That’s horrific!

How awful. I just don't understand this kind of behavior. It seems that people who are interested in hiking and doing other things in nature wouldn't be so disrespectful of our national parks. It's so disheartening. This year has been so revealing of many people's true natures.

This makes me so sad.

That's so hard to comprehend. How do people who value nature enough to go out and enjoy it also destroy it?

Our local parks were also overrun here during the height of the lock down. We have one area near our house that's a pretty difficult hike up a mountain and almost no one is EVER there. We were shocked to arrive to a full parking lot almost every time when things were locked down. I didn't see a lot of people being disrespectful, but it was weird to have crowds...

Thats just horrible. Where do those people come from? Who raised them? I read the story of motorcyclists ripping up the field near Mormon Row in the Grand Tetons. Made me sick. I always feel so respectful of our parks. https://cowboystatedaily.com/2020/07/22/dirt-bikers-cause-significant-damage-in-grand-teton-national-park/

Ded_tired, reading about that makes me sick! All the work and time invested in making the area a natural habitat destroyed by a few entitled and thoughtless individuals. I would call them something else, but it’s not printable. I hope they are prosecuted.

We were just in Glacier last week but didn't see anything like this, fortunately.

People can be idiots, but the national parks have been underfunded for awhile.

We went to Mount San Jacinto National Park (west of Palm Springs) earlier this month, and there was almost no one there.

Joshua Tree National Park, north of Palm Springs, was closed during part of the Spring, partly due to high traffic. It is a much more famous park, however.

Here's a photo of the Santa Rosa Wilderness, on the way back to Palm Desert from Mount San Jacinto:

Tourists are not visiting Palm Springs (at least not much) at this time, partly because it is off-season, and partly because of the pandemic. People do drive from L.A. to go to Joshua Tree, but not to Mount San Jacinto so much.

So disheartening.

Our closest natural getaway is the beach, and we haven't been there since this started. First because beaches were closed (and reportedly, plenty of people were ignoring that order), and then after they were reopened, the crowds were out of control, with complete lack of distancing. I miss it a lot, but not willing to take that risk 😟

P.S. Lars, I've been to both Joshua Tree, and San Jacinto - it was so cold when we went during May of last year, and very desolate. I think there had been recent fires. Loved that ride up!

Our forest preserves are open but for a few months they weren’t servicing the trash cans, so they were imploring visitors to not use them, to either not bring items in or to pack them out when they leave, and if people overflowed the trash cans too much, too often, the preserve would have to close. But I don’t think any of them did.

The other sad problem was, that with so many new visitors, especially families, thieves came to the parking lots and entered unlocked cars, or even broke in.

IdaClaire mining companies think that they should be open for mining, so that they can extract whatever gold is left, pollute the rivers with arsenic, and then expect the taxpayers to pay to clean up their mess, when the mining companies do not even own the land.

Logging companies are just as bad. They think they should be allowed to clear-cut forests in parks on land that they do not own - just so that they will have jobs. However, once the gold is gone and the lumber is gone, the jobs are gone too - except for the jobs to clean up the mess.

This is why we need strong regulation of our natural resources, as they can be gone in an instant and then (like gold) never return or take centuries to recover, in the case of redwood forests - if they ever do recover.

Some people believe that a deity created the earth for humans to exploit in any way that they please, and some people believe that the earth itself is sacred and should not be desecrated. Basically, some people are just very selfish, thanks to their capitalistic beliefs.

My father read one of my books on American Indian religions, and he told me that he believed like the Hopi Indian Tribe, as they were better stewards of the land.

It's happening in Maine, too - https://wgme.com/news/local/popular-maine-park-closed-because-of-large-crowds-trash

Even after it was closed - https://www.newscentermaine.com/article/news/local/pleasant-point-park-in-buxton-closed/97-e280b5ed-bee5-431d-b4c8-d924f5b5ab6a

Remember when the sequester furloughed state/federal employees and there was nobody to maintain the parks, and people trashed them as well? I recall reporting about overflowing trash, damage from vehicles, and people destroying some of the Joshua trees in that park.

I mostly chalk a lot of it up to ignorance. Just like children will do destructive things with no thought of how it affects anyone or anything else.

My oldest works at Olympic currently but has traversed the country working at various parks. DIL has worked at parks throughout CA and they have plenty of stories. As gscience said, money has been an issue for years. It's the first place Mitch McConnell and others like him look to cut from the budget every year even though it's a miniscule percentage of the overall federal budget. Every single park is short of staff and dealing with deferred maintenance. A lot of it is life safety issues, too.