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Comment by donkeyd | Hacker News Reader

The first time I experienced this in nature was last year in Yosemite. So many people were climbing over barriers and walking in places where they shouldn't, it was horrible.

I've experienced this a lot in Amsterdam too, however. Tourists are treating Amsterdam like it isn't a real city. Especially the British seem to have no respect and treat Amsterdam like it's Vegas, but with less American cops.

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Yellowstone is truly the worst for this. It's an extremely fragile natural wonder populated by some of the most disrespectful tourists the world can offer.

I actually cannot conceive of how the park rangers there manage to keep their cool day after day.

The Boundary Waters Canoe Area has some of the same issues. Campsites inside an 'easy to get to' area are just stripped. Trees cut down, bark stripped off of trees, the fire pit seating hacked at, and food stuffs from washing on the shore.

The forest service ends up digging the toilets out of some really rough pickaxe type terrain, since most of it is a thin layer of soil over the glacier carved granite. God help the poor soul who dumps trash in the outhouse and gets caught.

IMO that situation is not exactly ideal, but it is campsites working as intended. They concentrated the human impact into a small, actively managed area.

Why do they allow it at all? Are there no rules or laws that they can invoke / enforce for this?

Yosemite has always had tourists doing the things you mention. Like you say, it's horrible. The focus on "influencers" in this article is contrived; the issue is that some people behave in baffling ways in nature parks.

Can confirm that's how it's happening in Iceland, too.

Took a tour up there a while back, and our tour guide stopped to yell at people putting themselves in life threatening situations to take pictures. Happened multiple times.

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