> The point of national parks isn’t to preserve wilderness for the sake of preservation. The point is recreation.

The national parks service philosophy is very preservationist. They advise people to follow guidelines that are literally called “leave no trace”. Their mission statement uses the word preserve in the first sentence. Hell, part of the reason why Big Bend national park never became an international park (among many others) was because the parks service disagreed with the laxer, conservationist approach that Mexican authorities favored.

>The point is recreation. This is why they are full of artificial modifications like roads, trails, and sometimes attractions with shops and bathrooms.

Those modifications are done carefully to have as little impact on the environment and a lot of types of recreation are completed banned in national parks, hunting being the obvious one. The use of vehicles (including bicycles) is completely banned in federally designated wilderness.

What steps did whoever installed this take to make sure that this thing isn’t going to leech metals into an ephemeral watering hole used by wildlife?

I agree that the NapS is ver preservationist, compared to the blm, where the monolith is located. For what it is worth 66/75 of national parks permit hunting.

https://www.doi.gov/blog/hunting-and-fishing-national-parks-...

Well you can certainly have your own perspective, I just disagree 100% with it and will use whatever means I have to make sure that the tiny bits of nature we have left are preserved to the extent possible. Some aluminum "art" in the middle of nowhere is a perversion and should be garbage collected. That's my view, which I will use dollars and my vote toward.

We might just have agree to disagree. I have literally seen tens of thousands of pounds of garbage dumped on public land. The idea that some out of the way and moderately interesting art is a priority is laughable.

> I have literally seen tens of thousands of pounds of garbage dumped on public land.

Yes, and they shouldn't be.

> The idea that some out of the way and moderately interesting art is a priority is laughable.

I don't think it's that interesting, but besides that I don't follow your rationale. Because some people litter against the rules, we shouldn't clean up this thing someone put on federal lands? Even so, wouldn't large pieces of litter take priority over smaller ones simply due to human nature?

I really feel like you're stretching here. Frankly, it's interesting to watch people defend some thing they just found out about and have no attachment to.