Visitors Chainsaw Iconic Joshua Trees in National Park During Gov't Shutdown

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Joshua trees are beautiful, but humans can be pretty awful.

That's what park rangers learned during the first week or so of the partial government shutdown.

Joshua Tree National Park is about the size of Delaware, but only eight law-enforcement rangers were tasked with protecting the 1,238 square mile (3,207 square kilometers) wonderland during the shutdown.

The result? Visitors did not play by the rules, cutting illegal roads, chopping down the park's most famous occupants — the Joshua trees — and damaging federal property, according to the nonprofit National Parks Traveler.

"There are about a dozen instances of extensive vehicle traffic off roads and in some cases into wilderness," said the park's superintendent David Smith, as reported by National Parks Traveler. "We have two new roads that were created inside the park. We had destruction of government property with the cutting of chains and locks for people to access campgrounds. We've never seen this level of out-of-bounds camping. Every day use area was occupied every evening."

https://www.livescience.com/64467-visitors-chainsaw-iconic-joshua-trees.html