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An Illinois woman will spend four days in jail and be barred from entering Yellowstone National Park for a year for not straying from a grizzly bear and three cubs during her visit to the park in May.
Woman, Samantha Dehring, 25, of Carol Stream, Ill., Has pleaded guilty to “voluntarily staying, approaching and photographing wildlife within 100 yards,” US attorney Bob Murray said Thursday. Acting District of Wyoming.
During a visit to Roaring Mountain in Yellowstone on May 10, Ms. Dehring and others saw a grizzly bear with three cubs, according to the U.S. prosecutor’s office. Others in the park walked away from the bears and returned to their vehicles, but Ms. Dehring did not back down and took pictures of the animals, the U.S. prosecutor’s office said.
Ms Dehring appeared before U.S. magistrate Mark L. Carman on Wednesday, who sentenced her to a brief prison term and banned the park. She was also sentenced to one year of unsupervised probation and was fined $ 1,000 and paid $ 1,000 for community service to the Yellowstone Forever Wildlife Protection Fund.
“The park is not a zoo where animals can be observed in the safety of a fenced enclosure,” Murray said in a statement, adding that in their natural habitat, wild animals will respond when they feel threat.
“Approaching a grizzly sow with cubs is absolutely stupid,” he said. “Here, it is by sheer luck that Dehring is an accused and not a disabled tourist.”
Ms Dehring also faced another count of intentionally feeding, touching, teasing, scaring or disturbing wildlife, but it was dismissed.
In a statement, Ethan Morris, a lawyer representing Ms Dehring, said she had “shown great remorse and regret for her actions throughout this matter.”
Mr Morris added that Ms Dehring had suffered “constant online abuse” since the video of her encounter with the bears was posted online.
“While we understand that the court must send a message to deter others from violating park regulations, it is unfortunate that the district attorney’s office chose to choose Ms. Dehring,” Morris said. “Nonetheless, we accept the court’s judgment and award and hope this case provides an opportunity for visitors and park staff to take action to prevent such a situation from happening again.”
Ms Dehring’s visit to Yellowstone came at a time when people were exploring national parks at an unprecedented rate. Yellowstone set visitation records in May, welcoming 483,159 visitors, as other popular parks like Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona and Joshua Tree National Park in California also drew large crowds.
Yellowstone National Park officials declined to comment on the arrest.
Yellowstone regulations prohibit visitors from “intentionally staying near or near wildlife, including nesting birds, at a distance that bothers or moves the animal.”
Visitors are advised to stay 25 meters from large animals such as bison, elk, bighorn sheep, deer, moose and coyotes and at least 100 meters from bears and wolves.
In April, a 40-year-old man was attacked by a grizzly bear just west of Yellowstone. Rescuers arrived to help the man, but he later died from his injuries.
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