Title : Glad To Get To Yellowstone BEFORE The Selfie-Instagram Zombie Hordes Arrived
link : Glad To Get To Yellowstone BEFORE The Selfie-Instagram Zombie Hordes Arrived
Glad To Get To Yellowstone BEFORE The Selfie-Instagram Zombie Hordes Arrived
Buffalo seen from our car soon after entering Yellowstone in summer of 1998.
Scene inside Yellowstone - heading to one of the many geysers.
Lake not far from Lodge where we stayed for three days.
At Fountain Paint Pot in Yellowstone National Park, 1998.
Overlooking a raging river in Yellowstone National Park.
According to a recent detailed report by the UK Guardian, see, e.g.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/nov/20/national-parks-america-overcrowding-crisis-tourism-visitation-solutions
Americans are literally overwhelming their national parks, literally "loving them to death". In Yellowstone, the nation's oldest national park, visitation has surged 40 percent since 2008, topping 4 million in 2017. Fortunately, we (Janice and I) visited the park long before the instagram era in 1998 while it was still largely unspoiled and one didn't deal with traffic jams and boors. (Like the case of a recent idiot who came to the park to taunt the buffalo).
Anyway, over a period of four months, from high summer to late autumn last year, the Guardian dispatched writers across the American West to investigate how crowding of tourists is playing out at ground level. The results were not sanguine and showed clearly the time when we visited was likely the optimum.
For example, the Guardian team found:
- Two mile long "bison lines" in Yellowstone
- Fist fights in Glacier - a small Colorado town overrun by million of visitors.
- At Yosemite, park officials warn visitors to expect "two to three hour delays entering Yosemite valley"
- At Glacier National Park MT, there are regular tense standoffs in parking lots.
- A new level of moron has invaded Yellowstone, illegally flying drones and tossing rocks and debris into the sensitive geothermal features.
According to one park ranger, tourists to Yellowstone now regularly scramble from their vehicles - even temporarily abandoning them in the hope of getting close up photos. (We shot our buffalo - shown in the top pic - from the car while briefly stopping. We did not get out.) According to the same park ranger: Most visitors just don't know how to behave in a wild place"
Well, maybe because they were also never taught how to behave in a non-wild place.
In the case of Yellowstone, which became the first national park in the world in 1804, original visitor numbers were on the low side. For example, in 1904, a total of 120, 690 people visited the then national parks which included: Mount Rainier, Sequoia and Yosemite. By just the mid-century the numbers swelled to tens of millions. Soon national parks destinations became synonymous with summer vacations.
Today, the pace of visitation has outstripped resources. Worse, recent research has ascertained our national parks bear the disproportionate brunt of global warming - while years, hell decades, of wear and tear have seen parks' maintenance left far behind. Traffic has clearly become one of the most visible consequences of the tourist tsunami, with some locations seeing thousands of cars per day jamming the entry roads. In addition, some parks have seen a 90 percent increase in vehicle accidents. Again, according to one park ranger at Yellowstone, "We're exceeding the carrying capacity."
The explosion since 2008-10 is not surprising and is almost totally attributed to the dawning of the selfie and iinstagram era. People today, often the young and clueless, don't believe it exists unless it's captured in a selfie and dispatched to pallies on instagram. This voyeur yen and image capture obsession has driven ever more crowds with their selfie sticks, not only to Yellowstone, but to Rocky Mountain National Park, the Grand Canyon and Yosemite. In some cases, like at Yosemite, distracted tourists have become so mesmerized with the scene and their selfies they've misjudged their positions - and fallen to their deaths. They were so taken by getting the photo they didn't look where they were leaning.
What may have to be done to control the mob factor, especially as the planet gets ever more overpopulated, is to adopt a reservation system for the parks. This is already being seriously considered for Yellowstone, and it should be In such a system, just like for a fine hotel, reservations would have to be made long in advance - as well as payment.
Yep, it sounds like a sacrilege, but given the masses invading the national parks and the problems being caused - including overflowing porto-potties, it is inevitable.
As I noted, I am glad we got to visit Yellowstone twenty years go - as well as Rocky Mountain National Park and Estes Park (site of the Hotel Stanley - where 'The Shining' was centered.).
Let's also be aware the tourist selfie crush is inundating most of the fragile and beautiful places of the world - where it seems every manjack armed with selfie stick wants to get snaps. Europe is especially overrun and in places like Dubrovnik, Croatia they are also considering limiting the influx - which, like in France (Louvre), Italy (Venice), often tasks the available resources. Not to mention all the trash, garbage left behind. We also beheld the tourist swarm in Prague when we visited in September, 2015, e.g.
And just trying to get a glimpse of the Sistine Chapel in Rome is well nigh impossible, e.g.
The constant hordes of humanity eyeballing and instagraming are forcing many travelers to consider less popular cities and sights, such as Bratislava - where we also visited in 2015,
Yes, travel can be a unique experience and education, but it is now evident too many of the same places are being overrun by tourist crowds which are killing a good thing. Almost certainly, as the damage from human masses on precious local infrastructure become more pronounced, the number will have to be managed or in some cases, like in Venice, severely limited. Exaggeration? Uh, no.
In an article in In These Times ('Should Cities Ban Tourists?', August, p. 12, 2015) we're informed that Barcelona's Mayor has insisted the popular Spanish destination needs a "tourist cap" and a "moratorium on new hotel licenses". This since "tourism is now seen by many as a scourge" and as reported by one resident:
"They have urinated on my balcony. They have set fire to laundry and one even defecated in the building's hallway"
Meanwhile, in the U.S. reservations to the national parks like Yellowstone will almost certainly be implemented in the next few years. By way of perspective, when we visited Europe in July and August 1978 we experienced no similar issues. We easily got into the National Gallery in London and Greenwich Observatory, same with Windsor Castle, Earl's Court, Westminster Abbey, St. Paul's Cathedral, the Royal Albert Hall for a summer concert as well as the Tower of London with no delays and not being forced onto conveyor belts as they have to do now to rigidly control the time allowed (30 sec), i.e. to see the jewels (WSJ, 'Europe's Culture Storm', May 25, 2015)
What gives is the world is a much more crowded place than it was 40 years ago with nearly twice the number of people and also many more affluent people- namely Chinese - who can now afford to travel at will to wherever they want - from African safaris, to Jungfrau Joch in Switzerland. Worse, much of today's tourism is driven by the omnipresent cell phone and the obsession to take selfies of everything on God's green earth. As comic George Carlin would put it if he was still around: "People,, I have to tell ya, this is a very unhealthy habit!"
In the midst of the current human crush and swarming let us remember it was the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre who once pronounced: "Hell is other people". For many exceptional places in this world, Sartre's maxim is being proven each and every day.
Stay tuned.
See also:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/05/american-wilderness-trump-energy-threat
Stay tuned.
See also:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/05/american-wilderness-trump-energy-threat
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