Donald's government shutdown is harming some of America's most treasured spaces, treasured,

I guess, as long as you're not a Republican, and these would be our national parks. Inside

Climate News reports that the Trump regime decided to keep the parks open with skeleton crews.

Since October 1st, 12,000 National Park Service staff members have been on furlough. Only 3,000

park employees are left to run all of the National Park Services, 433 sites, and they are working

without pay. With parks remaining open, visitor access is limited, but enforcement is scarce, and people are taking advantage.

Some are hiking dangerous peaks without permits, and there's a horrifying trend of illegal base jumping in Yosemite.

Sacramento local station KCRA spoke with Lucy Hodgman from the San Francisco Chronicle for more.

You definitely hear a couple of reports of people parachuting off the rock formations there

or even paragliding, things that are a little more exciting.

But I think that that's happening a lot less often than the sort of quieter, more subtle

breaking of the rules.

So people parking overnight where they're not supposed to.

Saw quite a few people smoking, which wouldn't happen normally, some drones flying overhead, sort of smaller violations

that would go unnoticed normally, but wouldn't really be happening if the government wasn't

shut down.

Again, none of that might sound terribly dramatic, but smoking in natural parks can actually lead to some horrific events.

Since the shutdown, there have been two park fires. One was caused by lightning in Zion.

Another was a man-made fire in Joshua Tree. In both cases, short staffing prevented proper management of the

issue. This is reminiscent of the 2018- 2019 shutdown when minimal staffing led to defacement, illegal

off-roading, and destruction of Joshua Tree's. Advocates say this damage could take centuries

to repair, which kind of sounds like it's right in league with what the Trump regime is doing to this whole country.

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