Joshua Tree campgrounds to close for ‘health and safety concerns’
Joshua Tree National Park campgrounds will close at 12:00 p.m. Wednesday, January 2 “to take…action for health and safety concerns as vault toilets reach capacity,” according to a National Park Service news release.
“In addition human waste in public areas, driving off road and other infractions that damage the resource are becoming a problem,” reads the release.”Additional closures include Lost Horse Mine Road due to illegal activity and Rattlesnake Canyon in order to reduce the number of search and rescue events for rangers already spread thin due to the government shutdown.”
{“url”:”https://twitter.com/JeremyChenKESQ/status/1078798924650082304″,”author_name”:”Jeremy Chen”,”author_url”:”https://twitter.com/JeremyChenKESQ”,”html”:”&#lt;blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”&#gt;&#lt;p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”&#gt;A group of local volunteers are taking it upon themselves to maintain &#lt;a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/JoshuaTree?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”&#gt;#JoshuaTree&#lt;/a&#gt; National Park, cleaning bathrooms and taking out trash during the gov’t shutdown. Some visitors were grateful and even gave direct donations. Full story tonight at 5 pm on &#lt;a href=”https://twitter.com/KESQ?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”&#gt;@KESQ&#lt;/a&#gt;. &#lt;a href=”https://t.co/O4Y4qAFbiI”&#gt;pic.twitter.com/O4Y4qAFbiI&#lt;/a&#gt;&#lt;/p&#gt;– Jeremy Chen (@JeremyChenKESQ) &#lt;a href=”https://twitter.com/JeremyChenKESQ/status/1078798924650082304?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”&#gt;December 28, 2018&#lt;/a&#gt;&#lt;/blockquote&#gt;n&#lt;script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″&#gt;&#lt;/script&#gt;n”,”width”:550,”height”:null,”type”:”rich”,”cache_age”:”3153600000″,”provider_name”:”Twitter”,”provider_url”:”https://twitter.com”,”version”:”1.0″}
A pair of campgrounds, Black Rock and Indian Cove, will remain open for day-use but will close at sunset.
During the 2013 government shutdown, the park entrance was shut off entirely to visitors.
“I want to extend a sincere thanks to local businesses, volunteer groups and tribal members who have done their best to assist in picking up litter and helping maintain campgrounds,” Superintendent David Smith said. “This is no reflection on their efforts and the park is very fortunate to have a community that exhibits the kind of care and concern witnessed over the last week.”
“I’m hoping the federal government gets it together and comes up with an agreement here shortly,” said Seth Zaharias, one of the volunteers helping to maintain the park.
The local Joshua tree community is accepting donations to assist the volunteers. All money given will go towards buying supplies. Donations can be given to the non-profit Friends of Joshua Tree here, and donations of cleaning supplies and toilet paper can be given to the business Nomad Ventures at 61795 29 Palms Hwy in Joshua Tree.
