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Part of a bison herd (Bison bison) walking down the road. Photographed in Yellowstone National Park.
A lone female elk in the morning fog near Grizzly Lookout. I had heard one of the Hayden Valley wolf packs in this area just a few minutes before taking this photo.
While traveling through Yellowstone National Park I was struck by the way in which the park's wilderness is being reshaped and…
In Kaziranga National Park in India, four endangered one-horned rhinos (Rhinceros unicornis) have been found dead in the past few weeks, while our own legislators battle over measures to curb the spread of brucellosis from bison to cattle.
In Indian myth, the one- horned rhino is a divine beast,…
I'm referring to moose, of course. From an interview with biologist Joel Berger in the New York Times:
Q. O.K., why did the moose go down to the road?
A. If she's a native of the greater Yellowstone ecosystem and she's pregnant, she may have done it because she wanted to give birth in a place…
There are few images that represent the scenery of Yellowstone National Park as that of Bison Butts, as they stroll casually down the road in front of you for half an hour blocking traffic. Then they leave the road, and instead it's tourists who block the road, stopping in the lane to stare, point out the window, and take pictures (instead of pulling over like GOOD tourists do...)
Despite that, being able to go to Yellowstone a couple of times a month is still one of the very few things I miss about living in SE Idaho...
Epicanis; Don't get me started on the other tourists. I saw so much stupidity, including people who stuck their hands in thermal features and others who didn't even flinch when a bison did a mock charge right by them. I am surprised that I did not actually see anyone get injured. (Though I did buy Death in Yellowstone and learned that such stupidity has been a tradition among visitors to the park.)
P.S. What, no geolocation tags in the EXIF headers of the picture?...
Living in Bozeman, I have seen plenty of bison in Yellowstone and witnessed some close calls before. One time, when my ecology class bus had to stop because of a herd of bison blocking the road, we yelled out of the bus windows to an apparently deaf old man who had been taking pictures. He hadn't noticed the 3 or 4 bison charging his direction as he walked back to his car. At the last minute, he looked back (his face was priceless!) and jumped in his car and closed the door just before the bison charged passed his car.
Wasn't it this summer that 2 visitors got gored because they just weren't paying enough attention? At the beginning of August we drove through Yellowstone, got a good chance to view some young bison, which excited my son, but we of course kept our distance.
Brian - Death in Yellowstone is a fun book, but Lee Whittlesey hates that it's the one book most people bring to his book signings. He's more proud of other books he's written, but wishes they were as popular than Death in Yellowstone.
My collection of YNP photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/7230309@N05/collections/72157602418271298/
Re: the less intelligent tourists: Yeah, you'd think all of the "Caution: Geysers may emit Children"[1] signs posted all over the place would clue people in, but it's amazing how many still figure they can step off of the walkways.
(The linked post is a pictorial narrative including quite a few of the anti-tourist features of the Norris Basin area of Yellowstone National Park...)
[1] Okay, the actual picture (labelled "Dangerous Ground" in several languages all over the park) I'm thinking of is obviously supposed to show a child breaking through the surface and falling into boiling-hot stuff underneath, but that's not what I think when I see it.
Epicanis - Yes! http://www.flickr.com/photos/7230309@N05/1571368444/in/set-721576024199…
It's always a mild wonder at people and stupidity to animals. (I love to see families at zoos, mothers pointing at lions and saying to their children "The big kitty likes you!")However, I had no clue people would literally stick their hands into geysers, or let their children stand over them.
I feel a little sorry for the mules at the Grand Canyon. So many tourists have no clue how to properly sit on a pack animal.