A decade of news: The time tourists put a bison in their trunk at Yellowstone National Park
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If you ask me to share one of the most memorable stories we’ve covered at EastIdahoNews.com over the past decade, this one is at the top of the list.
It was May 2016 and our news organization was less than a year old. I was in Salt Lake City on another work assignment when a friend sent me a photo of a young bison in the back of a vehicle.
He told me one of his relatives was chaperoning a group of fifth-graders on a field trip to Yellowstone National Park when a father and son pulled up at the ranger station with the animal in their SUV.
I left my other assignment, went to my hotel and made a call to Karen Richardson, who was on the field trip. I still wasn’t sure if this was a hoax, but Richardson assured me it really happened.
“They were demanding to speak with a ranger,” Richardson told me at the time. “They were seriously worried that the calf was freezing and dying.”
RELATED | Yellowstone tourists put bison calf in car because they’re worried it’s cold
I also spoke with Rob Heusevelet, a father of another student. He told the men to remove the bison from their car and warned they could be in trouble for having the animal.
“They didn’t care,” Heusevelet said. “They sincerely thought they were doing a service and helping that calf by trying to save it from the cold.”
I checked with Yellowstone National Park, who confirmed the incident, and then posted the story on East Idaho News. Within the hour, people from around the world were reading and it didn’t take long before the article went viral.
At the time, we didn’t know the name of the tourists but Good Morning America was able to track them down and convinced them to do an interview a few weeks later.
Shamash Kassam and his son, Shakeel Kassam, told GMA that when they came upon the bison, it still had its umbilical cord attached and approached them. Convinced the animal would die without help, they decided to put it in the back of their SUV.
“We didn’t have the heart to, kind of, just leave it there and let it suffer, you know, as the darkness descended,” Shakeel Kassam told GMA. “We had no idea it was going to turn out so bad.”
Well, the situation did not have a good ending, as officials had to euthanize the bison because it was rejected by its herd.
RELATED | Bison calf euthanized after tourists put it in vehicle
“Interference by people can cause mothers to reject their offspring. In this case, park rangers tried repeatedly to reunite the newborn bison calf with the herd. These efforts failed. The bison calf was later euthanized because it was abandoned and causing a dangerous situation by continually approaching people and cars along the roadway,” the park said in a statement.
The Kassams were cited for disturbing wildlife and were ordered to pay a $230 fine plus a $500 contribution to the Yellowstone Park Foundation.
Over the past ten years, we’ve covered many other stories involving tourists and wildlife at Yellowstone. The main thing we’ve learned? It’s best to keep your distance and leave the animals alone.
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