A sign nearby states that this is a 'Leave No Trace' campsite, but no matter how hard we work to keep the shores clean, there always seem to be those who have no respect for our beautiful island.
Yesterday when my husband hiked back to the hatchery and wilderness campsite to show it to a friend who was visiting, a sad surprise greeted them:
The wilderness campsite had been trashed. Luckily rain in the past few days had weighted down the newspaper which was strewn around.
A relatively new chair had been left behind.
Plastic bottles, shards of glass bottles, and aluminum cans had been tossed around. Food tins had been thrown into a campfire and lay scorched.
A recent paper was dated October 1.
A partially burned plastic bag of trash...
This was rather blatantly symbolic of the disrespect. If you click on the photo to enlarge it you can see that someone left behind two cents on the broken bench. This special little campsite is definitely worth more than two cents to most of us.
Plastic food wrappers were caught in the tall grass.
My husband and I hiked back down to the wilderness site with garbage bags to clean it up this morning, but there wasn't anything we could do about the broken bench.
We would like to thank all the people who took their time and funds to initially create this beautiful, peaceful wilderness campsite for us to enjoy. It's sad and disheartening to see some people will completely trash special places like this, but please know that there are many of us who will do our best to keep it clean and care for it.
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4 comments:
DJ, how sad! Hopefully shedding light on this scene will discourage others from such destruction....
I am constantly amazed at how little regard some people have for these places. Most times when I go to the beach, I take a garbage bag and spend a few minutes picking up the litter that is perpetually around. Sadly, the bag is filled all too quickly. A couple of weeks ago, I was at the Perdido area of G.I.N.S. and wandered up on a large collection of medical waste that had ashore. Truly disgusting. I picked up all that I could before I ran out of bags.
Marcus, thank you very much for helping. I truly appreciate your time and effort.
The only medical waste I've found was a 500ml glass IV bottle. Go figure how this stuff gets out here!
What a shame to have the camp site trashed and damaged. Like Marcus, my husband and I never go the beach or out on the boat without trash bags, and, yes, they fill up way to fast. Hopefully, the efforts of everyone will help to keep our coastline pristine.
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