National Park Visitors in Danger Because of Technology
People are considered to be the smartest beings in the universe, but despite this achievement we make some stupid things sometimes. There are certain things you do not do, and going near a wild animal just to prove that you are not afraid of it is one of those things.
However this is exactly what many of the people who visit national parks do. Cathy Hayes was one of them, and she is one of the luckiest as she managed to escape with only minor injuries. She was visiting the Yellowstone National Park when she saw a buffalo. She had a camera and she wanted to take a closer look at it, so she approached it. The buffalo immediately reacted to her and he attacked her. She was cut at the leg and she had some minor bruises. The national park is full of such events, and it is believed that one of the reasons for the increase of such occurrences is the technology.
People bring their cameras with them most of the time, and because they want to take pictures and recordings of the animals they get to close to them. Visitors often feed the bears, they put their children on the buffalos in order to take pictures of them, and they dip into geysers despite the fact that they have been warned that the temperatures are extremely hot. The rangers say that the technology is making people behave in a strange manner.
July was a record month for visitors at the Yellowstone Park, and even though that is a good thing for the Park, it can be a problem for the rangers. There are many people who call the rangers from mountaintops in order to request guides or refreshments. The biggest surprise for the rangers came when one person called them and asked them to bring him hot chocolate. A French teenager sustained injuries because he fell 75 feet from the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. He backed up in order to take pictures, and he wasn’t very careful. It seems that the visitors really abuse the opportunity of calling the rangers.
A group of visitors once called the rescue helicopters three times. When the rangers got there, the visitors told them that their water supply had a salty taste. You can imagine the troubles the rangers have to face, mainly because two emergencies might occur at the same time and they might go to the one which isn’t an emergency at all. Jackie Skaggs, spokeswoman for Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming stated that since the people have access to technology they have the feeling that they can do anything and get away with it. He believes that this is the reason why some people are more daring than before to do certain things.
Ms. Skaggs said that every once in a while they receive calls from certain people who went on the top of a peak and demand to be rescued. In most of the cases they are left there over the night, not as a punishment for the way in which they behaved but for the fact that they do not want to endanger the rescuers. The National Park Service does not keep track of what percentage of the total search and rescue operations which they have conducted in the past five years have been caused by technology. One thing is certain, and that is the fact that the number of search and rescue missions increases each year. They had a record number of such missions in 2009, and that was 3,500.
There are many factors which can influence the requirement of the search and rescue operations. Besides “darkness” and “animals” they have added “inattention to surroundings” in the previous year. However, the rangers are aware of the fact that technology can be beneficial as well, mainly because the people can use it when they have problems, which was not possible in the previous years. However in the majority of the cases the visitors abuse this possibility and request rescuers for any task, which in many cases it has nothing to do with rescuing. The rangers use the technology as well, and in most of the cases they use it in order to detect the misbehaviors of the visitors.
For example last year thanks to the 24-hour camera which is located in the park they managed to catch various men who have urinated in the geysers from the park. They thought that they would not be caught because no one will be able to see them. It makes you wonder if these people are mentally sane, or if they have some problems with authority. Many people have not experienced the wild live before, and they have only seen it at TV. Because of that, they do not act as they should when they go to the parks, and the problem is that they are not aware of the risks which can be present in the wild.
Many people go unprepared and as a result they have to suffer the consequences. For example there are people who do not bring overnight gear with them even if they know that they will spend the night there. They do not bring food or proper clothes and as a result they have to suffer and in most of the cases they have to call the rangers. Many people see TV shows such as Man VS Wild and they want to act as the people which are present in such shows.
What they do not know is the fact that Bear Grylls, the host of the show is very well prepared, and he knows the techniques essential for surviving. And in many cases he does not stay in the wild overnight, all he does is present the proper techniques and then he and his crew travel to the next location. Many people send distress signals for the smallest thing, and the rangers can not communicate with them. As a result they have to travel there for any call.
