paintball pellets in the dirt.

”It’ll wash off eventually,” said Gavin Hoban, a recreation planner for the Prineville district of the Bureau of Land Management, surveying the vandalism Thursday. But it doesn’t rain much in the Badlands Wilderness Study Area east of Bend, and the paint can get into the holes of the lava rocks and stick around for even longer.

”Where it gets really bad is when they shoot into the juniper trees; it gets into the crevices,” he said.

He has seen this kind of vandalism before, and it’s common on public lands so close to urban areas, he said. But with limited staff, resources and time, 16 wilderness study areas and 1.6 million acres of public lands in the Prineville district, the BLM can’t keep an eye on everything at once.

So Hoban and others from a variety of area groups got together this week to start gathering ideas for a ”Friends of the Badlands” group.

”This is a way, given our limited resources, to get some folks in who are interested and passionate about the Badlands,” he said.

The new group would act as stewards, said Erin Barnholdt, outreach and restoration coordinator for the Oregon Natural Desert Association and a founder of the Friends of the Badlands group.

Volunteers could help with restoration projects and take note of what is happening in the wilderness study area both with the plants and animals and with the people who visit it.

”It’d be great if we can get community people who could go out there every weekend,” Barnholdt said.

People who regularly hike in the Badlands could help restore an old road, report on the wildflowers they spot in bloom or identify areas that have tire tracks where off-road vehicles aren’t supposed to be.

The idea for the group came from Barnholdt’s work with the Nature Conservancy, which has preserve stewards. She mentioned the idea to a woman at the Archaeological Society of Central Oregon, who had been thinking of something similar.

”It was riding off of her enthusiasm, and mine and Gavin’s, and hoping it spreads,” Barnholdt said.

About a half-dozen people convened the group’s first meeting Thursday, including people from the archaeological society, the Sierra Club and the East Cascades Bird Conservancy.

Organizers will continue to invite more groups to join, Barnholdt said, and they are working on a concrete list of things to be done.

”We’re hoping to tap into some of the expertise that some of these groups have and also get weekly project work done, stuff that we can’t get done by ourselves very easily,” Hoban said.

One possible project is covering up old roads no longer in use, since motor vehicles aren’t allowed in the Badlands anymore.

Looking at the paintball damage to the parking lot Thursday, Barnholdt noticed that a trail volunteers had camouflaged with rocks and branches had been cleared so the trail was visible again.

At the kiosk nearby, Hoban said the sign and some of the wooden slats that had been shot would have to be replaced.

Vendors sometimes include American flag stickers with signs, with the advice that if people see the patriotic symbol on the kiosk, they won’t shoot it up, Hoban said. He didn’t have any flags on this sign, he said, but he might put one up on the next one.

The BLM will replace the Flatiron trailhead sign as soon as it can, he said, since one deterrent to vandalism is to keep things looking fresh.

”In general, vandalized signs get more vandalized,” Hoban said.

Volunteer information

People or groups who are interested in joining Friends of the Badlands to help with long-term stewardship efforts can contact Gavin Hoban at 416-6879.