Forest And Yosemite Highlight Trash Pickup

Park photo

Sonora, CA — Volunteers collected lots of trash in the Stanislaus Nation Forest and Yosemite National Park last month while reminding the public to pack it in and out.

Yosemite highlighted the massive turnout for this year’s facelift program, which celebrated the event’s 20th anniversary by pitching in to gather a whopping 10,432 pounds of trash. In all, 1,426 volunteers performed 12,138 hours of work throughout the event. The park also held other special projects, including collecting 2211.7 grams of seed over the three days from Yosemite Valley meadows for its seed banking program, installing 45 food lockers in Tamarack campground, resting and maintaining designated climbing trails, and planting native deergrass and milkweed in the meadows.

Additionally, last month, the Miwok and Summit Ranger District Employee Association spent time cleaning up trash along the section of Highway 108 that it maintains through the Adopt-a-Highway Program. The employees amassed a total of 36 bags of trash, finding a television, hot tub cover, sled, cans, household trash, diapers, hats, shoes, pacifiers, and fast-food wrappers littered along the highway.

Forest officials make this plea to the public: “Please make sure that your trash is disposed of in a trash or recycling bin and is not left behind along roads and in the forest.

Another forest clean-up will be conducted in the spring after the snow melts.