#ProtectYourPark — Social Media Has Ensured They’ve Already Been Found.
No doubt you know that 2016 is the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service. You can’t avoid the fact. National Geographic, NPR, swanky travel magazines vomiting full color photographs of hikers atop Angel’s Landing in Zion National Park, Instagram users fumbling over one another about who can conquer as many parks as possible this year with the catchiest hashtags and handles — “58 parks in 30 days, yassssss.”
As an environmentalist, I take the good with the bad. More visitors means, hopefully, more future-vigilantes with regard to public land use, public comment process, protection of these spaces. But it also means increased erosion, garbage, and above all else — the need for education. Social media has elevated all of the aforementioned, and caused it’s own shitstorm of epic proportions.
2015 was a record year for oh-damn-I-was-gored-by-a-bison incidents in Yellowstone National Park — 5 visitors were gored; most of them were taking photos of and/or selfies with the massive mammal and got too close. In Colorado, Waterton Canyon was closed due to Bear Selfies — folks hiking in the canyon, selfie stick in hand, turning their backs to the bear at close range in order to get the perfect shot. Is there a Mauling filter on Instagram?
Many parks are reporting increased human-wildlife interactions, some with dire consequences. And while much of this is a simple numbers game of ‘more of us vs. them’, it is also a symptom of our dichotomous thinking. Viewing National Parks as Six-Flags style places to visit and check off the bucket list deprives visitors of a rich, broad perspective of what it actually is: habitat. With so many aspiring photographers who look to social media as an avenue to ‘discovery’, a stunning, Nat-Geo style shot is often the driving force of the experience. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with this, until you step behind the ‘Area Closed for Restoration’ sign, or onto fragile crypto-crust to snap said shot and hashtag that you’ve #foundyourpark.
Twenty six of our National Parks fail EPA’s air quality standards. Say the number again: twenty six, nearly half of all National Parks. We don’t need to perpetuate #findyourpark — they have already been found. John Muir really wouldn’t give a damn about your amazeballs yoga pose on top of a peak, complete with some text about ‘the mountains are calling and you must go’, without any tangible action to follow suit. What we need now is a group of concerned citizens who will step up and #protectyourpark. Experience these places as guests, and a good guest not only shows up with a bottle of wine (in this analogy, perhaps your own re-usable water bottle) but also leaves the place looking a little better than he/she found it. Perhaps most disturbing, your National Parks and public lands are constantly threatened by oil and gas development, by cattle grazing, sold off at auction, abused, pillaged for profit — we can choose not to sit idly by, taking our love of these places beyond just a photograph, but to a call for action, an outcry for our right to wilderness.
How to accomplish this? Look up environmental NGO’s to support wherever you live. These tend to be locally focused on issues pertinent to your backyard, with actions you can take, petitions to sign, legislation to vote for. Search for ‘Friends’ groups who volunteer to keep your favorite National Park in shape when government funds fall short. Hike without a camera. Enjoy the experience with your own two eyeballs and see how things change, how you change, how the experience morphs.
Social media can have profoundly positive impacts on what we care about and can stimulate activism — try that hat on, swapping posts centered around environmental issues rather than feel good fluff. We laud and quote those that do — filling our pages with words by Muir, Rumi, Ed Abbey — and while they did seduce with pretty prose, they also said stuff like, “What we need now are heroes. And heroines. About a million of them. One brave deed is worth a thousand books. Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul. Or as an old friend of mine once said — If I regret anything, it is my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?”
Be radical this summer. #Protectyourpark.
