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The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper
Close Encounters, Tourists in the Wild. Aired 8-9p ET
Aired August 25, 2024 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[20:00:01]
PAULA REID, CNN ANCHOR: Definitely going to watch that.
Ed Lavandera, thank you. An all-new episode of "THE WHOLE STORY WITH ANDERSON COOPER" airing next only on CNN.
And before we go, a very cute reason why there is caution tape closing off this popular California beach. Hundreds of mostly male sea lions suddenly showing up. A marine biologist tells CNN they don't know why yet, but the sea lions may hang out there for about a month. Monterey Bay is home to a marine national sanctuary and the sea lions are protected by federal law.
Well, thank you for joining me this evening. I'm Paula Reid in Washington, in for Jessica Dean. See you again next weekend.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to THE WHOLE STORY. I'm Anderson Cooper.
Summer is peak season for tourism in America's national parks, which host hundreds of millions of visitors every year. And part of the draw is the opportunity to see wild animals like bears, elk, bison, and wolves in their natural habitat. But sometimes tourists accidentally hike or camp too close to wildlife or intentionally get close to take pictures or selfies. That's led to dangerous and sometimes deadly outcome for both humans and animals.
CNN's Ed Lavandera and his team took an unforgettable trip to Yellowstone National Park. And over the next hour, you'll see some of these close encounters and learn what to do and not do when you get too close to a wild animal.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ED LAVANDERA, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: We're on our way to Yellowstone.
(Voice-over): I have never been to America's oldest national park.
Excited to see this beautiful place.
(Voice-over): Our crew flies into Bozeman, Montana. Yellowstone is home to a large population of bison, grizzly bears, and wolves. It's about a two-hour drive south. We're in Gardiner, Montana, and just trying to take a walk through
town. And you got to navigate more than just cars and crosswalks. These are rocky mountain elk.
(Voice-over): Gardiner is just outside Yellowstone's north entrance.
The motel over there has a sign that says do not pet the fluffy cows. You constantly have to be reminded about this stuff because you're walking around town and you think that they're just part of the atmosphere and that they're friendly. You have to remind yourself they're wild animals.
(Voice-over): Friendly stranger reminds us of that in a loving way.
This is "Close Encounters, Tourists in the Wild."
It didn't take us long to figure out what not to do. There is such a thing as getting too close to wildlife. Wild animals don't want to take a selfie with you and they especially don't want to be held.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When she's holding it.
LAVANDERA: This scene was captured in North Carolina these people pulled black bear cubs out of a tree and because of this human interaction at least one of the cubs could not be reunited with its mother. Wildlife refuge staff were unable to locate the second cub.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's insane.
LAVANDERA: The lure of admiring wildlife too closely can lead to mortifying outcomes. We need to warn viewers now that the following video is disturbing. And the girl is OK.
In 2019, this 9-year-old girl was recorded getting tossed in the air by a bison in Yellowstone. Luckily she did not suffer any major injuries. These kinds of incidents aren't new for the National Park Service. Videos from decades ago.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Kid, kid, kid.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Good boy.
LAVANDERA: Have long caught Yellowstone visitors pushing the limits.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The most exciting thing is the buffalo running through the parking lot.
LAVANDERA: This woman was thrown to the ground by a bison. We don't know if she suffered any injuries. But this man was hospitalized after being flung into a tree, all because they got too close.
[20:05:06]
And that's the reason we're here. Getting too close to a grizzly bear is no laughing matter either.
So we're going to go find some bear spray. Where's the bear spray?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, we do. It's like 48 bucks.
LAVANDERA: 48. Seems like --
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, we don't do returns on it either.
LAVANDERA: OK. All right. Have a great weekend.
(Voice-over): We've already learned our lesson on keeping a safe distance.
Here you go.
(Voice-over): But we prepare for the slim chance.
This isn't cheap either.
(Voice-over): We accidentally get too close.
If you test fire this container, make sure the wind is at your back. Seems like good advice.
(Voice-over): Tomorrow morning, we'll enter the park.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What just happened cannot happen tomorrow with the bear.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you spray this, and the wind blows at, you're in trouble.
LAVANDERA: You end up blowing it in your face then the bear says, you idiot.
(Voice-over): It's just after 5:00 a.m. and we're on the road.
