Thousands of pigs roam Arizona wildlands
And not the four-legged variety. If you read my blog enough, you’ll know that littering is one of my pet peeves. I have been amazed since moving to Arizona 12 years ago at just how much litter there is. Litter in the deserts, litter along the roads, litter ringing our urban lakes. Knee-deep piles of trash in the south left by illegal aliens; trash strewn all over our north by ignorant urbanites seeking fun and recreation in the pines. My daughter and I always have some trash bags in our packs when we head afield, and invariably end up bringing someone else’s litter home with us. Call me old-fashioned, but this is just a symptom of the ignorance and laziness that pervades our society today. “Gimme, gimme, gimme” with no responsibility attached to it. Read this article in today’s AzCentral.com: Trash piling up in Arizona’s forests.
Some excerpts:
Trash is piling up in Arizona’s forests, left behind by sloppy hikers, campers and people who just use the land as a dumping ground.
Forest workers find cans, bottles, paper plates, diapers – anything that would go into a trash can or a recycling bin back home. Some people pick up their refuse and leave it behind in bags to be picked up. Workers don’t have the time or the staff to keep up with it.
“Frankly, there are areas out there that are pigsties,” said Paige Rockett, spokeswoman for the Tonto National Forest, nearly 3 million acres of desert, mountains, lakes and other terrain northeast of Phoenix.
And when people leave human waste in their bags, forest employees with hazardous-materials training have to be called to handle it. Magee said that takes workers away from their main duties, such things as responding to fires and building and maintaining trails.
“There isn’t a trash crew on the forest,” she said. “Any trash you create has to go out with you.”
Officials say there are more people using the forests, so there’s more trash. The Tonto also contends with graffiti and vandalism.
Rockett called the Tonto an “urban forest” since it’s so close to metro Phoenix. It gets an estimated 5 million to 6 million visitors a year, she said.
Rockett said people also appear to be getting sloppier, more careless, in throwing around garbage. She said that since people pay a fee for certain access, they might see the forest like a sports stadium or a movie theater, where some people think that since they paid to get in, someone will come in and clean up after them, Rockett said.
Sheryl Yerkovich, recreation field supervisor at Tonto’s Mesa Ranger District, said she was shocked by the piles of trash thrown in ditches, stuck under trees and pushed into crevasses in rocks when she started working in the district four years ago and still is.
“We just didn’t and still don’t understand why people would treat their environment in this way.”
Most hunters and fishermen I know continue to set the standard for outdoor stewardship. They haul out trash they find. They clean up where shooters have left targets, shotgun shells and cardboard boxes. They call in and report violators. Lance Altherr created a group called Arizona Hunters Who Care – they organize several times per year and do massive garbage sweeps in high problem areas, especially down south. It’s not unusual that they fill a couple of roll-off dumpsters during an event. The message boards start coming to life every year around this time with stories of “hunters” who are slobs. As far as I’m concerned, if you trash a campsite you’re not a hunter – you’re an ignoramus with a gun and a hunting license. Same thing if you’re shooting signs. I don’t know many people like that though. Most hunters I know are just that – hunters. Let’s continue to spread the word, police ourselves, and demonstrate to the rest of society what it means to be a good caretaker of our forests, waterways and deserts.
A guy I know through a military message board happened to come to Phoenix on business a couple of years ago, so we took the opportunity to meet for lunch, talk about the old days, and so on. When he returned, he posted on the board “I used to think that plastic bags were made in factories; now I know they grow on bushes along the roads in Arizona”. Nice
