Officials shamed park visitors with the announcement in an effort to combat littering in the national park which can have a damaging impact on the hot springs. The Ear Spring geyser ejected a wide range of items including a child’s dummy from the Thirties and a countless number of coins. Authorities at Yellowstone National Park said people often believe that when something is thrown into one of the geysers, it is melted down and evaporated due to the intense heat.
However, this is evidently not the case and rangers warn that the littering is messing up the park’s delicate ecosystem.
Yellowstone officials said in a post on Facebook: “On September 15, 2018 Ear Spring erupted and ejected lots of decades-old trash.
“Foreign objects can damage hot springs and geysers. The next time Ear Spring erupts we hope it’s nothing but natural rocks and water.
“You can help by never throwing anything into Yellowstone’s thermal features!”
The US Geological Survey’s Yellowstone Volcano Observatory wrote: “The eruption ejected not only rocks, but also material that had fallen or been thrown into the geyser in years past, like coins, old cans, and other human debris.
“The last known similar-sized eruption of the spring was in 1957, although smaller eruptions occurred as recently as 2004.
“As a result of these changes, Yellowstone National Park has closed portions of the boardwalk.”
One park ranger told Four States website that the littering is ruining the national park.
The ranger said: “You might think that if you toss something in a hot spring or in a geyser that it disappears, but it doesn’t disappear.
“It stays in that and what normally happens is you can actually plug up a feature and kill the feature.
“And that’s happened in many places in the park.”