The first national park in the United States was Yellowstone. Established as an NP in 1872, a full 44 years before the National Park Service even existed.
Yosemite was declared a national park in 1890, just 18 years after Yellowstone. Since then 61 more national parks have been added under the umbrella of the National Park Service, along with nearly 400 other sites such as most national monuments, and other natural, historical, and recreational properties with various title designations.
The U.S. National Park Service continually asks visitors to national parks to “take only memories & photographs and leave only footprints.” They also ask that people “leave no trace.”
Unfortunately, some visitors like to “make their mark” with graffiti, which is, not only harmful to park resources, but illegal.
Zion National Park, December 2020 / PC: NPS
There’s another form of damage that visitors to national parks do every day – cairns. You’ve probably seen them. You may have even innocently made one. They’re piles of rocks stacked on top of one another.
Some are just a few inches high, some are several feet tall. But unless they’re made by a park ranger, trail maintenance volunteer or trail creator, as a directional or other guide, they go against the “Leave No Trace” practices that visitors should follow when visiting a NP.
Rangers at Yellowstone National Park have apparently had enough of this “rock graffiti.” On one of their most recent Facebook posts, the park is encouraging hikers and visitors to knock over cairns they see.
Should you knock this over??
Yes!Why did Wilderness Restoration Rangers dismantle this rock cairn? According to Leave No Trace ethics when we recreate in wilderness spaces, our goal is to leave no signs of our impact on the land and respect other creatures living in it. Unfortunately, this dramatically oversized cairn is a mark of human impact and is distracting in a wilderness setting. Building rock cairns also disturbs small insects, reptiles, and microorganisms that call the underside home!
When used appropriately, rock cairns are great for navigation, safety, and delineating a new or hard-to-follow trail. In general, rock cairns should only be constructed by rangers and trail workers. Please dismantle and refrain from building rock cairns when you visit Yosemite.
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1 comment
Unless you have official permission, stick to your backyard if you want to build a cairn.