Are you actually bothered by widespread litter or sewage spills or off-trail hiking, or is that just something convenient for a political fight? Actual concern would mean you want to save Organ Pipe National Monument and Big Bend National Park by building a wall to protect those fragile desert ecosystems. The shutdown, assuming it results in a wall, would prevent lots of lasting damage.

I do care about off trail hiking in all national parks because of the obvious damage that causes. I also care about preventing littering everywhere. Including national parks. My concern for these topics is unrelated to my stance on a border wall.

I don’t appreciate your unfounded implication that my concern for national parks is somehow politically motivated or excludes specific parks.

I also don’t appreciate your attempts to drag this conversation off topic. The article is about lasting damage to national parks due to a government shutdown. The article is not about a wall or the border.

Superficially, the article is about lasting damage to national parks due to a government shutdown.

Ask yourself why the article was written. Pay attention to the fact that the damage is blown all out of proportion. The article lists things that aren't long-term (unclean toilets and unemptied trash) and other things (walking off trails) that are a normal occurrence during non-shutdown times.

There is no question in my mind that this article was not written with any legitimate concern for national parks getting damaged. The most generous assumption would be ordinary fearmongering because a writer needs to catch eyeballs.

The most generous assumption is that the article was written in good faith and that the government shutdown has a material effect on the parks as described.

So, damaging 57 other national parks to save 1. It doesn't seem to me a sound/common-sense trade-off even if your claims are true.