Inaugural Public Lands CleanUp Day
On Earth Day, April 22nd, Swan Valley Connections hosted its first ever Public Lands CleanUp Day. Over 30 volunteers gathered for the event, and then dispersed in groups to pick up some garbage dump sites, dispersed recreation areas, campsites, and parking areas at gated roads around the valley.
With funding and staffing cuts to all of our federal agencies, this is just one way in which SVC expands the capacity of understaffed and underfunded agencies. As another example, in 2025, the US Forest Service Swan Lake Ranger District recreation department staff was slashed from six full-time employees to just one. These are the people that normally clean outhouses at local trailheads, clear trails, maintain educational signage, and clean up garbage at developed and dispersed campsites. In this instance, we have been observing how much trash has been accumulating at clear dumping spots around the Swan Valley, around dispersed recreation sites, and where people park at gated roads as access points to our beloved public lands.
Our valued partners at the US Forest Service brought five employees, two trucks, and two trailers to pile and haul garbage. Staff and board members from Wild Montana came and provided bubbly waters and prizes for “the most unique garbage found.” Xplorer Maps, whom SVC is excited to be working with on a Swan Valley map for our 30th anniversary, showed up with all eight of their employees for the day. Holland Lake Lodge owners joined to help clean up our public lands around the treasured Holland Lake and surrounding areas. And finally, many more passionate local volunteers came to do their part in caring for our shared lands.
After forming several groups, we divided and conquered several known hotspots to clean up the usual beer cans, bullet casings, tires, diapers, and toilet paper that can be found near many recreation sites throughout the valley. One larger group went to an old gravel pit, where someone had illegally been driving behind an area closed to motorized vehicles and had dumped a massive amount of garbage and household items. There, we loaded an old billiard table, several washers and dryers, furniture, toys, jugs of motor oil and gasoline, dog houses, broken weed eaters, clothes, horror movie DVD sets (which this scene could have come out of) and much, much more!
As one volunteer with Xplorer Maps later said, “At first it felt good to be cleaning up this beautiful place, but as we progressed, I became angry! Who would do such a thing to this pristine place?”
The large group of around 20 volunteers quickly filled the Forest Service trailers and trucks with garbage from this one large dumping site. After successfully cleaning up that site, a smaller group of us went further up Barber Creek Road and found where someone, likely the same culprits from the previous site, had dumped an entire load of garbage off a steep sidehill above Barber Creek. After cleaning that up, we found where another dumping site of garbage and household items had been left at a small campsite near the creek! Now we were getting furious with whoever was responsible for defacing our public lands! We found a large, heavy hamper, the size of a body bag, full of clothes and other items that stunk of bodily fluids, and for a moment we wondered if a body was actually inside, but thankfully that was not the case. We filled three more trucks with garbage from that site before calling it a day.
Back at the SVC office, all of the volunteers reconvened to unload garbage, share stories from the day, eat a late lunch provided by the local Bear Tracks Pizza, and receive prizes from Wild Montana. Other than the colossal dumping sites, the most unique garbage found was an old Super Nintendo controller, a bowling game with old metal bowling pins, a toilet, and of course the billiard table.
In all, we hauled two large trailers and five truck loads of garbage off our public lands to the dump!
So much of who I am revolves around public lands. On just about every weekend, or after work, I can be found recreating on local and regional public lands. This includes hiking, camping, backpacking, fishing, hunting, huckleberry picking, mushroom foraging, antler shed hunting, skiing, ice skating, snowshoeing, and dog walking, all in generally pristine places, where I can find solitude in an increasingly fast-paced world. In this way, public lands have shaped who I am, and it only feels right to give back and help steward the wild places that provide so many benefits for all of us.
At the large dump site, we found a Home, Sweet Home sign, which felt a bit ironic; this place is our shared home, and yet some people were clearly treating it without the respect it deserves. As Americans, we all own an equal share of these lands, and the clean air, clean water, wildlife habitat, forests, recreation opportunities, and solitude that benefit us all, are things we should all strive to preserve for ourselves and others’ enjoyment as well.
We thank all the volunteers again for taking time from their busy lives to help keep our valley beautiful, and to care for our cherished public lands. If you couldn’t make it for our inaugural year of Public Lands CleanUp Day, you can count on us doing it again next year on Earth Day!
