While tourists bring a lot of funds to Yellowstone Park, they also bring a lot of damage. Carelessness and ignorance can often have long-lasting negative effects on the planet, and that appears to be the case here. Yellowstone tourists ruined one of the park's stunning thermal pools.
Yellowstone Tourists Ruined Park's Thermal Pool
Getty Images, f11photo
One of Yellowstone's most stunning and well-known pools is its Morning Glory Pool. Located near the Old Faithful geyser, this thermal pool made it onto the must-see list for many Yellowstone tourists. A Yellowstone National Park historian shared a description of the pool with the NY Post. He said, "There are some lovely quotes about its beauty and stunning blue colors, and likening it to the morning glory flower."
However, the pool is not entirely that brilliant shade of blue anymore, and that is thanks to the Yellowstone tourists. Although many tourists today follow the "leave no trace" motto when exploring these parks, that was not the case a century ago. The Post shares, "The brilliant blue pool of scalding water was treated like a wishing well." This meant that "visitors chucked coins, handkerchiefs, trash, and all sorts of other debris into its depths."
Besides hoping their wishes would come true, the historian told the Post there was another reason for the coin tossing. It resulted from the tourist's lack of understanding. She claimed that the Yellowstone tourists of the past didn't have a thorough understanding of geysers and how they worked. That lack of knowledge lead them to tossing things inside of them and ruining the thermal pools.
She stated, "People didn't understand the plumbing and how geysers worked. There were lots of ideas about, 'if we throw something into this pool,, we might be able to make it erupt.'" So in fools attempts, the Yellowstone tourists continued to throw their personal belongings into these thermal pools.
Long-Term Effects
While those Yellowstone tourists never got their eruptions, they did initiate some long-term effects for the thermal pools. The once entirely blue pool is now a mix of colors. Sporting greens, yellows, blues, and oranges, as a result of all of the debris being thrown into it.
Scientists for the park argue that the pool's colors are changing because the temperature is dropping. Mike Poland, the scientist-in-charge of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, explained that "hotter pools tend to be a brilliant blue, and cooler pools can be more colorful since bacteria can grow there."
He continued to explain that the reason for the drop in temperature in this particular thermal pool is a result of all of the debris thrown in from the Yellowstone tourists. He explained, "At Morning Glory, the temperature cooled because people throwing objects in caused the conduit to become partially blocked, and the temperature went down, allowing different types of bacteria to grow."
Clean-Up And Hope For The Future
When this first started happening, the Yellowstone Park workers tried to stay on top of it. Efforts were made to have regular cleanups of the thermal pools. This included "bringing in fire trucks, pumping water out, and sending a worker in to do the dirty work."
They told the Cowboy State Daily, "The team fished out hundreds of objects during the laborious work as it tried not to damage the delicate thermal pool." While the park team isn't as diligent with cleaning the pools today, tourists are also more aware.
A former Yellowstone ranger left the Post with this positive statement, "I think people are much more respectful than they were in my early days. It's one way that values and behavior have changed over the years." He speaks about how many more Yellowstone tourists are considerate and there are less and less objects in the pools each year. Hopefully, word of this spreads and Yellowstone tourists and tourists around the world continue to be respectful and leave no trace.
