Episode 7 – Behaviours in Nature; Joshua Tree National Park

*Erik Kramer-Webb (left) with Kurt Sauer, former Superintendent of Joshua Tree National Park*

Erik Kramer-Webb lives and works in Joshua Tree and where has and his wife own the California Climbing School. Episode 7 of The Hive features Erik and some of his experiences, we compared this to our own experience and also spoke to Lucy McRobert about some solutions to this.

During the latest US Government shutdown in 2018, Erik and others, witnessed damage being caused by an influx of Visitors, not helped by the furlough of National Park Rangers. He shared some photos of this with The Hive (below).

Having experienced three lockdowns in the National Park throughout the last decade, Erik found that the most recent incidence bought the most destruction, due to the political decision not to close the gates of the National Park to visitors.

Soon after this, there were headlines stating that the park will take up to 300 years to recover – ecologically, however other points of view have downplayed this as alarmist, but what no one is disputing is that lasting damage was caused and that this is taking precious resources to repair. A spokesperson for the National Park Service, Mike Litterst, was quoted as saying; “soil damage like this can last for decades. So far, crews have helped repair about 20 miles (32 km) of tire tracks left during the shutdown”.

These scenes were somewhat replicated across the UK during the “lockdown” relating to the Coronavirus pandemic. During the Summer of 2020, damage to natural spaces occurred with disturbing regularity, most notably 140 acres of heathland at Chobham Common (Surrey) and 550 acres at Wareham Forest (Dorset) were destroyed by fires relating to use of disposable BBQ’s. Other scenes included tonnes of litter being left at natural beauty spots, such as Durdle Door, and damage/disturbance caused by people “wild camping”, with one of the worst hit locations being at Bellever in Dartmoor National Park.

Erik’s thoughts on how this can be treated, included making sure that our interventions with people were more measured, and to show understanding that most negative behaviours are not premeditated acts. He also feels that education can go a long way to helping people to understand how they should behave when they are amongst nature.

Erik and his story will be featured on Episode Seven of The Hive, which will be out during Spring 2021!