Safe Wildlife Distance

About The Project

This project began with a simple question: how can parks encourage visitors to keep safe distances from wildlife by using better communication science?

The National Park Service and Colorado State University worked together to create and test a communication campaign to encourage more park visitors to keep their distance from wildlife. We tested this campaign in four national parks:

  • Grand Canyon National Park (target wildlife: squirrels and elk)
  • Assateague Island National Seashore (target wildlife: wild horses and seals*)
  • Rocky Mountain National Park (target wildlife: elk, bighorn sheep*, moose*, and black bears*)
  • Shenandoah National Park (target wildlife: white-tailed deer and black bears*)

*Campaign communicated about these wildlife species, but data were not collected on them

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Artwork

Download the main artwork for the campaign to use as you would like in any communication materials you want to create. We have versions to support communicating two and three different distances, as well as a seashore/waterfront background. You’ll need Adobe Illustrator or software that can work with ai files.

About These Files

They were developed within the National Park Service (NPS) brand identity standards (including the templates for print media). Logos have been removed and NPS fonts have been substituted for similar defaults. Entities and individuals who are not with NPS are not permitted to use the likeness of the NPS logo. We recommend using the artwork for this campaign within any templates/park brand identity standards you have.

If you are working for and intending to use these in a national park, you can contact us for the files with the NPS identity. Contact Sara Melena from your NPS email address with your request: sara_melena@nps.gov.

Images shown below are samples based on our test parks.

Three Distances, Stacked Version

  •  artwork_3distances_stacked.ai
    Sorry, other versions are unavailable, but you could copy-paste the desired wildlife (or embed from other files) from the other artwork files.

Three Distances, Single-Plane Version

  • artwork_3distances_short.ai
    Sorry, other versions are unavailable, but you could copy-paste the desired wildlife (or embed from other files) from the other artwork files.

Two Distances, Stacked Version

Two Distances, Single-Plane Version

Print Media

Download customizable files designed for print. We have posters/signs of various sizes and a rack card. Swap in your distance regulations or guidelines and wildlife. They can be edited in Adobe InDesign CC. You can thank us by simply letting us know how you use these!

What if I need other wildlife not shown in any of the files?

Contact Katie Abrams with your request* because we have numerous vector files/images of wildlife (including land and sea life) that we can share with your individually, but cannot post publicly. Several sites offer wildlife silhouette graphics for free and for purchase. Here’s the sources we used for this project:

*Sorry, we cannot design any materials for you. We can only send you the wildlife graphics, if we happen to have what you are looking for.

Want to make something else you don’t see here? View and download the artwork files.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Digital Files

Download customizable files designed for websites and social media. They can be edited in Adobe Photoshop or InDesign CC or used as-is. Swap in your distance regulations or guidelines and wildlife. You can thank us by simply letting us know how you use these!

Websites

To help you craft copy/text for your website, we’re sharing Word files containing the content we used for this campaign. Feel free to use whatever you’d like from it and adapt it to your park’s context. We recommend building two pages:

  1. One on how to view and photograph wildlife: People planning their trip looking for what to do in the park will be motivated to visit this page.
  2. The second on wildlife safety: People who are more risk-averse and interested in educating themselves will be more likely to visit this page.

Both pages should link to one another to increase the likelihood people are exposed to both sets of information.

Website Image Files
Examples of the web pages from our test parks

Social Media

For your social media post copy/text, refer to the social media plans (Word files) for each of our test parks:

You can right-click and save the files you see displayed below if you want to use them as-is. Or, you can download the zip file containing all the native files (psd and indd format) for editing. Download the artwork file, edit (if needed), and export for web as a png file in Illustrator.

Suggested post text: A great park experience starts with the safe distance from wildlife. We think a long-distance relationship is the best kind of relationship because it allows you to stay safe and give wildlife the space they need. For more on how to view wildlife in our park, go to: [link to wildlife safety web page]

About how long is a bus? What unit of measurement should we use?

