Joshua Tree National park staff thank community for shutdown assistance
Rangers at Joshua Tree National Park thanked the local high desert community Tuesday morning.
“All of these different partners coming out to tell the story and to protect the park….”
Community members in 29 Palms gathered at the park headquarters mingling with park rangers grateful for their support.
“People every day were helping clean the bathrooms for us and they we’re picking up litter on the side of the road,” Superintendent David Smith, said.
He says the recent government shutdown furloughed his rangers leaving a void in maintenance and operations.
“They were educating visitors in explaining what was going on. Local businesses were operating as visitor’s centers basically,” Smith said.
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That included local climber Rand Abbott who helped coordinate community cleanup and fundraising efforts in the park. He says they are prepared if another shutdown occurs.
“We’ve got companies that donated. We’ve got a church that gave money for food for the people that weren’t working, we’ve got action pumping from me,” Abbott said.
Smith said the park lost $1 million in entrance fees and also saw more than 200 hundred miles of off-roading by unauthorized vehicles from visitors. The loss of fees will mean some cutbacks.
“The projects we would have been working on, you know we’re going to have to cancel those projects or move them down to the next calendar year, so we’re trying to figure out how to make up for that loss right now.” he said.
However Smith says he’s optimistic the park will continuing running with no interruptions.
“I have confidence that Congress and the President will work something out. They love their parks as well and they understand that these are our crown jewels of the United States,” he said.
