From Moab Times-Independent moabtimes.com

Events
Four-wheel drive enthusiasts raise money for thank-you ad
By
Apr 13, 2005, 14:00

Two weeks ago, after hearing the usual stories about this year’s Easter Jeep Safari, Andre Shoumatoff, a Park City resident, came up with the idea to “thank the people of Moab” for their wonderful hospitality and treating the 4WD community so well for years and years.
“Ironically, I have never even been to EJS nor do I plan to,” says Shoumatoff, “I just wanted to come up with a way to say thank you for the wonderful hospitality and that we respect the beauty of Moab and that most 4WD enthusiasts are actually good, respectful stewards of your land as well.”
The full-page ad appears in this issue of The Times-Independent.
“I am actually a greenie, who happens to also be a 4WD enthusiast,” says Shoumatoff, “I have been into Toyota Land Cruisers for years and have joked for a long time that I am an ‘eco-motorhead.”
“Most of the fun of 4WD vehicles is actually building them,” Shoumatoff continues, “sort of like Monster Garage (the hit show on the Discovery Channel where people build weird mechanical creations). I am a hiker and a mountain biker and absolutely love how beautiful Southern Utah is. I just enjoy ‘getting there’ as much as I enjoy actually being there, especially if it is off-road. Ninety percent of 4WD enthusiasts are responsible people who use 4WD trails responsibly; it is unfortunately a small, but noticeable minority who choose to do it otherwise.”
The original concept of the ad was actually something that Shoumatoff wasn’t interested in at all. Some 4WD enthusiasts were quite angry about tactics that SUWA (The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance) had recently taken in their ongoing battle against 4WD enthusiasts, says Shoumatoff. SUWA took out a full-page ad in the Salt Lake Tribune several weeks ago that met against a lot of resistance in the 4WD community. The ad specifically expressed concern over actions the State of Utah is currently taking to protect access to keep old Jeep tracks available to 4WD enthusiasts. The ad listed over 100 businesses who supposedly advocated the text in the ad.
“Someone came up with the idea,” continued Shou-matoff, “of taking out an ad saying ‘we are going to boycott the businesses who supported this campaign.'”
“The 4WD community is actually a very large and very well organized group,” he said. “Because of the skill required to modify your Jeep or other vehicle, chat rooms and email lists have cropped up all over the Internet so reaching out to 40,000 4WD enthusiasts in a short amount of time can actually be done very quickly.”
News of these businesses quickly spread all over the Internet and this rebuttal campaign was quickly gaining popularity, says Shoumatoff. “But within a day, two people who were owners of these businesses posted to these very chat rooms making it clear that they are not ‘anti-4WD’ and were even 4WD enthusiasts themselves. I am unsure of whether this was the fault of SUWA,” Shoumatoff continues, “or if they simply did not read the fine print.”
“I thought to myself, ‘something has to be done about this'” and Shoumatoff decided to set up the campaign himself – but with the goal of “keeping it positive.”
He set up an email address and a PayPal account to “send money to take a full page ad in The Times to thank the wonderful people of Moab,” said Shoumatoff. “We were able to nip the ‘anti-4WD Moab businesses’ idea in the bud and our campaign became even more popular and spread to 4WD clubs and chat rooms and online forums all over the country. We had donations from even as far as Wisconsin and other states from people who have never even been to Moab,” Shoumatoff said. Within the first day alone, they raised over $800, keeping the total campaign at four days total because they wanted to print this ad as close to the end of Easter Jeep Safari as possible.
The remaining funds were donated to the Utah 4WD Association to contribute to their education programs of how to use the trails responsibly. In total, over $1,100 was raised in four days.
Because Moab is a tourist town and thousands flock there each year to use the 4WD trails, it makes no sense to try to fight 4WD enthusiasts because a large part of the Moab economy is based on 4WD visitors, says Shou-matoff. “Fighting only puts more fuel on the fire – this would be like saying, ‘we hate skiers and we are going to deny you access to the slopes’ in Park City – it makes absolutely no sense.”