Arches National Park has made a top 10 list, and not for a good reason/NPS file
Arches National Park has made a top 10 list, but it's probably one the park staff wished it hadn't made: It's a "Hot Spot" for trash and other human-related impacts that wear on the national park and its natural resources.
"Hot Spots" are selected by the Leave No Trace Cener for Outdoor Ethics. The park located in southeastern Utah is one of 10 diverse and popular national, state, and local parks identified in need of leave no trace solutions. In March and September a Leave No Trace Team will work with the National Park Service to provide area visitors, land managers, volunteers and the local community with information, service work and education to reduce impacts in the outdoors and to recreate responsibly.
Leave No Trace selects Hot Spot locations each year: popular outdoor areas across the country that have experienced heavy recreational use and human-created impacts, including excessive trash, damage to vegetation, trail erosion, disturbance to wildlife and more.
“Hot Spot areas are damaged but can recover again with a motivated community and a comprehensive infusion of Leave No Trace programs” said Dana Watts, executive director of Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics.
“By identifying and working with Hot Spots and their communities across the country, Leave No Trace can rapidly move toward recovering and protecting the places we all cherish at a time when the outdoors has proven more critical than ever,” according to Erin Collier, one of the Subaru/Leave No Trace Team members who will be onsite to lead the work.
At Arches, backcountry coordinator Keri Nelson says the park's goal "is to ensure visitors to Arches National Park can experience the park in the most natural state possible. By providing visitors with information on how they can protect the park we hope it will transfer over to fewer impacts to the park as well as all other public lands they visit.”
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In S Africa, they charge $25 or more per person per day to visit the parks and highly restrict where you can go. Here for as low as $55 you can get a year long pass and bring people in by the car load.
Oir parks are under staffed and have not charged a fair rate for entry in decades. What good is a park if you allow crowds of disrespectful people destroy it?
We work volunteer for USFS and BLM it is amazing how unthinkable people treat our public lands. Trash, human waste,not picking up after pets and the list goes on and on.
This makes my blood absolutely boil. I saw a rock near Rocky Mountain National Park with a heart spraypainted on it. It was near my favorite fishing spot. Ita infuriating, disrespectful and destructive. These are not the people we want visiting the Parks.
This is very disturbing. I love God's country. Nature is where I go to get away, my visits with God. My dream is to travel all national parks when I retire. When I see this it upsets me. Would you throw trash in your backyard, prioritising your house. Or for that matter deficate on your front porch. Well the outdoors is my backyard and if you can't respect that you need to stay away fake hikers and campers!!!
I wonder if the increase in trashing our parks is correlated to us all being woke, righteous but actually petty inside.
I am complete agreement with the person suggesting a fee of $25 per person as a suggested price for national park entrance. I'm so sad seeing people disrespecting treasures like our National parks. And I'm not sure how to address that. I wish I had a better solution. Charging a lot of money is a solution not at all practical for people who can't afford it. How do we handle that?? I don't know. But I do believe it is necessary to figure out a way to involve people not previously involved to become spokesmen and women for our Parks. Wisdom will follow.
While I believe we need to work towards getting people involved, I also can appreciate the idea of limiting the number of people into a park in order to protect it. I had personal experience with this about 35 years ago. My family and I were interested in canoeing the islands in Canada adjacent to Minnesota. I put our name on a waiting list. This is how they controlled the number of people entering the area. Way back then they were protecting Quetico from too much over-visiting. It was wonderful. We were nearly alone. In a week of canoeing Quetico were only into one other person who was canoeing alone and the name of his canoe was "Paddle Naked" which he was.
Our National Parks are supported through our taxes and ALL people should have access, not just those who can afford the entrance fees.
I don't have much money, but as a senior life member would gladly pay a NP entrance fee. I've been going to national parks for over 40 years. Over the years the number of visitors has steadily increased. In the last 5 years vehicle and RV traffic has also increased. However, the biggest increase I've seen is the lack of respect for our national parks and its wildlife. Many travelers do bad things because they know nobody will see them doing the damage. It's like social media - say something you wouldn't say face to face. I don't know how this will be corrected because each person is responsible for their actions. Unless you actually respect you, your belongings, and your country, I see no way to stop the damage. Hmmm, I wonder if limits on the number of visitors would work?