Suicides Up in National Parks

'08 a big year for people offing themselves in pretty places
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 2, 2009 12:51 PM CST
Suicides Up in National Parks
Mountain bikers explore the rock formations at Canyonlands National Park in Utah, where a 65-year-old Biology professor disappeared, saying he was returning 'body and soul to nature.'   (Getty Images)

A newly unemployed businessman shot himself in the chest in Glacier National Park. A 46-year-old carpenter with cancer climbed into a canoe in the Everglades and never returned. A 49-year-old builder left a note blaming the economy before killing himself in Georgia’s Kennesaw Mountains. They were just some of at least 33 people who killed themselves in national parks in 2008, the highest number in recent years, reports the AP.

“It's some place where, toward the end of someone's life, when they're feeling a total sense of despondency, they want to return to a place of natural beauty ... for their final moments,” theorized the chief of ranger operations at Glacier National Park in Montana. (More suicide stories.)

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