Caught in a Rut

There are some areas here where the eagles come to live through the winter.  These places (one is a park) are clearly marked off with signs, asking people to stay out of them during the height of eagle season.  Here is one:

Hard to miss a sign like that.

There are dozens and dozens of places up and down the river here to view eagles, so if a couple of areas get marked off, it's not a huge deal.  You just choose some other spot.  There are plenty nearby.

And yet, just five days after the end of the time restriction, I found this:

On the other side of that snowbank is a trail head near the river.  That big sign on the left is the same one shown earlier in this post.  It clearly asks people to stay out of the woods here.  And yet, from this picture it is plain to see that many people were obviously taking this trail for many days prior to March 15.  So many people ignored the sign that they cut a deep path through the snowbank.

How many people did it take to make that cut?  I don't know, but I do know one thing.  It was made one person at a time - each one making a choice to ignore the sign.

Will there be long-term, lasting damage to the eagle population?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  That is not really what gets me here.  What gets me is the fact that so many people felt that they were the exception to the rule.  That mentality is a real problem.