2/24/2012

Humans Behaving Badly

Came across an interesting Tumblr site geared towards documenting the excesses in our parks and wild places, click here to see photos and also submit.

There's been a lot of issues recently with idiotic jeep drivers in Yala injuring passengers and killing animals including leopards while speeding. You can visit Sri Lankan Wildlife on facebook to see some interesting discussions.

The bottom line is that we who visit are those who are responsible for this. I personally was guilty and will be posting about this shortly as well.

What can YOU do?

1) Ask your jeep driver to switch of their phone and not to speed.
2) Keep in mind the closing time for the park and ask your driver to make sure he is near the exit as the safari ends so he does not have to speed to get out of the park.
3) Keep in mind that a photograph is just a photograph and a leopard does not sum up Yala National Park,
4) Ask your friends to the same.
5) Take photographs of anything that is not being done correctly in the park and post to humans behaving badly

3 comments:

GG said...

Never been to Yala, but not sure if I want to with all these disheartening stuff that I've been hearing about. There should be some strict regulations in place to curb such behaviour!

Jack Point said...

A timely post.

Would you be interested in trying to draw up some sensible visitor management guidelines that the park can adopt?

Dee said...

I was so depressed after being to Yala last year. Over 250+ vehicles were in that morning with over 50 (I kid you now) chasing a poor leopard who was trying to sleep on a tree. Unfortunately the group I was with was also leopard mad, rushing from one part of the park to another just missing beautiful birds, elephants and other animals worthy to be watched in the quiet stillness that is Yala. So so sad. I decided not to go after that.

I also heard the minister wants to give bait to the leopards so that they'll come out to where the tourists are. I can only imagine the implications of this, if it goes ahead.