MAAIKE MIDDLETON, FILMMAKER: We're going to go do an area called slough creek because we've heard that there's been an elk carcass there.
LAVANDERA: This is Maaike Middleton, a filmmaker who has been documenting wildlife for over a decade here.
MIDDLETON: You'll never know what you're going to see.
LAVANDERA: This is Middleton filming a captive grizzly bear. She knows to keep her distance in the wild.
Yellowstone is nearly 3500 square miles. We are here driving along its northern rim.
MIDDLETON: If you're looking on the landscape, you try to look for something that looks like it's out of place.
LAVANDERA: Have you become pretty good at spotting?
MIDDLETON: Sometimes. You have good day, you have bad days.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): And it's not long before we start to see the signs of a good day.
MIDDLETON: We have some yield deer. The animals just are slightly more active in the morning and at night.
LAVANDERA: There's a bunch of bison right there on your right side.
MIDDLETON: And there's one there, too. This is a national park, it's not a zoo. There is no schedule.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): Despite our early start.
There's a bunch of people with cameras.
(Voice-over): Dedicated wildlife watchers beat us to our first destination. The early bird gets the best shots, I guess.
MIDDLETON: What do you guys see on the septa?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There's a den.
MIDDLETON: The den?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But they said there's some elk up there.
LAVANDERA: You all been coming here for a long time?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Long time. Yes.
LAVANDERA: You've seen a lot of people get themselves into really bad situations, I would imagine.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We have a little sticker on our car that says don't pet the fluffy cows.
LAVANDERA: Yes, yes. We got that advice in Gardiner last night.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We tried to stop somebody from walking up to a black bear.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There was somebody just right down here as we left yesterday, that was sneaking up on the bison. Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I swear I've seen people tried to put their kids on a bison and then I'm like, I told them, I can't watch this.
LAVANDERA: You saw someone trying to put their kid on a bison?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes. I have seen that. They think Yellowstone is a zoo. It is not a zoo. It's wild animals and these animals are unpredictable.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): Unfortunately, they have yet to spot a grizzly bear.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And in here, where you hit the Lamar Valley, they got two grizzlies.
LAVANDERA: Oh, really?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So yes, just look for people with scopes.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): We head down the road armed with bear spray.
Welcome to Yellowstone. Is that a bear over there? Yes, yes, yes.
(Voice-over): Another tourist lets me use his spotting scope.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What, do you see it?
LAVANDERA: Oh, yes. It's definitely a bear. Playing with the grass. Beautiful. Wow, that's a great shot.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Just chilling.
LAVANDERA: Just chilling. Now it's walking.
(Voice-over): It's the first time I've seen a grizzly in the wild. I get the allure, the rush of excitement. It's mesmerizing.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's so cool.
LAVANDERA: When we return.
REBECCA CLARK, HIKER: (EXPLETIVE DELETED). The horn went in and he hooked me and then he pulled my skin out.
LAVANDERA: And later.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Look at this. Right?
LAVANDERA: Yes, look at the traffic jam. This is like the Taylor Swift of Yellowstone.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A woman reached out, I assume, to pet the cub. Everyone was horrified.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:12:05]
LAVANDERA: Yes.
(Voice-over): We spot a grizzly just two hours into our first day in Yellowstone.
Oh, yes. That's definitely a bear. Wow, that's a great shot. Very good. About to disappear behind that tree.
(Voice-over): Just a few minutes later. MIDDLETON: They're waiting. There's carcass in the rivers. They're
waiting for --
LAVANDERA: We get another tip.
MIDDLETON: The carcass is in the river?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
MIDDLETON: OK.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're just waiting for something to come to it.
LAVANDERA: So there's an animal carcass in the river not too far from where we're standing. And that's usually something that attracts bears. What else would come to the --
MIDDLETON: Wolves, coyotes, birds of prey.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): We spot a bald eagle as a bison stroll by. Up the road from the carcass, a few tourists decide to get closer to a herd of bison. Of course, they take a selfie at a safe distance. And despite it looking too close for comfort, this couple is likely more than 25 yards away from the bison, which is the minimum distance recommended by the National Park Service.
One bison cruising by them stops and looks directly at the couple. Moments later, the largest mammal in North America that can weigh up to 2,000 pounds and run at speeds over 30 miles per hour continues its journey unbothered.
