Joshua Tree National Park, facing hiring freeze, inundated with massive uptick in visitors

"If you do the math, there's simply not enough room for everybody," Jane Rodgers, Joshua Tree's chief of cultural and natural resources, told the radio station. "When you damage these areas [by parking offroad], those scars and that damage lasts for a very long time." less "If you do the math, there's simply not enough room for everybody," Jane Rodgers, Joshua Tree's chief of cultural and natural resources, told the radio station. "When you damage these areas [by parking ... more Image 1 of / 29 Caption Close Joshua Tree National Park, facing hiring freeze, inundated with massive uptick in visitors 1 / 29 Back to Gallery

More than two and a half million people visited Joshua Tree National Park in 2016 — 60 percent more than just two years before — and officials who work there are pulling double (and triple) duties to keep the park operating smoothly.

George Land, the park's public information officer and wearer of many hats, says he and other senior officials have had to do things like direct parking in addition to their normal responsibilities because the federal government is under a hiring freeze. Although the park's visitors have just about doubled since six years ago, they still have the same approximate number of staffers.

That sort of thing can create problems for the park's well-being.

Land says that the rise in people coming to Joshua Tree can result in two types of damage: one comes from maliciously-minded visitors who bring in spray cans to graffiti rocks or cut down Joshua trees for firewood; the other is accidental, or is the result of a visitor's naïveté.

"There's damage done just by the sheer amount of people coming into the resource, like people pulling vehicles up over the curb into the vegetation because they can't find parking," he tells SFGATE. "I wouldn't be being honest if I said there wasn't a significant impact on the park."

As Southern California Public Radio reports, there are only 2,000 parking spots at the park, but on busy days, up to 7,000 cars attempt to visit.

"If you do the math, there's simply not enough room for everybody," Jane Rodgers, Joshua Tree's chief of cultural and natural resources, told the radio station. "When you damage these areas [by parking offroad], those scars and that damage lasts for a very long time."

So what's contributing to the recent rise in visitors? A few things. First, there are simply more people taking photos and posting them to social media, piquing the interest of others in their network. There's also just more press coverage. In the last five or six years, the park's beautiful landscape has been profiled for international audiences; the Guardian, the Huffington Post, USA Today, Good Morning Australia, the BBC, and more have all written about the park.

But the uptick in visitors isn't bad news, even though it is challenging to manage. Adding that the park has a land mass of more than 80,000 acres — slightly bigger than the state of Rhode Island — Land says that though he's "concerned about the resource" he is also pleased that people are more actively interested in seeing it.

"We're a wilderness island in Southern California surrounded by a mass of humanity," he says, referring to nearby Inland Empire, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas. "We're swimming in this vast pool of humanity and we're glad people are using the park and being inspired and appreciating the beauty of it."

And with the limited number of park staffers and volunteers (544 volunteers worked at the park in 2016 for a total of around 41,000 hours), the influx of guests is having an impact on the natural beauty of Joshua Tree.

More could be done to help preserve the park, at least from a financial and developmental standpoint. More campgrounds could be added, and more staffers should be hired, should funding soon allow.

There's an important reason for that outside of just keeping the park running. Land says that the park is a beacon of economic strength for the area, providing the backbone for business growth opportunities for hotels, gas stations, and sports equipment stores nearby. As Land says, "It's worth investing in not just Joshua Tree but any of the national parks because we provide economic boosts to communities that are local."

If you want to visit Joshua Tree, Land has several suggestions: