Fires And Off-Road Tracks: Joshua Tree National Park Still Learning Impact. According to Hi Desert Star, “After the 35-day partial government shutdown, operations are returning to normal in Joshua Tree National Park and while conflicting reports of the damages have been circling, staff members are only now getting the full scope of what happened. ‘Human waste, damaged vegetation and a good amount of road damage has been mitigated,’ Ranger George Land reported this week as park officials went back to work. Trash, overflowing bathrooms and graffiti were reported and talks of closing the gates ensued during the first weeks of the shutdown, but the Department of Interior decided to keep the park open and bring back some of the staff on Jan. 10. The staff, paid from visitors fee reserves, were able to address some of the immediate sanitation concerns with the help of volunteers, but larger illegal activities were more difficult to control. ‘We really dodged a bullet considering we have identified over 100 out-of-bounds fires, of which any one of them could have had catastrophic consequences,’ Land said. Drivers going off the park’s established roads created about 20 miles of new illegal off-road tracks during the shutdown.” [Hi Desert Star, 1/31/19 (=)]

 

Will It Really Take Joshua Tree '200 To 300' Years To Recover From The Shutdown? According to Live Science, “However, that estimate might be a bit overstated, according to one expert Live Science spoke to. While it’s true that the survival of the park’s Joshua trees has downstream impacts on the desert birds, insects, mammals and reptiles that rely on them for shelter and sustenance, the loss of a few individual trees is unlikely to have long-lasting effects on the park’s 800,000-acre (324,000 hectares) ecosystem, Cameron Barrows, an associate research ecologist at the University of California Riverside’s Center for Conservation Biology, told Live Science in an email. … ‘Certainly, replacing one destroyed Joshua tree to the same age and condition could take [centuries],’ Barrows said. ‘But I would be hard pressed to say the park is at greater risk of ecological damage by the loss of one tree. If it was, say, 100 acres or greater, then we are probably at a scale where ecosystem integrity is compromised.’ (Barrows noted that he has not been back to the park since the shutdown to see the full scale of the damage.) More harmful to the ecosystem may be the many miles of fresh tire marks pummeled into the park’s soil by off-road vehicles. That desert soil isn’t just dirt or sand — it’s also a complex microbial community that can help support every plant and animal that interacts with it. ‘In desert park environments, a single tire track can break through the fragile microbiotic crust and cause significant scarring and damage,’ National Park Service spokesperson Mike Litterst told Vice.com.” [Live Science, 1/31/19 (=)]

 

Government Shutdown Empties Pockets Of National Parks. According to Missoula Current, “Federal employees have returned to work at public lands throughout the nation, but the cost of keeping national parks open during the record-length partial government shutdown remains unknown. Former park employees and public-lands advocates decried the Trump administration’s decision to keep national parks open and operating with skeleton crews. As trash piled up and natural features were destroyed in certain areas, the parks became a public relations nightmare. In response, acting Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt directed the National Park Service to tap fee reserves to support law enforcement, sanitation, safety, and emergency services. Those reserves come from revenue generated by park entrance fees and campground fees, and are allocated to stay within the park system for visitor experience enhancement projects under the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act, or FLREA. While NPS has broad discretion in how it invests FLREA funds, the funds are mostly used to benefit visitors by installing signs, restoring habitat, creating interpretive programs, and chipping away at a multi-billion dollar maintenance backlog. Fees weren’t collected during the 35-day shutdown, but FLREA dollars were siphoned to keep the parks operating. There appears to be no plan to replenish them.” [Missoula Current, 1/31/19 (+)]

 

 

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