{"id":112736,"date":"2022-06-18T06:15:18","date_gmt":"2022-06-18T12:15:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=112736"},"modified":"2022-06-19T11:55:40","modified_gmt":"2022-06-19T17:55:40","slug":"paraplane-paraglider-on-antelope-island-wtf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2022\/06\/18\/paraplane-paraglider-on-antelope-island-wtf\/","title":{"rendered":"Paraplane (powered parachute) On Antelope Island – WTF?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Something isn’t right here.<\/p>\n

Early in the morning three days ago the north end of Antelope Island was slow for birds so I decided to head south to check out the remote and relatively new South Island Road. This time of year bison bulls have separated from the rest of the herd as they wander the island in small groups and I saw quite a few of them on the north end. But the cows and their many calves tend to stay in one large herd, usually in a more remote part of the island, so one of my goals was to locate them and see how they were doing. I was particularly interested in checking out the young calves.<\/p>\n

I drove south past Garr Ranch<\/a><\/span><\/span> and finally located the cows and calves near the end of the very rough and washboardy South Island Road. They were in a massive but spread-out herd on both sides of the road – perhaps 300? of them. Some were actually on the road so it was slow going as I maneuvered my way past them in order to get to the far end of the island.<\/p>\n

Coming back, with the morning sun more behind me, it was a beautiful, peaceful and pastoral scene when I came upon the herd once again. I wish I had taken photos but I didn’t. I stopped and watched them for a while and then eventually wound my way through the spread out herd, drove past Garr Ranch and headed back toward the north end of the island.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I’d driven a mile or two past the ranch when I spotted something really weird-looking on the road in front of me. At least I thought it was on the road but it was actually just above the road. Because of this curve in the road and a slight hill, all I could see at first was the top of whatever it was. As we approached each other it turned out to be an incredibly noisy paraplane (powered parachute or PPC) hugging the road and coming my way.<\/p>\n

Because the pilot was hanging down from the parachute, I could see part of his contraption before he could see my pickup. But the instant he saw me he turned sharply to his left and headed east toward the nearby shoreline of what used to be part of the Great Salt Lake. This photo was taken through my dirty windshield with my smaller zoom lens just as he was turning to head east. And then he turned south again and followed the old shoreline toward Garr Ranch.<\/p>\n

At this point my concern was that he knew where the bison cows and calves were and might harass them in his incredibly noisy paraplane so I turned around and followed him from a distance. It was early in the morning on a week day and I knew there was no one else down there to witness what might occur.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

As he followed the shoreline he dipped down a single time to perform a “touch and go”. This photo was taken while his wheels were on the ground for less than a second. I continued to follow him to the ranch.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

He flew over Garr Ranch and continued south toward the herd but I decided it was useless to follow him further because the road south of the ranch is incredibly rough with potholes and washboards so I could only drive it at about 5 mph. It would take me too long to get to the herd but the last time I saw the paraplane it was headed straight for where the bison were. He may or may not have known they were there.<\/p>\n

In the end I don’t know what he did or didn’t do down there.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As I drove back to the north end of the island I decided to report what I observed to one of the State Park managers. But he told me, in obvious frustration, that paraplanes on the island are legal which kind of blew my mind. With only a single, highly regulated exception drones on Antelope Island State Park are strictly prohibited so how does it make any sense at all that paraplanes are allowed?<\/p>\n

Most of the 42 square miles of Antelope Island are remote and rugged with bison, pronghorn, deer and coyotes roaming the entire island. I hate to think of how much wildlife harassment goes on when there are no witnesses.<\/p>\n

I wish I had a higher opinion of my own species but experience has taught me otherwise.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Something isn’t right here. (3 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":112739,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,347,8,16],"tags":[1069,6386,6387,3040,6384,6390,6391,6388,311,6389],"class_list":["post-112736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-bison-mammals","category-ecology-and-environment","category-photography-ethics","tag-antelope-island-state-park","tag-bison-bulls","tag-cows-and-calves","tag-garr-ranch","tag-paraplane","tag-powered-parachute","tag-ppc","tag-touch-and-go","tag-utah-2","tag-wildlife-harrassment"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/paraplane-9946-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-tkk","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112736"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":112789,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112736\/revisions\/112789"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}