The Battle Between Bison and People In Yellowstone Isn’t New
Yellowstone National Park is celebrating 150 years in 2022 and in the last few years higher visitor numbers than ever before. Not only are there more visitors entering the park, the bison numbers have had a large increase in the 150 years, too.
In 2021, there were 4.86 million people that visited Yellowstone. That's the highest amount of visitors ever in one year. Add that together with a large amount of bison in the park, of course there are going to be issues.
In 1902, just 30 years after the park was established, there were just over two dozen bison that called Yellowstone home. Today, there are about 5,500 bison in the park.
Just like the issue that many major cities have, more people, more issues.
Last week alone, there were three tourists that had bad run ins with the big, bad, bison. The park says that bison only really attack when they feel threatened and when they toss someone, it's like firing a warning shot before they REALLY get mad.
Even though the number of tourists and number of bison in the park have both increased over the years, the worst stretch of bison/human issues happened in the mid 1980's. Between 1983 and 1985, 33 people were injured by bison. Between May and July of 2015, there were 5 injured in bison/human exchanges.
These day's most everyone has a phone with a camera and can upload the video to YouTube, Facebook or Instagram before the person getting gored even hits the ground. There are so many people that want to impress their friends, family and followers, they're risking their lives for social media.
Remember...Stay 25 yards away from the bison.
It's a rarity to see videos from attacks in the 80's or 90's, but Yellowstone posted one from 1992 that shows the power of the bison.