Three German tourists face possible fines after being accused of defacing property in Joshua Tree National Park in California.
Park authorities accused the trio of shooting paintballs at signs, toilets and garbage containers throughout the park.
They said the damage was discovered Sunday after a park ranger patrolling a campground found “fresh yellow paintball splatters on buildings and signs.”
Park rangers then questioned the tourists and they admitted to firing paintballs in the park using a compressed paintball gun and slingshots, authorities said.
According to the National Park Service (NPS), vandalism in a US national park can carry a maximum fine of $5,000 (£3,919), plus the possibility of a prison sentence of up to six months.
“Defacement or alteration of the NPS landscape, no matter how minor, is illegal,” Joshua Tree National Park Deputy Chief Ranger Jeff Filosa said in a statement Thursday.
“It impacts the natural environment that millions of people around the world come to enjoy,” he said, adding that “the park is regularly tasked with removing graffiti of all kinds, which takes up time and resources that could be better spent on other priorities.”
According to the NPS, park rangers confiscated three slingshots, a paintball marker, paintballs and other equipment from the tourists as evidence.
They also found that at least eleven street signs near the park’s west entrance had been shot with yellow paintballs.
Since then, employees have been tasked with cleaning the park.
The park service did not name the tourists, but explained that they were visiting from Germany.
According to the NPS, more than three million people visit Joshua Tree National Park each year, drawn by its “crazy” Joshua trees, wildlife and views.
It covers nearly 800,000 acres (1,250 square miles), making it larger than the entire state of Rhode Island.
The Joshua tree, a yucca palm, lives an average of 150 years. During a partial U.S. government shutdown in 2019, some of the park’s namesake trees were destroyed by vandals.
Environmentalists warned at the time that because of the slow growth of the trees, it could take more than a hundred years for the damage to be repaired.
In 2021, a California couple was fined $18,000 for cutting down 36 Joshua trees north of the park to build a new home.
There have been further cases of vandalism in national parks across the United States.
On its website, the NPS stated that removing graffiti and other damage from park land is “extremely difficult,” “costly and time-consuming.”
