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Hundreds of millions of visitors flock to America’s national parks each year, and the rangers tasked with overseeing them certainly have their hands full. Plenty of tourists choose to ignore rules that most people would chalk up as common sense, and Great Smoky Mountains National Park recently had to issue a reminder about the dangers of feeding the bears that call it home.
Part of me likes to think there’s a “Days Since A Visitor Did Something Stupid” board hanging up in the headquarters for the National Park Service, but there’s also no real need for one when you consider it would rarely read anything other than “0” thanks to the many ways people who flock to those attractions regularly manage to get themselves into some trouble.
Take, for example, the tourist whose skin literally melted off their feet after deciding to wear flip-flops while hiking in Death Valley or the far too many videos of idiots getting up close and personal with bison in Yellowstone that seemingly surfaced on a monthly basis.
Those massive creatures are just one of a number of potentially dangerous species that can be found roaming the 63 national parks that are scattered throughout the United States, and they tend to be littered with signs advising visitors to keep their distance due to the potential pitfalls of attempting to interact with them.
Unfortunately, they only do so much to drive the point home.
Great Smoky Mountains National Park had to remind visitors they’re not allowed to feed bears after rangers cited three tourists in the span of a week.
The border of North Carolina and Tennessee is home to the 522,419 acres that comprise Great Smoky Mountains National Park, an expanse that boasts a sizable population of an estimated 1,900 black bears in addition to other potentially formidable fauna including elk, bobcats, and rattlesnakes.
At one point, the park attempted to dissuade visitors from feeding bears with a sign that kept a running tally of the number of people who had been injured by one.
National Park Service
It is still filled with postings that convey a similar message, but according to a press release that was issued on Wednesday, they weren’t enough to dissuade three different people from feeding black bears—including one incident at Maloney Point involving an interaction with a mother and two cubs—in the week leading up to the warning going out.
Officials used the reminder to note that visitors who break that rule face “fines of up to $5,000 or imprisonment for up to six months” while adding feeding bears has the potential to put them at increased risk by normalizing iterations with humans (it doesn’t explicity address the whole “they can also maul you to death” thing, although it’s heavily implied).
I’m glad they went out of their way to clear that up and am also slightly horrified they had to do it in the first place.