"Trash talk": Sheriff blasts teens for littering forest

TELLURIDE, Colo. - An end-of-the-year campout for graduating seniors is a popular tradition at many high schools, but after a recent one near Telluride, Colo., the county sheriff found more of a dump site than a campsite, reports CBS Denver.

"(The trash) just goes on and on. It's hard to believe nobody came back and tried to clean it up a bit," San Miguel County Sheriff Bill Masters said.

Masters shot a four-minute video to publicly shame the students, according to the station.

"I'm not going to clean it up, and I think the children are supposed to. So as soon as I sent that video off to a couple parents, they put it on Facebook, and then there were parents dragging their children to clean it up," Masters said.

The sheriff says he hopes this will teach others to take care of public land.

"Somewhere along the line, we missed the boat with this group of kids, and it's pretty disappointing," Masters said. "To leave the trash out like this is just disgusting ... in our national forest."

Masters said his office usually knows about the end-of-the-school-year bash, but didn't this time. The party happened deep in the forest, and the site may never have been found if police hadn't been searching for a missing car in the area.

Masters said while they did find some receipts with names around the campsite, it's hard to hold only a handful responsible when close to 100 people may have been involved. He said as long as the site got cleaned up, that's good enough for him.