Burning Man's 747 plane still parked in Black Rock Desert two weeks after festival ends

Early arrivals to Burning Man take part in "Build Week" ahead of the main event, showing some of the work, art setup and mutant cars that arrive on the playa before most attendees. Early arrivals to Burning Man take part in "Build Week" ahead of the main event, showing some of the work, art setup and mutant cars that arrive on the playa before most attendees. Photo: Sidney Erthal Photo: Sidney Erthal Image 1 of / 127 Caption Close Burning Man's 747 plane still parked in Black Rock Desert two weeks after festival ends 1 / 127 Back to Gallery

Read the latest story on what happened to the Burning Man 747: Burning Man art piece made from 747 now a tourist attraction in the Black Rock Desert

A Burning Man camp has come under fire for leaving its massive art piece made from a Boeing 747 airplane parked in the Black Rock Desert and breaking one of the annual festival's most important rules, "leave no trace."

The owners of the plane, a nonprofit called Big Imagination, say they haven't abandoned it and are working with the Bureau of Land Management to move it into a storage location.

Ken Feldman, co-founder and CEO of Big Imagination, says the original plan was to move the plane to a piece of private property near the Playa when the festival ended, but the landowner backed out at the last minute.

Feldman and his team have scrambled the past two weeks to resolve the situation and have identified a new location for the plane.

"We would like to have this completed before this weekend," Feldman says. "If we could have done it two weeks ago, we would have done it. We are moving as fast as we possibly can."

"As a collective of 500-plus volunteers who have been working on this since 2014, the last thing we would want to do is to leave behind an ecological disaster on the Playa or in any way impact Burning Man from getting their permit," a statement from the group reads. "We acknowledge that our exodus plan has not gone as expected and we apologize for any undue stress this has caused the greater burning community, or the Burning Man Org and especially the BLM whom we've always sought good relations and whom we are working closely with to resolve this situation as rapidly as possible."

The Bureau of Land Management manages the Burning Man site and BLM spokesperson Rudy Evenson says a Big Imagination representative visited the BLM's Winnemucca District office Monday. Evenson confirms the group is "working diligently to remove it."

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"Leave no trace" is an important principle behind the annual event, which lures more than 70,000 people into northwest Nevada's desert. Attendees are required to clean up after themselves, taking away their art pieces and removing all trash. Burning Man's guide to cleaning up mentions all the tiny pieces of litter that could easily get left behind: tent stakes, bottle caps, ashes, wood debris, orange peels, cigarette butts, pistachio shells, rope fibers, sequins.

Evenson says the 747 was moved 12 miles north of the festival site after the event ended and has been sitting there ever since. plane.

"They are trespassing when technically speaking because they don't have any authorization to take this large vehicle out of the Playa and it has been out there longer than 14 days," Evenson says.

Jim Graham, a spokesperson for Burning Man, said in an email statement, "All art pieces are expected to be removed from the event site the week the event ends, with smaller pieces having a tighter turnaround and larger, more complex pieces taking additional time. While the 747 was removed from the Burning Man event site early Friday morning, we're aware the piece has not yet been removed from the Black Rock Desert and are monitoring the situation."