Letters to the Editor: The San Gabriel Mountains are filthy. This is no way to run a national monument

To the editor: Your editorial urging the expansion of the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument ignores your own recent reporting. On Aug. 6, you published an editorial that stated: “The images of piles of trash left by visitors to the East Fork of the San Gabriel River in the Angeles National Forest in the L.A. Times last week were horrifying.”

Back in 2014, President Obama was in Los Angeles County to announce the formation of the monument encompassing most of the San Gabriel Mountains. After a photo-op and a press release, he left to do what he had really come to California for: fundraising from wealthy donors.

No money was authorized to improve the mountains. Since then, conditions continue to worsen, and the federal government has done very little.

Expanding the footprint of the monument does nothing to solve its problems. It’s just lip-service offered to a donor class that has never walked the trails to Mt. Baldy or Mt. Wilson.

We don’t need declarations and smiling photos. We need results — in particular, the results promised nearly a decade ago that have yet to be delivered.

Robert Helbing, Monrovia

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To the editor: Sure, let’s get more acreage in the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument, but not with the U.S. Forest Service running it. Under that agency, the monument is overrun with trash each summer, and graffiti stays on rocks, signs, trees — you name it — for years.

The overwhelming trash problem is why the San Gabriel Mountains joined travel magazine Fodor’s “No List 2024,” which encourages tourists to avoid certain destinations around the globe.

Jim Burns, San Gabriel