With all of Joshua Tree National Park now open after extensive cleaning and repair, Park Superintendent David Smith outlined the damage done to the Park while it was open during severe staff cutbacks as a result of the partial government shutdown. In an interview with National Park Traveler magazine, Smith said, "There are about a dozen instances of extensive vehicle traffic off roads and in some cases into wilderness. 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. Joshua trees were actually cut down in order to make new roads.”
Smith said the new roads at Joshua Tree didn't run for miles, but rather jogged around gates to gain access in many cases.” “It’s short spurts for people to get around gates for the most part. They would just go out into the country, and then once 20 or 30 cars would go over it you would essentially have a new road created in pristine desert,” he said.
Smith said one place that saw traffic was around Joshua Tree's Live Oak area, which is not far from the north entrance to the park, “We had some pretty extensive four-wheel driving around the entire area to access probably our most significant tree in the park, a hybrid live oak tree that is deciduous. It is one of our iconic trees inside the park. People were driving through virgin desert to get to this location to it and camping under it. “That would probably be a quarter-mile or so around the rock formation that is there.” The superintendent said there also were instances of graffiti in the park this past week.