Full-sized buses vary in length from about 40 to 50 feet. Keep in mind, you’re only trying to help people judge the distance, so getting picky about exact measurements is not fruitful in terms of communicating with visitors. The distances should be within your park’s regulations, but they can be different (further away) if desired for visitor or wildlife safety purposes.

We did not assess which unit of measurement visitors may understand better or prefer. Many people are somewhat unfamiliar with judging the kinds of distances we’re typically talking about anyway. So the unit of measurement is less important than the visual representation of that distance. You’ll see we chose to communicate in feet and meters in our test parks.

Help

The positive results we found in testing this campaign’s effects on visitors’ behavior were based on employing the following print, digital, and interpersonal communication tactics:

  1. Placement of signage in parks (24×36, 11×17, and 11×8.5 sizes) in locations visitors would encounter them
  2. Distribution of rack cards at main visitor center(s) to people who approached desk for information (At Assateague Island, they were given to every vehicle that entered)
  3. Volunteers and interpretation staff equipped with key messages to use in brief conversations with visitors and stickers (watch the training video made for Rocky Mountain National Park)
  4. Stickers made available at various locations throughout the park and given out by volunteers and interpretation staff
  5. Four social media posts: 1 each day across Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram
  6. Two new or revised web pages on the parks’ websites
Key messages to use in interpersonal communication

Research shows behavior change or compliance with park rules is more likely when mediated communication aligns with interpersonal communication. Ensure staff know the more detailed information that can be found on the materials, but you can also provide them the following few key messages.

  1. Remind visitors that when they see wildlife, to keep THE safe distance (rather than “a” safe distance –implies there’s a rule)
  2. “Give them room, use your zoom.” (many people are often taking photos)
  3. Telling people about the risks is useful, but be sure to also convey the ways that they can do the right thing and enjoy doing it:
    1. use their zoom,
    2. animal may stay longer allowing for more photos,
    3. see the animal do what it naturally does,
    4. be a part of the park’s mission, and/or
    5. help keep national parks’ animals unique (not a zoo).
How do I edit/adapt the media files?

You will want to hire or use someone who has knowledge and skills using Adobe Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop. It may be cheapest/most efficient to outsource the editing to a graphic designer, if you do not employ someone with those skills. You can also reach out to local colleges to find students who may be interested in project-based work like this. Depending on their skill level and amount of changes needed, based on our experience, we believe it would take around 8 to 12 hours of time to customize all of these files to your context (including the text/copy). Additional costs may be required if you need graphics or photos of other wildlife species that are not included.

They can be used by anyone. Attribution is not required and there are no restrictions on use or adaptation, with one exception: You are not permitted to use the trademarked NPS logo or fonts (Rawlinson) if they are not being developed for a national park. If you have questions about the files, you can contact Katie Abrams (Katie.abrams@colostate.edu).

Safe Wildlife Distance Campaign Contributors

Dr. Katie Abrams

  • Assistant Professor
  • Department of Journalism & Media Communication, Colorado State University
  • katie.abrams@colostate.edu
  • 970-491-5315

Sara Melena - Education Specialist

  • National Park Service Lead on Project
  • Office of Education & Outreach
  • Natural Resource Stewardship and Science
  • National Park Service
  • sara_melena@nps.gov

Tara Teel - Associate Professor

Kirsten Leong - Social Scientist

(formerly with the National Park Service when she helped initiate this project; she continued to contribute her expertise to the project as-needed)

Graduate student contributors:

Want to work with us?

We’re open to collaborations with individual parks (national, state, and county), organizations, and businesses that are interested in improving communication around human-wildlife conflict issues.

Colorado State University offers wordclass expertise in this area with our Center for Science Communication in the Department of Journalism and Media Communication. This new center is under development and formalization but our faculty are already leading numerous projects in partnerships with the National Park Service, United States Department of Agriculture, United States Forest Service, and United States Geological Survey.

Dr. Katie Abrams, Assistant Professor
Department of Journalism and Media Communication, Colorado State University

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