Is that weird?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, it was a little intimidating.
LAVANDERA: We're watching you through our lens. It's compressed, so it's hard to tell how close it got. Were you worried?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, a little bit.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): Bison are not known to be an aggressive species, but can be defensive when guarding their territory.
CLARK: Want try and see if I can make it by. Wish me luck.
LAVANDERA: This cell phone video was taken in 2022 at Cap Rock Canyon State Park in West Texas home to a herd of southern plains bison.
CLARK: I just want to get by, OK. Thank you. I appreciate it.
LAVANDERA: The woman you hear is Rebecca Clark. She's an avid solo hiker.
CLARK: (EXPLETIVE DELETED). Oh, my god. Oh.
LAVANDERA: What is this on your wall? CLARK: So this is kind of just my memory wall.
LAVANDERA: You wanted to remember him.
CLARK: Yes, I want to remember him. I want to remember that time. Here you go. Here you go.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): Clark recorded on her phone as she crossed paths with bison roaming passed a trail much closer than the minimum distance recommended.
[20:15:06]
CLARK: Keep going, go over there to your babies.
LAVANDERA: At what point did you realize you were in trouble?
CLARK: When I saw him turn. It's like instantly I knew he was going to come after me. I mean, it was so fast. He ran to me and hooked me and then flipped me up, and face forward into the mesquite bush.
LAVANDERA: What is going through your mind at that time?
CLARK: To tell you the truth, I thought I was paralyzed. I really did. It numbed me that much from my waist down at one moment, just wanted get back. OK. I remember laying there. I flipped myself over and I knew I need to call for help.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): The bison's horn cut a wide gash in her back.
CLARK: I wasn't as diligent as I should have been about knowing about bison before I went hiking.
LAVANDERA: Has this changed your relationship with this animal?
CLARK: Oh, no. I've been so intrigued by it.
LAVANDERA: They would have been extinct years ago.
CLARK: I'm sorry, got to check it. I can't believe you did this to me.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): What made Clark emotional is the fear this incident would change the rules and keep others from exploring the wild.
CLARK: I worked with low-income children for many years and they just have an opportunity for sidewalks and buildings and don't have an opportunity to go out and experience these things. And we need to protect wildlife so that they will be around for them to experience. But we have to be safe.
LAVANDERA: Are you emotional because you hope that you didn't do something that prevents someone else from enjoying being out there? You love the outdoors that much.
(Voice-over)? As we reach the early afternoon, we head back home. On the road, we find ourselves stuck in another bison jam. And spot wolves roaming the open plane.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's a wolf.
LAVANDERA: One nestles atop a rock near the road. Our first day in Yellowstone was more than we could have ever hoped for. And it wasn't over.
MIDDLETON: Do you see him?
LAVANDERA: Yes, there.
MIDDLETON: I just see a blob there.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): We spot another grizzly bear near the road.
This is as close as we've gotten so far. How far away do you think we are more? More than 100 yards where we're supposed to be.
MIDDLETON: We're at a safe distance. Yes.
LAVANDERA: We're at a safe distance. All right. As soon as word spreads that there's a bear here.
MIDDLETON: Look at this, right?
LAVANDERA: Yes, look at those traffic jam. And people start getting antsy, they start moving around real quick and that's exactly what you're not supposed to do.
MIDDLETON: People parked in the middle of the street.
LAVANDERA: You temporarily lose your mind.
MIDDLETON: Yes.
LAVANDERA: It's like if you're walking down the street in New York City and some incredible celebrity like Taylor Swift is walking down the street. The entire block goes crazy, right?
MIDDLETON: Yes. Yes.
LAVANDERA: This is like the Taylor Swift of Yellowstone.
Our first day at Yellowstone just absolutely magical. All the wildlife that we saw. There are moments when you're seeing these animals moving through the park and you think for a moment that they're tamed, that they are a species that you can be around intimately with. And that's just not the case.
(Voice-over): Up next.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A woman reached out, I assume, to pet the cub.
CHRIS GEREMIA, SENIOR BISON BIOLOGIST, YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK: Some individuals that were intoxicated tried to harass a group of bison. Potentially tried to kick at some. LAVANDERA: Kick?
GEREMIA: Absolutely.
