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  • 2019-01-11 (xsd:date)
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  • Did Visitors to Joshua Tree National Park Cut Down Trees During the Government Shutdown? (en)
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  • The U.S. federal government shutdown, which entered its 21st day on 11 January 2019, had a significant negative impact on one institution of American life in particular: the national parks. With staff cut back to a minimum, monuments, forests, and wilderness areas around the country saw a buildup of trash and human waste, and volunteer groups were required to intervene in an effort to perform whatever maintenance and cleaning they could. In January, it was widely reported that three deaths had occurred in national parks during the shutdown, although it's not at all clear that those deaths would have been prevented if the parks in question had been fully staffed. On 10 January, The Other 98% Facebook page linked vandalism at the iconic Joshua Tree National Park in California to a lack of staff caused by the ongoing shutdown: During the shutdown, with Joshua Tree National Park open but no staff on duty, visitors cut down Joshua trees so they could drive into sensitive areas where vehicles are banned. The destroyed trees are irreplaceable; they take sixty years to mature and live for more than 500 years. The key claim in the widely-shared meme, that staffing shortages contributed to the destruction of some of the iconic eponymous Yucca brevifolia trees at Joshua Tree National Park, is accurate, according to facts confirmed and descriptions provided by park management. Although it wasn't correct to say that no staff were on duty during the shutdown, staff numbers were very heavily diminished. On 8 January, the National Park Service (NPS) announced that they would be temporarily closing Joshua Tree to allow park staff to address sanitation, safety, and resource protection issues in the park that have arisen during the lapse in appropriations: In an interview with the National Parks Traveller website (which published a photograph of one of the downed trees), Joshua Tree National Park Superintendent David Smith gave further details on the vandalism perpetrated in the park in early January: According to National Parks Traveller, Smith also drew a clear connection between the significant cut in staff numbers during the shutdown and the ability of park staff to monitor visitor behavior and prevent the kind of damage seen in recent days: The following day, 9 January, the National Park Service announced a reversal of the decision to temporarily close Joshua Tree, writing that management, acting on a controversial directive from acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, would use funds derived from visitor fees in order to bring back the staff needed to keep the park open: (en)
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