Just returned from a 2 week visit to some of our fine National Parks. I was absolutely astounded at the sheer stupidity of many tourists who insist on getting that close-up view/camera shot of wildlife. And of course, while there, got to witness a Bison headbutting a woman and an elk accidentally "butt" checking a young teenager while trying to reverse direction and flee the folks crowding in on it.

The winner, however, was when I pulled over to view (with binos) a beautiful (and very large) Mama Grizz and her cub across a meadow. There were about 12-13 people standing on the shoulder shooting film and spotting. Along comes this Asian couple that starts walking across the meadow to get a better view. The crowd starting yelling at them and it only took about 4-5 seconds for the bear to tip up her nose and recognize their approach.

Fortunately the bear decided to move back into the thick brush and walk away.

I also saw several shredded front ends on vehicles where the driver wanted to pull within inches of a Bison crossing the street rather than stopping a few feet short and giving them some room.

I cannot imagine the amount of stupid in these parks come July and August !

I can

Explains a lot about the situation our country is in doesn't it?

We live within 10 miles of Glacier National Park. Last year we drove the Going to the Sun road to the east side. Around the flats along St. Mary's a grizzly bear was ambling about 40 yards off the road. I was amazed at all the idiots that were out of their cars and walking on the shoulder to get a picture of this guy.

Buy a Zoom Lens folks. You don't know how fast these bears can move. I have 2 good friends that have been attacked by grizzly bears. They can do a lot of damage.

City slickers!

Last time I was in Yellowstone, the sheer stupidity of people was in full bloom. Young bear on the side of the road that was agitated about something and running from one dead tree to another ripping bark off. Strong signal to me to stay the f*** away. A young Asian couple was following the bear. The bear took off and the couple got into their car and drove in between the flow of traffic to follow the bear. Other incidents with people getting too close to bison and elk and the buffoonery around the mud pots, pools and geysers disgusted me.

We were in SD there was a van stopped along the road with the side door open and they were feeding some wild Donkeys. The donkey jumped in the van when they tried to quit feeding him and leave.
They were having a bad time when we left.

I do all my grizz watching on the Smithsonian Channel or the National Geographic Channel...it’s close enough.

Remember this fairly recent story?

After a newborn baby bison calf was scooped off the road in Yellowstone National Park by two tourists last week and placed in their car to “keep it warm,” authorities are again warning the public to keep their distance from wild animals in the popular park.

Although rangers attempted several times to reunite the calf with the herd, their efforts failed, and the baby bison had to be euthanized.

“The rangers on scene did a heroic job trying to get that bison to go back to the herd nearby, even using lights and sirens on their vehicles to get it to move away from the road and reunite with the other buffalo,” Charissa Reid, a public affairs specialist for Yellowstone National Park, tells PEOPLE. “But with no idea of where the calf came from or which mama bison it belonged to, there wasn’t much else they could do. The baby buffalo had to be put down.”

The calf couldn’t be placed in a zoo or animal farm, Reid says, because park regulations prohibit moving wild animals out of Yellowstone.

“It would have had to go through months of quarantine to be monitored for brucellosis (a bacterial disease in cattle and buffalo that can infect humans),” she says. “Our job here is not to rescue animals, but to maintain the ecological processes and integrity of this wild place. Yellowstone isn’t a zoo.”

On May 9, Karen Richardson of Victor, Idaho, snapped a photo that has now gone viral of a father and son pulling up to a ranger station with a bison calf in the back of their SUV. The photo, which has since been removed from Richardson’s Facebook page, was initially posted with the caption, “Dear tourists: the bison calf is not cold and it is not lost. PUT IT BACK!”

Richardson, who was helping out with a fifth-grade field trip to Yellowstone, told East Idaho News that the out-of-country tourists were demanding to speak to a ranger, “seriously worried that the calf was freezing or dying.”

The men, whose names have not been released due to an ongoing investigation, says Reid, were ticketed, then followed to the spot where they picked up the calf in Yellowstone’s Lamar Valley, so that it could be released back to the herd.

“Unfortunately, there was nothing more that could be done and the baby bison had to be euthanized when it caused a dangerous situation by continually approaching people and cars along the roadway,” Reid tells PEOPLE.

“Park regulations say that people need to stay at least 25 feet away from wildlife (a distance of 100 feet is required for wolves and bears),” she says, “and that is at the heart of this problem. If these people had kept their distance and contacted law enforcement, none of this would have happened.”

Tourists often feel comfortable around bison, she adds, “because they feel like they’re harmless cows. But last year, we had five incidents where people were gored and seriously hurt because they got too close. Bison are very protective of their young and can be very aggressive.”

Their lumbering appearance is deceiving, she says, because they can also move fast, running up to 40 mph.

Besides the situation last week, Yellowstone authorities also in recent weeks had to deal with a visitor who was caught on video trying to pet an an adult bison, and a group of tourists who posed for pictures with the herd at an unsafe distance.

Putting a baby bison in the back of an SUV, though, was a first.

“I’ve certainly never seen it happen before,” says Reid. “People need to know that bison injure more visitors to Yellowstone than any other animal. Something like this shows why we have regulations to keep wildlife and people apart.”


LINK

I swear smart people are getting dumber every day

The Grand Canyon on a busy day is breathtaking in the number of chances people take for that perfect photo shot. I’m amazed there are not more deaths from falling.

For some reason Asians and Europeans are THE most clueless. I swear they think GNP is a big, open zoo.

HOW the Rangers can keep their cool is beyond me. I'd be kicking them OUT as well as fining them.

May have a late opening due to record snows but Glacier is estimating 1.5 MILLION visitors! I feel sorry for it's wild residents.

Taken less than a month ago in Cades Cove (Smoky Mtn NP):


Yes, that's a huge group of people crowding a mother bear with a cub. The tourons are getting more and more stupid as time goes on.

https://www.wbir.com/video/new...ades-cove/51-8135340

A few years ago my wife hiked to the canyon's rim in Yosemite the first weekend the area was open.

Each morning a particular deer would come and hang out near our tent (about six feet away). On the last morning while my wife was sitting on a big rock to warm in the morning sun and I was in the tent getting everything packed I hear here speaking loudly "bear, Bear, BEAR!"

A brown bear, about 400 lbs, had strolled into the camp and was sitting next to the rock. About two minutes later the bear gets up and moves along.

quote:

Originally posted by JALLEN:
City slickers!

Bait!

Voluntary Darwinism.

I was walking the trails in Everglades National Park when I came up on a 7-8 foot gator on the side of the trail with its mouth wide open. There was an Asian couple taking pictures of their little girl standing beside it.

quote:

Yes, that's a huge group of people crowding a mother bear with a cub. The tourons are getting more and more stupid as time goes on.

I volunteered for the National Park Service while living in Knoxville. The amount of studpidity with wildlife was beyond incredible. It always amazed me that the majority of visitors seldom got out of their cars to take a one or two mile hike to one of the major waterfalls or lookout points not on the highway.

It's just natures way of culling those who need it.