LEE WHITTLESEY, FORMER PARK HISTORIAN, YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK: You can enter a wilderness area and get killed.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:23:35]
MATT TURNER, NATIONAL PARK SERVICE: I didn't even clean up.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): If you're one of the millions of people who follow the National Park Service social media accounts, then you know Matt Turner's work. He is the man behind the National Park's quirky and hilarious social media posts.
TURNER: Hike in groups, bears like to have options. Wildlife just wants to be left alone. Don't we all? We have the post, "Bison may look fiend-shaped, but they have all the friends they want. Keep your distance and don't make it awkward. Someone did reply back that an introverted bison write this. And yes, it did. I think I'm an introverted bison.
LAVANDERA: So Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, John Oliver, they have teams of writers. You have?
TURNER: I have my two cats at home, but otherwise --
(LAUGHTER)
LAVANDERA (voice-over): Turner is an older millennial whose humor has been shaped by television comedies like "The Office."
STEVE CARELL, ACTOR, "THE OFFICE": I'm not superstitious, but I am a little stitious.
LAVANDERA: Then "Parks and Recreation."
AZIZ ANSARI, ACTOR, "PARKS AND RECREATION": I couldn't afford enough premium carpet to get us this stage. I mean, it's a short walk, but it was pretty luxurious, right?
LAVANDERA: He believes safety tips are best delivered with a comedic bow.
TURNER: Someone just asked, may I ride the moose, and we responded back with a classic April Ludgate gif of her, can I just dip on your tea, looking annoyed.
LAVANDERA: Do you ever think, how is the National Park Service letting me get away with this?
[20:25:04]
TURNER: Yes, I think I probably keep my boss up at night, but I think the strategy has worked well for us.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): Very well in fact.
TURNER: When I first started back in 2018, our Instagram had under a million followers and now we're up to nearly six million. We need to be bigger than the Kardashians at some point.
LAVANDERA: Well. you have a fun job, my friend. And you make a lot of people smile. That's a good thing in this day and age.
TURNER: We do have a post that goes, self, and you never met me.
(LAUGHTER)
LAVANDERA (voice-over): Day two of our Yellowstone trip starts with an onslaught of parked cars. There's a grizzly bear down in the valley below, this time with her two cubs. So we have ourselves a grizzly jam.
GEREMIA: Wildness sometimes means harsh and severe.
LAVANDERA: Chris Geremia is Yellowstone's senior bison biologist.
GEREMIA: Everyone on this pond freezes and bison will come here and they'll sit on the ice. And as that ice starts to turn over in the spring, animals fall through. And every year a bison fall under this pond, grizzly bears come here as the ice is receding and pull out those carcasses. And that's a critical food for those bears that are coming out of hibernation.
LAVANDERA: Nearby, tourists revel in this moment.
Have you ever seen a bear like this as close as this?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We come to Yellowstone annually, but we've never seen one on a carcass. That's awesome.
LAVANDERA: That's a special moment.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Absolutely.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): And they show us a picture they took just a few days ago.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We were just driving along a mom and two cubs, the black bears. And they were down in a ditch line and then another cub came out back onto the road and a woman reached out I assume, to pat the cub. It was scary because that mother, the south, could have charged.
LAVANDERA: Do you think they realized they shouldn't have done what they did or --
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Absolutely not because as they drove down the road, they were smiling. Everyone was horrified. Every time you're here, you see things that are just absent minded. LAVANDERA: How often do you hear stories of tourists behaving badly?
Or really playing with fire?
WHITTLESEY: Every day.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): Lee Whittlesey was Yellowstone's official park historian. He spent nearly 50 years working in the national park.
You wrote a book called "Death in Yellowstone," which I find incredibly fascinating because there's a lot of ways to die out there in the wild.
WHITTLESEY: There are, for example, the bears something like 13 deaths, but hundreds of injuries.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): Whittlesey's estimation of probable fatal bear encounters includes the entire Yellowstone ecosystem throughout the park's existence.
That is a good statistics.
WHITTLESEY: They are.
LAVANDERA: Considering how many people goes to the park. Are bison incidents more common than bear incidents?
WHITTLESEY: You're more likely to be injured. People are enthralled with these animals and I don't blame them, but getting a selfie with you and the bison, not the way to do it.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): After our third grizzly sighting.
