Few people are aware of the significant number of fatalities that occur as a result of nature tours and wildlife tourist events not only in the US but worldwide. It seems that this is the perfect environment for Darwin Award recipients! Recently, a woman who had been warned by park rangers in Yellow Stone National Park not to get too close to the Bison herd that resides there, they just had to get a closer look and have her photo taken within few steps of the mighty beast! Within a split second, the woman who had refused to take park warnings seriously was thrown into the air and gored by an animal that weighs over a ton and can run almost 3 times faster than a human in for short distances. Despite being rushed to the ER she died shortly after of spinal injuries and massive blood loss. Chock one more up for the Darwin Award!

One very prevalent commonality among the victims of wild animal attacks on guided tours are liberal white women who are either business owners or corporate officers accustomed to giving orders but not taking them! These Darwin Award recipients are characterized by refusing to listen to the tour guide warnings, accusing the park of limiting the quality of their experience with over emphatic warnings, and exhibiting pure arrogant disregard for the rules! Many insist in getting out of their seats and setting out on foot on African Savana terrain outside of the tour vehicle for a better shot! This often involves being charged by a lion, leopard, or perhaps a hyena or even water buffalo! These powerful beasts have no natural fear of humans as they see them so often during the tourist process. The results are swift and deadly after a lion clamps down on the personal’s neck and windpipe just as they do to antelope, wildebeests, and many other powerful plant eaters that succumb to the big cats! Even with armed guards, once a person who has foolishly toyed with death and gotten too close, fatal injuries occur.

In Australia the crocodiles are of particular attraction to visiting tourists who pay for a ticket on the river tour. There, tourist boats, little more than powered double row skiffs with a sheet metal roof and railings offer up close and personal exposure to the sheer power and size of Australian crocks who can range up to 25 feet in length and beneath the murky waters of the outback rivers can strike with lightning quickness in a split second. The big thrill is for people to hold a butchered chicken on a fishing pole line over the water, and amazingly out of nowhere, the massive monstrous crocodilian who is literally a living dinosaur, leaps 10 or more feet into the air chomping onto the chicken bait and disappearing back into the muddy river! On one occasion a tourist refusing warnings not to extend her arm out over the water, wanting an edgy selfie photo, did just that! The crock emerged from the water grabbing her arm, yanking her into the river! The guides stopped the boat and attempted to help, but by then the huge crocodile had gone into a death roll and delivered horrific wounds to the new recipient of the Darwin Award. Her remains were later located further down the river by authorities! The current had carried the corpse further from the attack site.

In all these cases, nearby hospitals equipped with trauma surgery wards are of little help as injuries are so catastrophic at the scene. Massive bleeding usually causes shock and seizures that become fatal much less the bite wounds inflicted. People out for a good time and in a different country or rural environment tend to let down their guard and respect for the raw power of nature’s predators! Add to this deadly formula, the willful disrespect for precautions and you have a recipe for disaster!

Guided tours in US parks in bear country can be especially hazardous. Hiking trails with warning signs and complete shut downs if a nuisance bear is being hunted because it has no fear of humans who have been feeding it or is a suspected killer of a park victim, are often traps waiting for the one who disregards all caution and insists on wanting some up close and personal film footage of bears. One might recall a very famous film of a family having a picnic at a park bench when a black bear shows up and seats itself on the bench beside the tourists who begin feeding the park predator! This can end up very quickly in a life threatening situation!

This last entry concerns yet another white upper class corporate manager out on a much needed vacation, unwilling to heed warnings in the midst of Grizzly Bear country on a guided tour through a narrow hiking trail with an armed park ranger in front of the group and one from behind the line of visitors. All of them have been warned not to take food, not to loiter behind the group, to heed all warnings given by the park ranger if he detects the presence of a Grizzle in close proximity! Helen had been a high powered upper management officer in the corporate realm for more than 15 years. Her lavish vacation allowances had taken her the world over to see whales breaching the Pacific Ocean surface off California to seeing Panda Bears in the parks of China, but she was unfamiliar with Grizzly Bear country!

As she and her hiking tour made their way through the dense pine and Douglas firs woodlands she was becoming impatient! She hadn’t seen a big lumbering brown bear yet. Montana is a sparsely populated state that has a large Grizzly population! These bears are fast, savage, and virtually silent hunters who fear nothing in their environment. Helen had intentionally strayed away from the group hoping to get a few photos of a bear just off the main trail. Before the park rangers managing the tour group had realized it, Helen was out in the open unprotected and beyond the watch of the armed park personnel! What they heard was a loud roar and the screams of a woman who thought she had pulled a fast one on the park officials determined to get her precious wildlife shots! Instead, she found not only the jaws of a ravenous Grizzly, but she’s become another unsuspecting recipient of a Darwin Award.

In a matter of minutes the woman had been mauled, dragged off, and was in the process of being eaten by the time the park rangers found her and the massive brown bear that was feasting on a human body. The animal was euthanized but Helen’s injuries were so horrific that she had been pronounced dead at the site and became one of many who have ventured too close to the largest known predator on the North American continent. This fate has not only befallen inexperienced tourists, but hunters, wildlife biologists, and foresters who analyze the fauna to gauge the health of the forests! Bears are intelligent and cunning and safety of those in the wilderness can never be taken for granted!