Vandalism at primitive camping sites in northern Minnesota...

[koochiching]

During the opening weekend of partridge season, I visited a number of primitive state forest and county campsites in Koochiching, Beltrami and Itasca counties. Yuck! I was really disappointed in the amount of discarded litter, garbage and vandalism evident at most sites.

I realize that county and state maintenance crews have been sharply reduced because of budget shortfalls. But the maintenance of these campsites has always been the responsibility of current users, who are expected to clean up a site before leaving, so that the next visitor will have a pleasant camping experience...

I've been visiting some of these sites for over 30 years, and I've never before seen so much discarded rubbish and wanton destruction.

Any ideas as to who is responsible for this vandalism? Also, any ideas as to how it might be controlled?

kooch

[IFallsRon]

There used to be more wayside rests with pit toilets up in the northern counties but vandals have seen to it that they were closed.

[M.T. Bucket]

I spent a summer cleaning up county-owned dispersed sites in Itasca County, and it's really a never-ending battle. People seem to have no problem packing full containers in with them, but have a terrible time packing out empty ones. I'm not sure what that's all about.

As for "who", I used to think it was kids looking for somewhere to drink (usually tons of beer packaging when we show up), but then I started seeing full-grown (physically--in fact they were often overgrown) men and women at some of the worst sites and upon a return visit they were often trashed. Based on the remote locations of these sites and the fact that they usually aren't associated with a 'destination' lake, I'm pretty certain you're not looking at the handiwork of tourists, either.

I think there are really 3 problems here:

1) A lot of people, through genetics or upbringing, are completely incapable of seeing their behavior as unethical.

2) Itasca County Parks & Recreation has one full-sized campground, about a dozen dispersed sites, 70+ public accesses, 4 hunter/hiking/ski trails, ~10 miles of the Mesabi Bike Trail, a small in-town recreation area, and a several other sites to develop and maintain. I'm not positive, but I think they have one full time field person and a couple of 90 day positions to do the work. Hard to get anything accomplished when every week you have slobs crapping on the boat ramp, spraying graffiti on the bike trail, ripping the outhouse door off at a trailhead, shooting up public access signs, and leaving a thousand pounds of trash each week.

3) It's hard to enforce. Enforcement officers have a hard time patrolling all of these areas and catching these types of violations. Every once in a while I would find something at a trashed site that had someone's name on it or I would get a license plate number of someone who appeared to be dumping. Seems there's a little difference between me seeing someone littering and a CO seeing it. Hard to ticket someone based on an addressed envelope found at a dump site.

I'm having a hard time remembering the sites I worked on...Erskine Lake (bad one), Long Lake (usually OK), Hay Lake (worst one every time, some real slobs there), Nickel Lake (not bad). There were several others as well.

[Tofishem]

SLOBS have absolutely no upbringing!!! And refer to the the world as their dump!!! They outta be hung! With people picking up the roadways, their thinking is someone will pick it up. I think someone caught littering should do 1000 hrs of community service in picking up litter!

Bruce