in absence of Rangers, Joshua Tree National Park visitors are behaving like a**holes, at crisis pt

[Demovictory9]

Amid closure at Joshua Tree National Park, volunteers struggle to clean up after unruly visitors

In this high desert enclave, Rand Abbott is a well-known man of action. He’s a paraplegic rock climber; a vocal lightning rod at town hall meetings; and a tireless promoter for the desert landscape and its resident creatures.

So it came as little surprise to friends two weeks ago when he volunteered to clean restrooms and remove trash that was littering Joshua Tree National Park due to a partial government shutdown over funding for President Trump’s border wall.

Unfortunately, the park was in far more disarray than a one-man army could handle.

---

While Joshua Tree is famous for its otherworldly landscape of weather-beaten rocks and spindly, namesake trees, unruly visitors have turned it into a worst-case example of parkland abuse, officials say.

With no rangers in sight for roughly three weeks, visitors have fought over official campsites and driven through off-limit areas to create illegal encampments. They have littered, set illegal fires, defecated in the wild, and chopped down vegetation to drive around barriers intended to keep people out of sensitive wildlife corridors.

https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-joshua-tree-cleanup-20190109-story.html

Abbott, one of dozens of ardent volunteers helping out in the park, figures he’s spent nearly $5,000 on bleach, rags and garbage bags and driven 702 miles while cleaning overflowing toilets, picking up garbage and documenting the mess from his wheelchair.

The 55-year-old said that last Sunday, he confronted a group that had used a chain saw to cut up a Joshua tree and a pine tree for firewood. In a separate incident, he cautioned a man who had illegally parked a pickup truck and trailer in a rocky cove frequented by bighorn sheep.


“That guy was casually brushing teeth when I pointed out that he’d run over and crushed creosote and cactus,” Abbott recalled. “He just flipped me off.”

Then, a mile up the road, Abbott said he spotted “a pile of beer bottles beside a rock facing the highway that someone had desecrated with graffiti.”

Environmental and community groups say the conditions have reached a point of crisis.

[Bettie]

1. As a mother, I try to raise my kids to

be considerate and follow rules even if no one is around to enforce them, because it is the right thing to do.

Clearly, there are a whole lot of moms who chose not to teach this lesson to their children.

[Crutchez_CuiBono]

2. Nice. Good job Mom.

Integrity is how we act when nobody is looking. A golden rule.
Public Schools are good places to learn general manners of society too.

[Bettie]

3. Thanks, I do my best

and based on what people who don't live in my house say, my kids are honest, kind, and decent, which is all I can ask of them.

At home, sometimes they make me want to scream, but that's their job as teenagers!

[Crutchez_CuiBono]

5. Funny bc

mom used to say, "You behave so well when we are around people...what happens to you guys when we get home..." Heh heh.

[phylny]

14. Moms and DADS (ahem)

may have taught their children just fine. When people grow up they do what they want.

[Bettie]

16. People who know right from wrong

generally don't act like animals.

And yes, I didn't say dads, because I wasn't thinking. My husband (father of the kids) is a huge part of who they are turning out as, but I was distracted and didn't put it in there. Sorry.

[TeamPooka]

4. "Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints" was our rule when camping

as a kid with my Mom and our family and friends.
I guess that's too much to ask of these assholes.

[anarch]

6. Yay, freedom!

Stories like this make me feel better about the impending doom of humanity.

[bdtrppr6]

7. What in the hell

is wrong with fucking humans? No rangers around so let's fuck up national parks. Stupid assholes.

Not MAGA

[kairos12]

8. Murica free from job killing regulation.

[SWBTATTReg]

9. Assh**es. I hope everyone of these vandels and the like are caught and prosecuted to ...

the fullest extent of the law. Another fine example of your fellow human beings, eh?

[tenderfoot]

10. That's just Libertarianism in action

such an impressive approach to society.

[Oneironaut]

11. I'll never understand this trash that goes to National Parks

and immediately starts littering and destroying them in every way imaginable. I bet most of them are Trumpy assholes.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

12. Makes a compelling argument against libertarianism. nt

[Neema]

13. I really fucking hate people.

Seriously. Such a huge percentage of the human race are total assholes.

[Solly Mack]

15. Assholes.

People suck.