As parents, we have a responsibility to teach our children about the importance of protecting our planet and all its inhabitants. Taking your kids to national parks is a wonderful way to immerse them in the beauty of nature and to allow them to learn about wild animals living there.
However, there's a right way and a wrong way to visit national parks as a family. And the wrong way involves allowing kids to feed wildlife and actually encouraging this harmful and dangerous activity.
In a viral video, touronsofnationalparks (@touronsofnationalparks) shared a scene of a family feeding a wild elk along a pathway.
In the video taken at Rocky Mountain National Park, the child feeds the animal while family members move up closer to take photos.
The original poster, Sebastian Stonum (@sebastianstonum), wrote: "Watch this kid get his fingers bit."
And the kid did.
You can hear the kid exclaim, "Ow!" as he recoils in pain and pulls his hand back from the elk's mouth.
Children don't inherently understand wildlife risks or the best ways to care for them. So, it's up to parents and caregivers to lead by example and demonstrate how to keep safe from wildlife and never approach, touch, or feed them.
The best things we can do for wildlife in national parks are to keep at least 25 yards away, try to move past animals quickly if they are on trails, or simply turn around and go another direction to give them space.
In addition to teaching kids about responsible trail usage and how to respect wildlife, you can raise sustainability-minded little humans by enrolling them in nature-based schools, practicing eco-friendly daily habits, and talking to your kids about the effects of rising global temperatures in words they can understand.
"So irresponsible on the parents for not being a better example, & also you don't know if these things carry ticks or any other diseases," one Instagram user commented on the video. "That's also risky just petting & feeding them even."
"Who is letting their child stand by a wild animal?????" another Instagrammer asked.
Another commenter wrote: "A crucial learning moment."
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