2.1 Economic aspects
In 1895, superintendent of the national park approved first construction of zoo, which was operated by E.C. Waters. He had been a businessman conducting boat tours in Yellowstone Lake, and the idea of zoo had developed as connective attraction to his boat tours. His zoo had bison, elk and bighorn sheep as well as he had a permission to exhibit Crow Indians in his zoo. This zoo was closed in 1907, however, by 1924, the National Park Service started operating another zoo by themselves. They also endeavored to maximize tourists visit by improving accessibility, accommodation and visitor entertainment. Still, Zoo-Montana is hosting more than seventy thousands visitors every year in the area. U.S. National Park Service Superintendence wanted to provide opportunities for tourists to experience park’s wildlife closely, to improve tourists’ satisfaction. They focused on obedient coyote and promoted it as a wild dog, and they looked at bears foraging garbage near hotels and campsites. First, they created a feeding ground for restaurant customers, so they could feed bears with their leftovers. Later, the National Park Service found some bear foraging along a road to a Yellowstone visitor centre, and started encouraging tourists to feed bears as an attraction of the national park. (Biel, 2005, p. 7-22)(Yellowstone.com, 2007)
2.2 Environmental aspects.
Fundamentally, rules of the National Park Service have never allowed anyone to feed wild animals, but it was ignored to increase tourists’ satisfaction and economical benefits. Moreover, they published a brochure to teach visitors how to feed bears safely. In 1930’s, fifty to seventy grizzly bears gathered each evening to one feeding ground, which attracted more than a thousand tourists. Along the roadside, it was reported that some visitors had received minor injuries while they were feeding bears. In particular, even very tame bears became easily violent, when people behaved like they had food but actually they did not or people tried to feed bears directly from their hands. In 1931, 451 incidents of property damage and about a hundred injuries were reported. As people were feeding the bears, bear numbers had increased, but food from people did not grow so rapidly. Simply, because bears had been receiving food from humans, lack of food for bears caused increasing number of reported injuries. However, bears, which injured people, were recognized as dangerous and put down. (Biel, 2005).
The U.S. National Park Service had not been interested in conservation of predatory animals, such as wild bears and wolves. They only focused on conservation of safe herbivorous animals, such as elk and bison, because visitors can get safely closer. Concept of environmental conservation depended on visual value for the nature for tourists. In the case of wolves, because it was also threats to stocks of local farmers, and it disappeared from the Yellowstone National Park by 1930’s. Fortunately for the National Park Service, this wolf extinction stimulated elk to spend summer more open spaces rather than forests or steep slopes, this meant visitors could find elk more easily. On the other hand, the number of elk had increased to almost maximum of the carrying capacity of the national park. The growing numbers of elk caused overgrazing and started damaging natural vegetation. During1930-1986, the park rangers removed about twenty-six thousands elks from the national park. Also, the elk had become a major hunting target, so hunters removed about forty-five thousands elk during the same period. (Mao et al, 2005)(White & Garrott, 2005).
In the contrast to bears, wolf and elk, bison had been receiving good care from the National Park Service. They provided supplemental feed from 1939 to 1952 to increase the number of bison, and they started reducing artificial supplement as the number of bison was adopting in the natural regulation. The number has recovered to more than three thousands in 1990’s. (Gogan et al, 2005).
2.3 Socio-cultural aspects
As the national park had attracted more tourists, more people stared being aware of environmental condition and concern of the national park. As soon as Waters opened his zoo, tourists started claiming about the condition of animals. Because he fed those animals on leftovers from restaurants, animals had some kinds of vegetables as well as some amount of meat. That means tourists observed herbivore animals having meat, and this made them feel uncomfortable that those animals were so desperate to eat meat. They soon started writing letters for the superintendent of the national park to close the zoo. Those actions successfully closed the zoo in 1907, and those made the National Park Service prepare better conditions for animals when new zoo was opening. (Biel, 2005).
Moreover, when bears started depending on humans by learning that they could obtain food from humans, complains from other tourists forced abolishing the feeding ground. Because those bears knew they could have food from humans, they started wondering around campsites. It caused injured and property damages at the campsites and presence of bears around the campsite started threatening campers. Those campers complained about the existence of feeding ground. In addition, while the National Park Service was promoting the roadside bears as friendly bears as a major attraction of Yellowstone National Park, tourists had been reporting major injuries and fatalities by wild bears. Then when a bear injured visitors who were teasing the bear, the bear was killed. The National Park Service had to prohibit feeding bears along the road for the tourists’ safety and satisfaction. They wanted to reduce disappointments of tourists by injury. Tourists did not like to kill bears for humans’ egoism. (Biel, 2005).