The biggest problem is people who shouldn't be there. It's not the employees, it's not the patients, it's the environment. Workers with the Forest Service, the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management report similar problems. More and more visitors to national parks, forests and refuges engage in criminal activities. Public lands are often used for illegally cultivating marijuana, for example.
Some growers use booby traps and weapons to protect their crops from rangers and law officers.
In recent years, ranchers, miners, county officials and right-wing militia members have brought new forms of violence to Western states where the federal government owns vast expanses of land. Western counties passed ordinances asserting that they, not Washington, controlled such lands. Local officials and land users cited these ordinances as they threatened federal land managers, disobeyed their orders and barred them from federal lands. A two-pronged assault by Justice officials on the county supremacy movement seems to have reduced the incidents. The department won federal and state court rulings against the ordinances and brought civil actions against those who conducted illegal activities on federal land.