Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumJoshua Tree National Park has been trashed in the shutdown. Now visitors are cutting down trees.
Despite severe damage, the park will not shut down entirely.
A week ago, Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California was forced to shut down its campgrounds due to health and safety concerns over near-capacity pit toilets, according to CNN.
But despite the partial closure, things continued to get worse.
According to National Parks Traveler, visitors are creating illegal roads and driving into some of the parks most fragile areas. They are also chopping down trees, setting illegal fires, and graffitiing rocks. With Joshua Tree being roughly the size of Delaware, the eight on-duty law enforcement rangers had no way to stop all the prohibited activity.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/joshua-tree-national-park-has-been-trashed-in-the-shutdown-now-visitors-are-cutting-down-trees/ar-BBS5jSo?li=BBnb7Kz
Basement Beat
(659 posts)A gov shutdown happens and people are acting like its the damn apocalypse. Yeah, we clearly need some adults in the room.
dlk
(11,606 posts)Tech
(1,777 posts)Judi Lynn
(160,682 posts)By Jeanna Bryner, Live Science Managing Editor | January 10, 2019 01:48pm ET
- click for images -
https://img.purch.com/h/1400/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5saXZlc2NpZW5jZS5jb20vaW1hZ2VzL2kvMDAwLzEwMy82NTkvb3JpZ2luYWwvam9zaHVhLXRyZWUtbmF0aW9uYWwtcGFyay5qcGc=
Joshua trees are beautiful, but humans can be pretty awful.
That's what park rangers learned during the first week or so of the partial government shutdown.
Joshua Tree National Park is about the size of Delaware, but only eight law-enforcement rangers were tasked with protecting the 1,238 square mile (3,207 square kilometers) wonderland during the shutdown.
The result? Visitors did not play by the rules, cutting illegal roads, chopping down the park's most famous occupants the Joshua trees and damaging federal property, according to the nonprofit National Parks Traveler.
More:
https://www.livescience.com/64467-visitors-chainsaw-iconic-joshua-trees.html?utm_source=notification
defacto7
(13,485 posts)I'm sure it has escalated. The culprits just wait for the chance.