Modern technology has allowed us to travel to places in the world that 100 years ago were not even possible to visit. We can visit remote places in the world now and experience different cultures, people, and natural wonders. But when it comes to beautiful natural wonders, sometimes they meet their match with dumb tourists. The pristine beauty that has been preserved for thousands of years can be destroyed by their stupidity.
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00:00The natural world is wonderful.
00:03The mountains, canyons, waterfalls, and coral reefs of our Earth are catnip for the soul.
00:08They encourage us to leave our gray, lifeless cities and venture out into the wild, and
00:14for some dummies, completely trash whatever we find there.
00:18Want to experience the natural wonders of our planet?
00:20You better make sure you get there ahead of these bozos.
00:23Duck and run
00:24Mother Nature spent hundreds of thousands of years directing wind against a lump of
00:30Oregon rock, lovingly shaving it into an uncanny likeness of a duck's head, only for a bunch
00:36of teens in 2016 to destroy all that hard work in a matter of seconds.
00:40Dude, holy s**t.
00:43The so-called Duckville was a popular tourist attraction in the Pacific Northwest, with
00:49many visitors to Cape Kiwanda choosing to bypass the safety ropes and pose on top of
00:54the sturdy sand formation, so it really took some effort for the vandals to ruin the fun
01:00for everybody.
01:01The worst part?
01:02In a reverse Scooby-Doo, the gang of teens totally got away with it, because no one meddled
01:07enough, apparently.
01:08They were never caught or identified.
01:10Even if they were, Oregon state law means they'd only get a fine of $435 for mucking
01:16up the duck, which is just daffy.
01:19You'd think they'd get a… bigger bill.
01:23You're despicable!
01:26Cruisin' for a bruisin'
01:28In March 2017, the captain of the British cruise ship Caledonian Sky drove his humongous
01:33vessel over the top of a delicate stretch of Indonesian coral reef known as the underwater
01:38Amazon, which sounds like how Aquaman orders his cheap HDMI cables.
01:43But it's called that because of the rich and fragile rainforest-like biodiversity on display.
01:49The ship grounded on the reef as part of a bird-watching trip for the nearly 100 tourists
01:54on board, badly damaging some 1,600 square meters of coral.
01:59To make matters worse, the ship then called in a tugboat to drag it off, causing yet more
02:04damage to this fragile ecosystem.
02:07Needless to say, the locals weren't happy, prompting a massive outcry and at least one
02:12death threat via YouTube under an old video of the crew dancing to their version of Gangnam
02:18Style.
02:19"...Caledonian style!
02:22Caledonian style!
02:24Wop!
02:24Wop!"
02:25Hopefully, careless coral murder is no longer part of the Caledonian Style.
02:31Troop goof
02:32The so-called Goblins of Goblin Valley State Park in Utah are one of the most surreal sights
02:38in North America.
02:39Huge, mushroom-shaped boulders perched atop narrow sandstone stalks formed over millions
02:44of years by a fluke of erosion, these rocks can be found nowhere else on Earth.
02:50For 99.9 percent of visitors, they're a natural marvel.
02:54But for Boy Scout troop leader Glenn Taylor and his fellow Scout supervisors, they were
02:58a hazard.
02:59In an alleged flash of paranoia back in 2013, Taylor realized that if one of these teetering
03:05rocks happened to be shoved by an idiot just as some Scouts were passing beneath, he could
03:10kill them.
03:11Rather than let this unlikely scenario come to pass, Glenn decided to beat his hypothetical
03:16idiot to the punch, as his Scouting buddies cheered him on.
03:20"...Wiggle it, just a little bit.
03:27Wop!"
03:30170 million years of history crassly obliterated.
03:34But what's worse?
03:35Pointlessly destroying a treasure of the natural world, or singing this song while you're doing
03:41it?
03:42"...I wanna see you wiggle it, just a little bit, as you do it."
03:47Seems kind of like a toss-up.
03:50Cliff's Nopes
03:51Look up from the base of the Ireland Cliffs of Moher, and you'll see 300 million years
03:57of history unfolding spectacularly before your eyes, climbing 390 feet out of the Atlantic.
04:03The cliffs are world-famous among geologists, ornithologists, and plenty of others who have
04:08job titles ending with "-ologist."
04:11So you can imagine the "-ologist community's collective horror when they strolled down
04:15to the cliffs one morning in 2013 to find they'd been plastered in terrible graffiti.
04:21Covering an 8-by-6-foot section of cliff, the graffiti replaced the natural beauty of
04:26the coastline with an abstract design, resembling those Zuber's Pants your gym teacher wore
04:32in the 90s.
04:33Fortunately, the graffiti was cleaned off by experts without damaging the cliffs.
04:37The work was tracked to a French art collective who spent a couple of weeks tagging spots
04:42throughout the Emerald Isle.
04:43We know this because they uploaded their exploits to Vimeo, but were soon hit with so many negative
04:49comments they yanked the video and shut down their social media accounts.
04:53300-million-year-old cliffs won, garbage art zero.
04:57One tree kill
04:58For centuries, the Tree of Tanuray was the only tree for 250 square miles in the blistering
05:04heat of the Sahara Desert.
05:06As Atlas Obscura illustrates, its mere existence in such a hostile environment due to its unusually
05:14deep roots was a miracle.
05:16So of course, in 1973, a drunk Libyan truck driver following a centuries-old caravan route
05:21that passed nearby struck the ancient tree, splitting it in half.
05:26Today a metal sculpture stands where the tree once stood.
05:29Sure, the driver wasn't technically a tourist, but he had to have been drinking like a spring
05:35breaker on a boost cruise to not avoid the only obstacle in sight for 250 square miles.
05:42Broooo!