This is Las Vegas’s Sunset Park. It happens to be the first place that I went fishing in the United States. Kind of fitting as this is a good spot to start fishing, and many people bring their children here to teach them about fishing. I love the idea of this park. For starters, the pond is only a small part of a big park filled with recreational and sporting activities. From basketball courts, playgrounds and more, to a hiking trail in actual preserved desert landscape. This is an open and free-to-use park for all, with the occasional fair or event, but always there to enjoy. Open spaces for kids or dogs to play, picnic and party areas to use for a BBQ. Hardworking groundskeepers ensure everything is working and kept clean. But my favorite part is a sizable pond that gets stocked yearly with fish.
This may seem odd to read about, because this park might
even be similar to your local park. What you have to understand reader, is that
you have to see this park through my eyes. We do have parks back in South
Africa, but none can compare in scale and nature to Sunset Park. Fraud and lack
of funding turn these parks into scary and generally dodgy areas. It is a real privilege
to see what a park can truly be, and I wish everyone could have access to such a
place to enjoy.
However, no place will ever be perfect. You will always be
able to find something wrong if you spend enough time on it. For me, it is not
that the park has a sanctuary effect for the homeless. Nor the loudness of the
music from the party hundreds of yards away. It is the disrespect and disregard
for the rules and the park itself.
The cleanliness of the park is due to its workforce, not the
users of the park. The occasional person not cleaning up after nature called
for their dog. People leaning against a sign asking to not feed any animals whilst
they are feeding the ducks. My biggest peeve though, is a two-part problem that
spoils the pond through ignorance.
The first aspect is over-fishing of species that are not
stocked in these waters. This has led to almost all of the bass being removed from
the pond by anglers. This means there are no longer enough predatory fish to
maintain the carp population. Most Americans don’t fish for carp and will thus release
them if caught. The second aspect is releasing of fish that are not going to survive.
Fish that have been gut-hooked. These fish die and float around for days, because
even though many fish-eating bird species are around, they don’t eat the dead
fish.
These may seem like small, somewhat insignificant problems
and are probably things that will never change. But my hope is that sharing
this, someone might just think a little differently next time and walk that
extra 10 feet to drop that can in an actual bin, and think responsibly about the
effects of their actions.
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