Yellowstone warnings

Yellowstone National Park has always been a scary place.

Grizzly bears, boiling hot springs, and raging rivers have taken their toll over the years, but this spring its bison and elk that are sending folks to the hospital. In two separate incidents recently, cow elk roughed up a couple of women at Mammoth, and a bison gored a woman at the Lower Geyser Basin. Another woman was injured in early May when she was butted by a bison.

It’s nothing new. Run-ins with bison have become so common that visitors are given a crude illustration of a bison tossing a tourist into the air as a warning when they enter the park.

The warning, however, doesn’t appear to be working. Maybe it’s time to try something else.

I recall a particularly treacherous two-lane highway in Georgia that featured prominent billboards informing motorists how many fatalities had occurred on that stretch recently. The number was shocking enough that it slowed me down and I hadn’t been speeding.

Something similar might do the trick in the park — a scoreboard, if you will, of human/animal conflict.

Close encounters should be easy to avoid. Elk and bison are large animals. Unless you’re not paying any attention at all, there’s little chance you won’t see them.

Unfortunately, a lot of people aren’t paying attention, and even if they are, large-eyed ungulates don’t instill much fear. Perhaps graphic photos of goring victims would wake folks up.

The old saying that you can’t outrun a grizzly bear, but you only have to outrun your partner, also holds true for elk and bison.

But most ungulate encounters occur in developed areas of Yellowstone. The most recent bison victim was standing on a walkway, and the women thumped by the elk were near park headquarters in Mammoth.

Identifying the aggressive animals isn’t easy. They tend to look a lot alike. Further investigation might indicate a single bad-tempered culprit instead of a normally mild-mannered member of the species that was simply pushed too far.

Who’s to say there aren’t some bad actors in the herds?

If the toll continues to rise, I suggest instead of handing out flyers warning of animal encounters, that the park distributes Lee Whittlesey’s book Death in Yellowstone: Accidents and Foolhardiness in the First National Park. It scared me. The gruesome tome just might raise the attention level of the most jaded tourist.

Or not.

And we all enjoy reading about the misfortune of others.

Parker Heinlein is [email protected]