Quote Originally Posted by MC97GQ View Post
Todd,

Whilst I agree with you to a degree, also look at it from the point of view of the Parkies. Every monday morning you go out to a location and find it trashed(either rubbish left behind or vandalism), it would get pretty disheartening. Then you have budget restraints, you have to spend money that could upgrade other amenities continually repairing one place.

I know this will ruffle feathers, but we all need to take responsibility and ownership for these places, I am not a fan of dobbers, but if we see people doing the wrong thing we need to get license plate numbers and report them. I don't advocate approaching people that do this sort of stuff, as it might get you into more trouble than you need. But a quick call to Crimestoppers or something similar might see idiots like these finally get their wings clipped.

My thoughts

Mark
I too understand how frustrating and disheartening it must be for the parks staff, but by closing these areas down all they are doing is giving up vast areas of our country to these degenerate criminals to do with as they please. If the vandals are willing to destruct public property like the original post indicated, a locked gate and a "closed sign" is not going to keep them out - quite the contrary... Now they have free reign to do as they please because they have very little chance of being seen by anyone.

The best thing we can do with these areas is actually use them, patrol them, make it known that these sorts of actions are not and will not be tolerated. These sorts of cowards won't do anything wrong if there are honest people around to see them.

If we see a friend or acquaintance do something stupid tell them to pull their head in (many groups of vandals has one or more people in the group who don't agree with the actions of the group, but who don't say anything for fear of being ridiculed).

Insist that our authorities follow through on trying to catch them and prosecute them rather than surrender and spend all our resources on harassing and trying to exclude the honest law abiding citizens they are employed by (us!).