When this is a top 10 Instagram post from the National Park Service, you know you’ve got a problem: “Believe in yourself like visitors who believe they can pet a bison.”
According to Azzedine Downes, president of the International Fund for Animal Welfare, the spike in incidents between people and wildlife had surged in the pandemic—and despite vocal pleas from countless park systems like Yellowstone and Assateague Island National Seashore in Virginia + Maryland—tourists weren’t listening.
Ruled by 97% wilderness and only 3% civilization, protecting what makes Jackson Hole a destination for adventure is a community imperative—not some bullet points on a brand website.
That’s why we were tasked with:
In scouring thousands of incident reports, social content and news coverage about dangerous interactions with wildlife, one theme immediately emerged: People weren’t just bewitched to becoming the Abominable Snowman from Looney Toons out to pet and squeeze whatever cute creature they could get their mits on—they were doing it for the Gram (AKA Instagram).
Oftentimes, people were losing what their real proximity to wildlife was because they were trying to line up the Selfie shot or video on their phones.
This led us to develop a custom Instagram filter that uses real-time spacial recognition data to uniquely prompt people whether they are at a safe distance or not while in the act of capturing the moment for social glory. The interactive filter can immediately recognize the animal species and associated national park safe distance rules.
We named the filter: Selfie Control for immediate recognition and attachment with endless news stories of selfies with wildlife gone wrong—and we made it an open-source application so other national parks and wildlife habitats could quickly make their own versions fit for their locale’s wildlife.
[ 1 ] 1:1 outreach between Jackson Hole Tourism + national park peers, inviting them to try out and customize their own versions of the filter. That’s 433 individual parks, spanning more than 85-million acres of habitats for 400,000 animal + plant species.
[ 2 ] In parallel-path, led national and regional press outreach targeting outlets that covered the steep rise in dangerous incidents, as well as locales that reported on individual cases to not only bring the solution of Selfie Control forward—but also resurface poignant examples of how these incidents have led to harm and even death of wildlife and imbalances in the natural ecosystems of their habitats.
[ 3 ] A third-party research firm conducted visitor intercept surveys over the summer period of the initiative to hear directly from people exposed to Jackson Hole’s responsible tourism efforts calling attention to Selfie Control through a combination of paid print media; billboards and gas pump toppers along major Teton county roadways; coasters and posters given to local food/bar establishments and retail/hospitality venues. Paid social and digital placements targeted a 50-to-75-mile radius around Teton county.
Of the nearly ~1,000 summer visitors who participated in the intercept surveys—28% reported changing their behaviors in response to Jackson Hole’s responsible tourism initiative.
Conversations are ongoing with national park peers for expanded adoption and customization of the Selfie Control filter.
Selfie Control garnered 1.2 billion earned impressions with 547 unique placements across the likes of The Washington Post, The Verge, Thrillist, ABC News, Good Morning America and elsewhere. As mentioned before, each feature came with detailed retellings of the current state of unnecessary and reckless interactions between people and wildlife.
With the news being syndicated across eight additional countries, we’ve been able to open up international dialogue for change, backed by a socially led tool that proven to be making an impact here in the United States.
