Snowmageddon 2019 has finally hit during the height of the government shut down. The shutdown, for those that were not aware (like myself until recently), started in late December 2018 and has become the longest lasting shutdown in U.S. history all caused by a disagreement on the allocation of funds for certain government departments between Congress and Trump.
In the meantime, Americans have been focusing on the immense amount of snow that has been falling in parts of the U.S. Others, like myself, are not a fan of the cold have been staying inside and browsing what the internet has to offer like Twitter.
When I was on Twitter recently, I came across this tweet which features images from San Bernardino National Forest during the snow and shutdown (you can find a whole thread here). The images include piles of broken and abandoned sleds piled underneath the trees, and dumpsters overturned spilling the contents all over and left for the animals.
Seeing as the forest is a national park, it is not staffed during the shutdown which means there is no one left to clean up this mess. Until the shutdown is over or there is a random act of kindness from citizens, this trash will sit there and affect the lives of wildlife and the well being of the park.
If this is how the American public is going to treat our national parks when no one is there to look after it then do we really deserve to have them? Why do we need a man in a uniform to come up and tell us to pick up our trash?
Why do we need another grown human to come and pick up our sleds after a disastrous sledding incident? Why are we relying on others to clean up after our GROWN-ASS SELVES and WHY are we continuing to treat these places like trash?
We are all adults and you know that a 5-year-old child didn't walk to this park and knock over the dumpsters or leave their sled under a tree. There were parents. Teens on dates. Mindless, and frankly stupid, people (ADULTS) that made the conscious decision to leave their trash everywhere. This is truly heartbreaking to see.
If we are such a progressive country that demands change and rights and this or that, why should any other country take us seriously if we turn out national parks into our own personal garbage bin while the government isn't there to pick up after us?
We want to be more independent and don't want the government to interfere but WE CAN'T PICK UP OUR TRASH! We learn this since we could walk and yet there are parents teaching their children to trash their environment. This is disgusting and makes me angry to no end.
I cannot believe the nerve of these people and I cannot imagine the way that this will affect the ecosystem afterward.
I hope we start to see the wrongs in this. Sled, that's fine; take your broken sled home to throw it away. Throw away your trash; don't knock over a dumpster and leave it. We cannot claim to be progressive with our citizens doing these types of things to our national parks.
Things like this make our country a joke and I can't even imagine the poor national park rangers who have to go out and clean that up because people are ignorant and stupid. I can only hope that we learn.
