Over a mid-September weekend, some of the most heavily used (and littered) portions of the Grand Canyon’s South Rim will get their annual tidy-up. But collecting trash from ledges that dangle some 5,000 feet over a massive hole in the earth is no task for your average sanitation crew. Instead, the park’s Preventive Search and Rescue Program (PSAR) will issue a special-use permit to the Arizona Mountaineering Club (AMC), about 50 of whose member-volunteers will rappel over the canyon’s edge to collect hundreds of gallons of plastic bottles, bags, sunhats, coins, and snack wrappers.         

The cleanup does more than ameliorate a serious eyesore in an otherwise spectacular landscape. “Trash puts a [strain] on the natural environment that we really see on our wildlife. Specifically birds, but also megafauna like bighorn sheep and deer,” says Ben Cooper, who supervises Grand Canyon’s PSAR and also offers logistical support to AMC’s garbage roundup. With visitation at the park up 33 percent over the last three years, and hitting 6 million visitors in 2016, that strain is only fixing to get worse. With few skilled on-staff climbers and a stagnant budget, much of which goes toward educating tourists on safety and providing imperiled hikers with emergency services, Cooper says, “We need to engage our community partners” in the cleanup.