GEREMIA: Everything in this park is very complicated.
LAVANDERA: We joined Geremia to observe a nearby herd of bison.
GEREMIA: This is the place where this country decided to protect bison and prevent them from going extinct.
LAVANDERA: Geremia has worked to protect Yellowstone's bison population for over two decades.
GEREMIA: They're very peaceful animal but when pushed, they will defend themselves.
LAVANDERA: I see a couple of them checking us out.
GEREMIA: Yes, I do, too.
(LAUGHTER)
GEREMIA: Oh, my, and there are all sorts of cows. So the things that they will do to communicate to you, to let you know that you're too close is they'll lift their tail straight up. They will fall to the ground. A bison will bob their head or swing their head. They'll huff like have a deep exhale like a, or they'll bellow. LAVANDERA: I see two right there that have stood up and they've kind
of turned, looking toward us. Is that a sign that they're changing their behavior?
GEREMIA: These animals are nervous of us, right now. There's a lot of newborn calves on the ground. So they'd say, you know, I don't want you to come any closer.
[20:30:04]
LAVANDERA (voice-over): Every year, Geremia deals with tourists crossing the line.
GEREMIA: About a week ago, we had some individuals that were intoxicated that went out and tried to harass a group of bison. And I tried to get too close, tried to touch them, potentially tried to kick at some of the individuals.
LAVANDERA: Kick?
GEREMIA: Absolutely. We had one instance when visitors saw a calf on the side of the road, they picked up that calf and put it in her car and brought it to a ranger station here. When that happens, we have no way to reconnect that calf with its mom and with its group.
LAVANDERA: So someone thinks they're doing a good thing, but you've actually ended that animal's life.
GEREMIA: That's correct.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Can we talk about this guy coming toward us?
GEREMIA: I think he's asking, why are you calling her a he? You know, bison are just very curious. Now we're 40 yards. It should make you feel a little uncomfortable.
LAVANDERA: Well, I'm following your lead, so you seem very calm, and the tail is down.
GEREMIA: What I would like to do is just take a few steps back and allow this group to continue to just move in that direction.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): We left the park and headed 30 miles north to speak to a man famous for his close encounters with grizzly bears.
DOUG PEACOCK, AUTHOR, FILMMAKER: I spent almost 20 years, most of it alone, lugging around at 16 millimeter movie camera, going after wild grizzlies.
LAVANDERA: Doug Peacock's footage was used in this 1988 PBS documentary, which profiled his work.
PEACOCK: Once you go into grizzly country, you are automatically entering a system where man is not the dominant animal.
LAVANDERA: Peacock served in the Vietnam War and suffered severe PTSD. PEACOCK: For me there's hardly a greater evil than a helicopter.
LAVANDERA: He was intent on finding solace in nature so Peacock headed to northwest America over 50 years ago.
PEACOCK: You'll see there's three bears.
LAVANDERA: You come here after Vietnam. Do you know anything about grizzly bears?
PEACOCK: When I set up in Yellowstone, they were all over the place. I started watching and by the end of that summer, I was really hooked.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): What he found with the grizzlies, he said, was much more than solace. It was a spiritual experience.
PEACOCK: And there was that big grizzly came out of the timber. He flipped his ears and at the very end, you know, I thought it was going to charge me but it didn't. He turned gracefully and swung back into the timber. And I felt something passed between us.
LAVANDERA: When we come back.
PEACOCK: I have been charged couple of dozen times, but no bears ever touched me.
SHAYNE BURKE, ATTACKED BY A GRIZZLY BEAR: She has me in the air and she just drops me like a cat. This could happen to anybody who puts themselves in bear country.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LAVANDERA: You live let's say 30 miles or so from the entrance to Yellowstone Park.
PEACOCK: Yes.
LAVANDERA: What brought you out here?
PEACOCK: It was coming back from Vietnam. I was a Green Beret medic, so I took care all of the casualties. I was really burned out when I came back and I didn't want to be around people.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): Few people have documented grizzly bears in the wild like Doug Peacock.
How many grizzlies have you seen in your life up close?
PEACOCK: Well, hundreds. I really loved being around the grizz. There are two out there, right? The mother is to the left.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): He credits grizzlies for continuing to give him the right perspective on life.
