One of the most Dangerous Threat to U.S. National Parks: Idiots Armed with the most recent Gadgets [National Parks]

July was an alarming, record-setting month for injuries at the Yellowstone National Park. It’s not the park that’s getting more dangerous, however-it’s the technology that ignorant, inexperienced visitors are bringing in with them that’s in charge:

But today, as an ever more wired and interconnected public visits the parks in rising numbers – July was a record month for visitors at Yellowstone – rangers say that technology often figures into such mishaps.

People with cellphones call rangers from mountaintops to request refreshments or a guide; in Jackson Hole, Wyo., one lost hiker even asked for decent chocolate. - Big Apple Times

Actually, let me back for a moment. It’s new technology inside the hands of stupid, selfish folks that’s guilty, and it’s guilty in National Parks beyond just Yellowstone.

Beyond calls for cocoa, there are more serious cases, like the French teen who fell 75 feet inside the South Rim of the Grand Canyon after he ” backed up while shooting.”

It gets worse. Thanks partly to higher-connected GPS units, a set of Canyon hikers managed to call a rescue helicopter 3 times with their satellite beacon. The explanation? Water supply ” tasted salty.” They refused the helicopter rides home, all three of them, because they’d only wanted better water.

Experts told the recent York Times that hyperconnectivity has given people the impression that easy 911 button presses allow them to do more dangerous things. I mean, why bother to bring potable water on a multi-day hiking trip when the National Park Service is a trifling button press away, right?

Thankfully, when stupid people do stupid things and get caught on the summit of a cliff for the night, sometimes it all works out after all:

” Every every now and then we get a decision from someone who has gone to the head of a peak, the weather has turned and they’re confused about the right way to get down and they need someone to personally escort them,” said Jackie Skaggs, spokeswoman for Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. ” The answer is that you just are up there for the night.”

Even good new tech, like SPOT or GPS, is getting a foul rap because suburbanites think they’re able to traipse of into the wild with it without thinking. SPOT, for example, currently would not offer two-way communication, meaning rescuers can not be entirely sure if the button press was for warm chocolate or severed limb. They should respond in either case, with the helicopter rides costing as much as $3,400/hour.

We constantly worry about pollution and global climate change negatively affecting our natural parks and resources. Those are all obviously still a threat, in fact, but this text on human idiocy, selfishness and arrogance adds somewhat more fuel to the hearth.

Seriously, read the item and tell me if the last six or seven paragraphs don’t get your blood boiling. [Long island Times]

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This post is tagged: Armed, idiots, national, Parks, threat, us