giddings_ag_06 said:
Y'all realize it will only get worse, right? The vast majority of Americans only have outdoor experience from a city park or backyard the size of a living room. For cheap trips or to "experience the outdoors" they just load up and drive through parks usually having never even seen any of these animals before. They don't watch the outdoor or discovery channels and know what nature is really like. The more citified Americans get, the more dumb decisions they will make in parks. Harsh fines won't teach anyone before the fact either. Videos would help, but we have too many idiots trying to get "outdoorsy" now.
Eh...I'm a third generation "city slicker." I can read park rules. Been to Yellowstone and many other parks without incident. And as an authentic city kid, I certainly don't need any rules telling me to keep a safe distance from wildlife.
I suspect social media "animal lovers" just don't understand the differences between domesticated animals and wild, and want to do something heroic for another lost fur baby. I sometimes read posts from crazy cat ladies on my neighborhood Nextdoor app, and their are people who genuinely believe they can communicate with the lost fur babies they see crawling out of sewer ditches and so forth. They also think stray dogs on the jogging trail are "coyotes." My favorite was some lady who kept complaining that someone was killing possums and depositing them in the middle of one of the main roads every morning. Because how else could you explain dead possums in the middle of a street?