PEACOCK: Grizzly bears. That's a beautiful family. LAVANDERA: coming here to this part of the world and surrounding
yourself with grizzly bears that helped you cope and forget about the horrible things you saw in Vietnam?
PEACOCK: Yes. I needed to get out of myself and the bears sort of instill instant humility.
A bear kept coming up to about 15 feet away.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): Peacock has experienced chilly close calls with grizzly bears that can weigh up to 400 pounds and had four-inch claws.
PEACOCK: I have been charged couple dozen times, but no bears ever touched me. One bear charged all the way up to me, skidded. She appeared to reach forward and sniff my pant leg and then she turned around, and so I ran back into the forest.
BURKE: I got two major puncture wounds on the shoulder. Broken shoulder blade, and then my rest here you can see my bone, so that was from the final kill bite.
[20:40:06]
Back of my legs, these are all bite marks.
CHLOE BURKE, SHAYNE BURKE'S WIFE: Nine different sites that he needed to be stapled back together. 60 staples or 60 --
S. BURKE: Sixty staples. So this here --
LAVANDERA: This is Army veteran Shayne Burke and his wife Chloe.
S. BURKE: I went to Iraq in 2010. I was part of the withdrawal.
LAVANDERA: Doug Peacock came back from Vietnam and he wanted to be in the wilderness. Coming to Yellowstone was like therapy for him.
S. BURKE: When I came home, I did struggles with some PTSD issues. Definitely being outdoors, getting out there is very therapeutic.
LAVANDERA: When did you guys meet? How long ago was it?
C. BURKE: Eight years ago.
S. BURKE: Yes, we met rock-climbing.
C. BURKE: He offered to show me around to all the local climbing in New England.
S. BURKE: We've always liked the outdoors, as long as we've been together.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): Shayne and Chloe married in September of 2022. And soon after Shayne had an operation for a brain tumor. His recovery put their honeymoon on hold. C. BURKE: After some time we kind of start getting back into the
activities that we loved and felt like, you know what, this might be the time to take that road trip that we've always dreamed of taking out west to go see national parks, just a lot of hiking.
LAVANDERA: That's what you guys wanted your honeymoon to be?
C. BURKE: Yes.
S. BURKE: Yes.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): Two years after their wedding, the coupled did take that road trip.
S. BURKE: We have been in Yellowstone for three days. We basically just did a bunch of wildlife spectating off from the roadside. Then we headed south to the Tetons. We did some research trying to find great gray owls. Trip Advisor told us that, you know, we can find them on Signal Mountain.
LAVANDERA: They set out on what was supposed to be a short hike, armed with bear spray just in case.
S. BURKE: I have mine on my chest. She had hers right on her hip.
LAVANDERA: Chloe soon turned around.
C. BURKE: Our dog was getting kind of hot. I decided I was going to go back to the car.
S. BURKE: I told her, hey, I'll be back in the parking lot in an hour.
LAVANDERA: And Shayne realized an hour had passed he decided to go off trail taking a shortcut back to the parking lot.
S. BURKE: I'm moving pretty fast and all of a sudden I see a bear cub 50 yards away, running away up this hill, mom's got to be close. I pull my bear spray out, I look down, identify the safety, and go to pop it up. But the mom is right there.
LAVANDERA: Shayne says he didn't have a chance to fire off the bear spray.
S. BURKE: I just opted to turn around and dive to the ground, and simultaneously at that point she had made contact with my right shoulder.
LAVANDERA: What happened next is a nightmare and Shayne knows it's a miracle he's alive to tell the story.
S. BURKE: She started biting my left leg a bunch and then she bit my right leg. She picked me up. I'm almost certain that she bit deep enough that she actually scratched my femur.
LAVANDERA: She made it to the bone. S. BURKE: Yes. I let out a pretty big scream and at that point, she
has me in the air, my legs in the air, and she just drops me like a cat. And then just steps on my back and then just goes to bite me.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): Shayne says the grizzly had him pinned and move to bite him on the back of his neck.
S. BURKE: That's how they kill their prey is usually biting behind the head and severing the spine. My hands are still like this. She chomped both those at the same time. And she also bit into the bear canister.
LAVANDERA: Which was still in your hand.
