Parks in rush to clean up messes after shutdown

SALT LAKE CITY — National park visitors cut new trails in sensitive soil. They pried open gates while no one was watching. They found bathrooms locked, so they went outside. One offroader even mowed down an iconic twisted-limbed Joshua tree in California.

During the 35-day government shutdown, some visitors to parks and other protected areas nationwide left behind messes that National Park Service officials are scrambling to clean up and repair as they brace for the possibility of another closure ahead of the busy Presidents Day weekend this month.

Conservationists warn that damage to sensitive lands could take decades to recover. Even before the shutdown, national parks faced an estimated $12 billion maintenance backlog that now has grown.

Many of the parks went unstaffed during the shutdown, while others had skeleton crews with local governments and nonprofits contributing money and volunteers.

National Park Service spokesman Mike Litterst in Washington, D.C., declined to provide a full accounting of the damage at more than 400 locations.

But interviews with park officials and nonprofits that help keep parks running reveal a toll from people and winter storms.

President Donald Trump has said another shutdown could start Feb. 15 if he and Democratic leaders can’t agree on funding for a U.S.Mexico border wall, compounding pressure on the park service to catch up on repairs.

Hiring seasonal workers who typically start in the spring as rangers, fee collectors and hiking guides also has been delayed.

Grand Canyon National Park officials said Friday they are delaying the start of a highly competitive lottery to award permits for self-guided rafting trips on the Colorado River in 2020 because staff had work to catch up on after the shutdown. Matt Baldwin, who works with the park’s river permits office, said the lottery is rescheduled for Feb. 16.

Employees at Death Valley National Park found human waste and toilet paper scattered in the desert and evidence people tried to kick in locked restroom doors, said David Blacker, executive director of the Death Valley Natural History Association.

“It became pretty depressing the kinds of things people will do when they are unsupervised,” Blacker said.

Jeff Chiu / Associated Press Trash overflows a garbage bin at Ocean Beach in San Francisco, a widespread problem at national parks as officials scramble to clean up and repair damage.