No ‘Barrycades’ this time.
Los Angeles (AFP) – Sabra Purdy is just back from Joshua Tree National Park in southern California, which was crammed with tourists. It is high season, and to prevent chaos from the partial shutdown of the US federal government, she put on her gloves, cleaned toilets and picked up trash.
The 40-year-old businesswoman joined other members of the business community who benefit from park-related tourism, and together they performed some serious maintenance in the 790,737-acre (320,000-hectare) park while waiting for politicians in faraway Washington to end their budget impasse.
The shutdown began on December 22, with Congress at loggerheads over whether to include the $5 billion sought by Donald Trump to fund a wall on the border with Mexico, a central pillar of his election campaign and of his presidency.
The result: hundreds of thousands of federal workers were sent home without pay, including 21,383 employees of the National Park Service (NPS), responsible for 418 facilities nationwide, including national parks, monuments, historic sites and even the White House.
But most parks were left open, and without the usual entry fee.
“In the long run, the rangers who work here committed to preserve the area and just their mere presence probably keeps things from happening that shouldn’t,” said Sherman Craig, who was visiting Joshua Tree from New York.
A Park Service statement issued for a shutdown earlier in the year laid out a bare-bones plan.
“The NPS will not operate parks during the shutdown — no visitor services will be provided,” it said.
“NPS will cease providing visitor services, including restrooms, trash collection, facilities and roads maintenance (including plowing), campground reservation and check-in/check-out services, backcountry and other permits and public information.”
That is where the community around Joshua Tree came in, determined to help keep the magic in the air.
The Sonora and Mojave deserts meet on the park’s west side, amid a spectacular backdrop of rocky mountains, boulders and a type of cactus called the Joshua Tree that gives the area its name.
– Disorder but ‘no chaos’ –
Since the shutdown began, dozens of volunteers have been traveling to the park to clean overused bathrooms, remove mounting piles of garbage and carry out other, equally unfragrant work.
Purdy, who eight years ago opened a tour company for climbing trips with her husband Seth Zaharias, said that when she arrived at Joshua Tree on Friday she found disorder but “no chaos.”
There were “a lot of people with dogs where they shouldn’t be, camping where they shouldn’t be. But it could certainly be much worse,” she said.
“Unfortunately, this isn’t the first shutdown, and probably not the last.”
Volunteers often take the opportunity to guide tourists and explain the rules about protecting the park’s precious and delicate ecosystem — rules often flouted during the shutdown.
Local businesses started organizing their fairly informal grouping even as Congress was failing yet again to get its budget deal done.
All supplies for the effort come from the pocket of local businessmen, though some donations are starting to arrive from other park lovers.