S. BURKE: Which was still in my hand. By the power of the universe and --
LAVANDERA: The bear bites through it right here. And that's when you hear that pop?
S. BURKE: Yes.
LAVANDERA: Which must have been terrifying.
S. BURKE: My initial thought was she's been through your skull and you're definitely going to die.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): The bear spray can exploded.
S. BURKE: Suddenly I hear her thump, thump, thump, just running away.
LAVANDERA: So do you think it was biting into that bear can spray that agitated her and ran off?
S. BURKE: Yes. That literally saved my life.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): Shayne was able to call Chloe, a licensed EMT, who is still waiting for him in the parking lot.
S. BURKE: She went right into EMT mode. You need to put tourniquets on your wounds. You need to try to stop the bleeding anywhere where it's bleeding. You need that.
C. BURKE: Somehow the bear missed any major arteries.
LAVANDERA: National Park rescue rangers airlifted him to a nearby hospital.
What did you tell the ranger about the bear?
S. BURKE: I said, please, don't kill the bear. She was just protecting her cub.
[20:45:03]
Just knowing that I was going to probably be OK, and I want the bear to be OK, too. LAVANDERA: When people hear this and it might scare them of wanting to
enjoy the wilderness and being outdoors, what do you say to those folks?
S. BURKE: It's really cliche, but I would say what's the point of living without living with little risk and really enjoying your life.
C. BURKE: Just be prepared and be bear aware.
WHITTLESEY: Often a bear is defensive if it, quote, "attacks."
LAVANDERA: Yellowstone historian Lee Whittlesey.
WHITTLESEY: If you are hiking the back country and you're all by yourself, you're in a very vulnerable position. What to do, don't hike alone. Take four people or three at the bare minimum, make noise, don't hike silently. Carry bear spray. That's darn near an ironclad rule these days.
LAVANDERA: The number one, rule experts say, don't run.
JOE BUETER, YELLOWSTONE PARK RANGER: Everything here is an illusion.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Stupid.
LAVANDERA: When we come back.
WHITTLESEY: Death in hot water.
LAVANDERA: That outnumbers the bison and the bears.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Four and a half million visitors.
LAVANDERA: Is it sustainable for the park?
CAM SHOLLY, SUPERINTENDENT, YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK: There's going to be a limit.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LAVANDERA: Deaths and injuries at Yellowstone. Does it stand out compared to other parks?
WHITTLESEY: It stands out a lot in the numbers of ways that you can get injured. We got thermal features, hot springs, geysers, and mud pots, and steam vents they are often above the boiling point in temperature.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Stupid.
WHITTLESEY: There is this fascinating visitor reaction that I call got to touch that water.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (EXPLETIVE DELETED). It's very hot.
LAVANDERA: If you fall into one of these boiling hot springs -- WHITTLESEY: And you immerse all the way, you're going to swallow water
so that will inflict burns all the way down. It's going to enter through your eyes. You're going to be blind. People have died by bending over and touching that water.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): In fact, 22 people have died in Yellowstone's hydrothermal areas, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
That outnumbers the bison and the bears.
WHITTLESEY: It does.
LAVANDERA: This is a gruesome way to go.
(Voice-over): In July of 2024, a hydrothermal feature exploded, launching grapefruit sized rocks hundreds of feet into the air, and destroying a nearby boardwalk.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We grabbed our kids, started running, trying to get as far as we can from the expulsion.
LAVANDERA: Don't fear, though, National Park Service officials say no injuries were reported and large hydrothermal explosions like this only occur every 700 years on average.
Just look at this. It doesn't look real.
BUETER: It should be on another planet almost.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): It's our last day in Yellowstone. And Ranger Joe Beuter is taking us to the Norris Geyser Basin. He spent more than 30 years working in this national park.
The sound that's coming from the ground is just amazing.
BUETER: Everything here is an illusion. It looks calm it, it looks serene, and it is unless you tried to walk on it, or swim in it.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): This hydrothermal area is Yellowstone's hottest and if that isn't enough to impress you, it's also one of the most acidic.
BUETER: So 1,000 feet down below us the temperatures can exceed 400 degrees and then the water just percolates up through the rock. Some of these features are acidotic, some of them are alkalotic. The acidic ones can be as acidic as battery acid.
LAVANDERA: I mean that -- it sounds terrifying.
