Three men handed jail sentences after careless, drunken act in a national park
Three tourists who were filmed getting too close to feeding brown bears in the wild have been handed prison sentences and the additional punishment of thousands of dollars worth of fines.
David Engelman, 56, from Sandia Park, New Mexico, and Ronald J. Engelman, 54, and Steven Thomas, 30, both from King Salmon, Alaska, pleaded guilty to leaving the trail in Alaska’s Katmai Park to get closer to the animals.
The men were identified after they were captured on a park webcam as they waded out into a salmon run to take selfies as the bears were feeding.
All three men were fined $US3000 each ($A4260) and given a year probation. David and Ronald Engelman were sentenced to one week in prison, while Steven Thomas received a 10-day sentence.
In addition, each man is prohibited from entering any national park for one year.
Judge Matthew Scoble called their behaviour “drunken capering, and a slap in the face to those who were there”.
The proceeds from the fines would go towards the Katmai Conservancy, a non-profit that looks after the running of the park.
The incident happened in Autumn of 2018, causing outage. The men were eventually identified by the National Park Service Investigative Services, with help of the livestream footage.
“The conduct of these three individuals not only endangered other visitors and wildlife officers at Brooks Falls, they also potentially endangered the life of the bears,” lawyer S. Lane Tucker said.
Had the incident resulted in death or injury, Mr Tucker argued it would have had a huge impact on tourism to the area and the animals would have had to be killed.
The National Park Service were alerted to the incident by viewers of their ‘bear cam’ which was being broadcast live to YouTube.
Images: YouTube