National Park Visitors’ Stupidity Has Skyrocketed in 2018. 

Visitation at US national parks has been surging in recent years with many parks achieving record attendance in 2017. While it’s great that so many people are taking interest in the great outdoors, apparently not everyone is equally well-versed in how the great outdoors actually works. As it turns out, the wild animals in these parks are, shall we say, “wild”, and the water that is expelled from geysers is (we’re using some technical terms so try to stay with us) “very hot”. While unfortunate incidents have been taking place in national parks for decades, the behavior that’s been on display in 2018 has been nothing short of remarkable…and it’s only September! Let’s quickly run through some of the most outrageous incidents to date.

Just last week, a man was filmed walking on (and urinating on) Old Faithful. That’s Old Faithful as in the geyser in Yellowstone that shoots 5,000+ gallons of boiling water over 100 feet in the air roughly every hour. It’s moments like these where you almost wish Old Faithful were a little less faithful and jumped the gun a bit. Although he avoided becoming a Darwin Award nominee, he was promptly arrested.

On our recent trip to the Canadian Rockies, our fishing guide told us that on multiple occasions he has been asked by tourists, “so where do you keep the elk at night?” As in, more than one person believed that the elk that roam Jasper National Park are kept in stables somewhere and released into the wild every morning for visitors to observe. This was dumbfounding, but this lack of awareness explains why people do things like this…

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My tour will be over instantly. You will be in an ambulance severely bleeding. And this elk will probably lose his life. But it was worth it for a picture on your iPhone right?

A post shared by Kendra Neef (@kn.wildlife) on Aug 23, 2018 at 9:14pm PDT

Elk are everywhere in the Canadian Rockies and several parks in the US. We witnessed numerous people walking right up to them on the side of the road, oftentimes with small children. We even saw a woman approaching a herd of elk with her small puppy in Banff. Putting your own flesh and blood at risk is one thing, but a puppy? What kind of monster does such a thing? If you’ve never seen a bull elk up close, they’re huge intimidating creatures and they are more than capable of turning a grown man into a kebob…especially during the rut. The idea of approaching a bull elk (or any elk for that matter) means you’re A) an idiot, or B) genuinely don’t understand how dangerous elk are. Either way, there are far too many national park visitors that fall into one if not both of these categories, which leads to things like this…

This happened one day after the guy was arrested for walking on Old Faithful. Park rangers will tell you to keep a minimum of 25 yards between you and an elk, and these people clearly ignored this warning. Fortunately the man’s injuries were not severe, but it easily could have ended much more poorly for him…Then just a few days later it happened again.

If you think that approaching an elk is stupid, we’ll raise you one. How about approaching and harassing a bison? Earlier this summer, an Oregon man was filmed doing his best matador impression with a bison in Yellowstone and was later arrested in Glacier National Park. It turned out that this lunatic had been on a drunken national park crime spree that began in the Grand Tetons. The video really has you rooting for the bison.

When I try to put myself into the shoes of someone who knows nothing about animals, I can almost rationalize how someone may not appreciate how dangerous elk and bison are. But you have to draw the line at bears, right? Surely everyone knows that bears, especially grizzlies, have a nasty habit of eating people who get too close. Not this guy apparently…

This video, which was filmed in Alaska’s Katmai National Park, almost seems fake at first. No one can be this desperate for Instagram followers, especially a middle aged guy in cargo shorts. The sad part is, if one of those bears had done what they’re hardwired to do and attacked what was clearly a perceived threat to their safety, the bear probably would have been euthenized for attacking a human. So not only was he risking his own life, he was risking the life of the bears as well. He’s currently facing well-deserved criminal charges.