The Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies has received some leads on trespassers captured on camera off-roading in restricted areas of a wildlife preserve and is now working directly with Alaska State Troopers on the incident, the center’s director said Tuesday.

Sept. 15, several off-road vehicles were seen on camera driving on the Inspiration Ridge Preserve, which is owned and operated by the center. The off-roaders had driven around a chained gate with a clear “No Trespassing” sign, according to Sept. 25 press release from the center.

The press release noted that “the perpetrators drove off-road indiscriminately over vegetation, through the trees, and then onto the hiking trail system, following it into the heart of the Preserve.”

“The vehicles ran down spruce trees and elderberry bushes next to the trail as they recklessly thrashed their way through the Preserve, damaging ecosystems Preserve staff have been carefully monitoring and protecting.”

Images of the unauthorized vehicles were captured by the use of game cameras that the preserve has in place for long-term wildlife studies, Beth Trowbridge, the center’s director, told the Homer News.

Inspiration Ridge is designed to protect the Fritz Creek Watershed on the east side of Homer and is a wildlife corridor for a diversity of animals, Trowbridge said.

“There’s a reason for protecting this land; it provides wildlife a really important corridor that are traveling back and forth from the bluff down to the bench, and then back into the hills,” she said.

It’s also a local facility dedicated to conducting local citizen science. When the area is violated, it not only disturbs the habitat, but also could cause potential disturbance to projects and monitoring that the organization is engaged in, Trowbridge said.

There is a reason why vehicles are asked to remain off the property and people operating them need to be conscious and respectful of that, she said. “What these drivers did was an inappropriate violation to private property.”

Trowbridge said further assessment of damage caused by the vehicles was conducted by Nina Faust, a retired teacher who helped inspire the creation of Inspiration Ridge, and Joel Cooper, stewardship director with Kachemak Heritage Land Trust.