I get it. A picture or a video from vacation is like validation. It proves that you are there and creates a lasting memory.
That’s you in front of the Roman Colosseum. That’s you outside of Buckingham Palace. At the Louvre in Paris with the Mona Lisa.
But those entities won’t cause you bodily harm.
What is the fascination with some tourist and wild animals?
It happened again recently at Yellowstone National Park. A group of people surrounded a Mama grizzly bear and her two cubs. Guess what? There is a zoom function on your camera or video camera. You can capture an image from a distance away.
But some people feel the need to get even closer.
Sometimes they even try to insert themselves into the image or video. This is either stupidity or vanity run amok. Or both. It's called "wildlife" for a reason. Some people seem to think that, since there are no barriers or obstacles or cages, it’s a zoo. It’s not.
It’s a national park open for your enjoyment. Gawk all you want, but please do it from a safe distance. It’s their home. It’s their land. You wouldn’t invade the personal space of friends and family just to get a picture, would you? No. You would keep a respectful distance. Why is that concept lost just because we’re talking about animals?
There are defined rules and regulations about this, but perhaps things need to be changed. Perhaps the National Park Service can run a mandatory course that people have to take prior to entering these parks.
Because leaving it up to common sense isn’t working. We can see that. If people want to have hands-on interaction with a bear or bison, that’s not common sense. It’s stupidity.
This is the part where I would say that it’s going to take a tragic accident for things to change. But we’ve already seen that, both for humans and animals.
I am reminded of the incident in which a man put a baby deer in the back of his car. He probably had all good intentions of reuniting the deer with his mother, or the pack. But that’s not how it works.
It’s one thing to want to visit a place like Yellowstone National Park.
It’s quite another to be fully educated about wildlife.
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