BUETER: As long as you stay on the boardwalk you can walk around and tour of them really safely.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is the park service. Get on the boardwalk!
LAVANDERA (voice-over): And just like it is with wild animal encounters for the many tourists who follow the rules, there are a few who break them.
This man sticks his head into Old Faithful, Yellowstone's most famous geyser. The park says its steam temperature has been measured above 350 degrees.
[20:55:02]
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, my god, what is happening?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: People, look now.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I know how much you like dumb people, (EXPLETIVE DELETED), so look at this (EXPLETIVE DELETED).
LAVANDERA: And the very next day that same man was sitting on top another dangerous geyser.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There's Grand Prismatic. And there's somebody walking.
LAVANDERA: And this is yet another man who strayed away from the boardwalk in a hydrothermal area.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, my god, what an idiot.
BUETER: Most of the folks that leave the boardwalk do it accidentally. Their hat blows off and they go to retrieve it. In train like this that can be really hazardous. In some places, the surface might be a foot thick. In other places, a half an inch or less thick. And a person or an animal would fall through the cross into that underlying steam and boiling water.
LAVANDERA: So you can literally fall into boiling water if you step in the wrong place.
BUETER: The last fatality here at Norris Geyser Basin was in 2016. That person was fully immersed in a thermal feature.
LAVANDERA: And are you able to retrieve the body?
BUETER: Generally speaking, we are able to, in some cases because of the heat and the acidity we're not able to.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): Break the rules at your peril. Norris Geyser is yet another reminder that you can and should enjoy all that this wild planet has to offer as long as you follow the rules.
You can just be driving along the road and just feed off the road. You can come across a bear.
(Voice-over): Back on the road, we encounter yet another bear jam.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Please use pull outs. Do not stop in the middle of the road, please. Thank you.
LAVANDERA: Yes. People start getting too close, kind of lose sight of where they're at.
(Voice-over): Before we leave this wild land.
So you live on the ground here?
(Voice-over): We speak to its human boss. Cam Sholly is Yellowstone's superintendent.
SHOLLY: Back in the '60s, we're feeding bears out of dumps in this park. I mean, we set up garbage dumps to attract bears so visitors could drive by and see them and feed them and things like that. We've come a long way.
LAVANDERA: When you look back at those pictures, do you ever think about, why in the world does anyone think that was a good idea back then?
SHOLLY: There's plenty of mistakes that we made in the Yellowstone, feeding grizzly bears some garbage dumps is one of those things. I think it's a good lesson in how we made mistakes, learn from those mistakes.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): They have learned big time. Yellowstone's greatest and most fundamental problem now is a product of its incredible success.
SHOLLY: That's the largest wildlife and visitor interface in the world. We hit a million visitors in the park for the first time in a single year in 1948. And then we hit 4.8 million in '21.
LAVANDERA: Is it sustainable for the park or is there ever going to be a point where you say, hey, is there a limit to how many people can come?
SHOLLY: Yes, there's going to be a limit. I don't know exactly what the point in time is or what that number is.
LAVANDERA: Is it possible to build more roads? I guess the more roads you build, the more impact you have on the wildlife.
SHOLLY: This isn't a problem that we're going to build our way out of. The park is 2.2 million acres. Less than 2,000 acres are pavement. And the vast majority of visitors never get more than a half mile away from their car.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): All of that land most visitors never go to, Sholly says, must stay unpaved and wild.
SHOLLY: There's something about being remote with no one around, looking at places that have not changed at all over hundreds and hundreds of years or more, and that's a special part of this job.
LAVANDERA: It's a job that comes with both its problems and its pride.
What does the country lose if a place like this doesn't exist? SHOLLY: Well, you also on the first park in America, it's the first
national park in the world. It started a movement in this country and how incredible the resources are that we protect, how important the stories that we tell are the good, the bad, and the ugly of this country's history. It truly has created the best national park system in the world.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): My team and I are incredibly thankful we got to make this visit. Watching such majestic animals roam the land is a reminder of what it feels like to be wild and free. We hope you get to feel it, too. Safely of course.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COOPER: Since 2008, annual park visits to Yellowstone have increased by more than 40 percent. And that number is only expected to grow.
Thanks for watching THE WHOLE STORY.
