Facebook page tracks Yellowstone ‘tourons’ disturbing wildlife, ignoring park rules

Before widespread use of social media, it may have been difficult to fully comprehend the ignorance or sheer recklessness of some Yellowstone National Park tourists.

Now, thanks in large part to Jen Mignard’s Facebook page — “Yellowstone National Park: Invasion of the Idiots” — there is a weekly online dose of ill-advised acts.

There’s the shirtless man charging black bears. The woman posing fashion-model-like as she takes selfies too close to a reclining bull bison. The woman who finds out — despite the numerous warning signs — that when she sticks her hand in a hot pool it is indeed searing hot.

“It’s hard to believe people really are that ignorant,” Mignard said.

Tourist ignores warnings right on cue

Last fall, when Mignard was doing an interview with a news organization at Yellowstone’s Excelsior Geyser, a woman stepped off the boardwalk into the thermal area and walked down to the hot water, a big no-no since the ground can be unstable. Signs warning visitors not to leave the boardwalk are liberally posted.

“It couldn’t have been scripted any better,” Mignard said. “And I had promised (the camera crew), I said, ‘If you go to the park you are definitely going to see people behaving poorly.’ Unfortunately, it’s a sad reality.”

Park workers may be less surprised, since they are exposed to bad behavior on a regular basis, at a time when roughly 4 million people a year now visit Yellowstone. The misconduct has prompted some workers to refer to visitors as “tourons,” a mashup of “tourist” and “moron.”

As an example, one Invasion of the Idiots post noted an interaction between a concession worker and a tourist who was angry that bison weren’t in view when she drove through the Hayden Valley. The worker asked what time the tourist drove through the area. She told him it was around 11:30 a.m. He jokingly told her that the bison were probably on their lunch break.

Commenter B.J. Baker wrote, “When my husband and I were working in Yellowstone one summer, we saw an elderly foreign lady washing her socks in a hot spring and nearby a teenage boy dipping bubble gum in the hot spring and lifting the hot string out over and over.”

Mignard said she knows of several National Park Service employees who follow the page, including one who helped clean up some vandalism that was posted. The Park Service’s law enforcement and other staff also monitor the page. So in addition to possibly educating visitors, the site can also result in some positive outcomes and fines for unlawful behavior.

Idea stemmed from 2016 park incidents

The idea for the Facebook page was born in June 2016 when Mignard and her friends decided to highlight some unusual incidents in the park. One was when two men picked up a bison calf and put it in their vehicle because they thought it was cold. The other was when a man stepped into a thermal pool and died, thinking the temperature was moderate enough for a hot tub-like soak.

As Mignard talked to several friends, “venting online,” they decided to create the page to see if they could collect and share more incidents of “tourists doing really stupid things.” By leaving the page open to the public, the site has gone from Mignard and her 15 to 30 friends to 190,000 members, a significant climb from the 30,000 members only last spring.

“As far as I’m aware, this is now the second-largest Facebook group for Yellowstone National Park aside from the National Park site,” she said.

Mignard attributed a lot of the growth in followers to last spring’s historic flood in the northern portion of the park. Roads and campgrounds were washed out and the sewer line was severed between Mammoth Hot Springs and Gardiner. For a short time, that area of the park was closed to all visitors before roads and bridges were checked and gradually reopened. Because of the unusual circumstances, Mignard saw the opportunity for the page to provide frequent updates on the park problems.

There’s been plenty of fodder to build viewership.

Videos of bison chasing tourists, Yellowstone visitors illegally posing in a fragile thermal area for a group photo and a woman standing next to a roadside grizzly before it bluff charges her. There are also photos and video clips from other parks, like a woman outside a railing on the edge of the Grand Canyon doing a yoga pose.

“And of course, humor always goes over so well compared to just stupid tourist tricks,” Mignard said.

So made-up posts like the Motorized Cooler Bear Run did well last year, although the joke generated calls to the National Park Service out of fears it was real.

Mignard receives about 60 to 100 submissions a day. She declines the vast majority to concentrate the content on the West and to keep things more focused on humor, as well as to avoid duplication. Some posts will receive hundreds of comments — everything from questioning people’s intelligence to rooting for wildlife to attack tourists who have violated park laws and approached too close.

“How did humanity ever make it this far?” commenter Linda Banack Rathmanner asked.

“Many of these people honestly don’t know any better,” wrote Michael Gaines.

An anonymous commenter wrote, “My husband worked for YNP several years ago. He worked out of park headquarters and worked road maintenance. His favorite story was about a tourist who unloaded his canoe in the sewer lagoon and was fishing. Someone told him he couldn’t fish there and his response was ‘I paid my entrance fee, I will fish anywhere I want.’ Employees speculated he probably griped about not catching any fish.”

Although she’s the mother of two children and caregiver to 11 sled dogs, the Billings-area resident estimated she may spend six to eight hours a day on average moderating the Facebook page’s content.

“Honestly, it could be a full-time job,” she said. “When you add it up my phone says I spend a ridiculous amount of time online.

“I try to keep it enjoyable for myself. Because if I don’t enjoy it, I’m not going to do it. And that’s almost a disservice to all the followers.”

Despite her busy home life, Mignard and her family usually schedule an annual trip or two to the park in the fall when it’s less crowded. Yet of all the “grand and beautiful spots” within the park, her favorite place to visit is Artist Paint Pots.

“I just love the gurgling mud,” she said. “There’s something cathartic about it.”

Has poor conduct increased since pandemic?

Since the pandemic lockdown, and after visitation to the park soared as people sought more outdoor travel, Mignard said it appears the incidents of poor conduct have increased. The widespread use of social media also seems to be driving bad actors to take risks, do stupid things and then post them on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok, she added.

Some, like the man from Hawaii who helped a bison calf out of the Lamar River this spring, have been tracked down and fined by park law enforcement.

That the incidents of bad behavior seem so obvious to some, while appearing innocuous to the wrongdoer, will undoubtedly provide raw material for the Facebook page for years to come. And as long as people continue to act incoherently, expect the number of “Invasion of the Idiots” followers to climb.

Perhaps Joan Ellen best summed up why many so many people follow the page: “I should pay you for this site!” she wrote. “It’s my therapy! Now when I read these touron stories, I have an outlet for my anger and anxiety... I also get a release of endorphins by laughing so hard when someone doesn’t get the sarcasm and comments as such. No therapist needed in my life. I just hop on this site and let go!”