Stewardship

The Grand Canyon National Park River Rangers and Resource crews need your help in taking better care of the Canyon. New trails are appearing in fragile soil crust areas, and more trash is being left behind at the popular camping beaches. In addition, it seems that the “Leave No Trace” ethic has been forgotten. Too many balanced rock sculptures, rock cairns, stick sculptures, driftwood shelters, sand castles, drip castles, and large deadmans are being left on beaches and up the side canyons.
The Colorado River through the Grand Canyon is a unique river experience. Few other rivers in America are so removed from roads, ranches, towns, bridges, and the like. When you leave your deadman or sculpture behind, you have deprived other river runners the opportunity to see unspoiled, natural beaches and river banks. If you must alter a beach for your pleasure and comfort, please return it to its natural condition before you leave—dismantle any sculptures or structures you or someone else have built, remove any rocks that you brought down to the beach, and dig out the deadman. On park river patrols we have been collecting and documenting trash found on popular camping beaches. Usually we can fill a quart or gallon baggie with what we find in the sand. This is in addition to what we grab out of the eddies and along the strand lines. Please help the canyon out by having everyone in your group do a sweep for trash (especially cigarette butts) before you leave camp and head downstream.

Regarding trails in the Grand Canyon—don’t make any. The biotic soil crusts in the canyon are easily damaged by a single person’s careless wanderings, and once broken, the crust will no longer hold sand or soil in place—“Don’t Bust the Crust!” The park’s river rangers, resource crews, and commercial guides on resource trips have spent many, many hours rehabilitating and obliterating “social” trails, and protecting sensitive and fragile areas. Campsites can be very heavily impacted by back and forth traffic in camp to the kitchen area and between sleeping areas. All camping activities should be limited to areas below the historic high water line, out of the mesquite or desert zones, and off of fragile soil crusts, dunes, or upper terraces. The goal is to restrict impacts to the more resistant post-dam sandbar areas that can be regenerated by flood flows.
The canyon and its beaches have benefited from years of good stewardship on the part of many of those who care for the place dearly. Please accept our thanks for your continuing care.
Grand Canyon National Park River Rangers
and Resource Crews