Bear selfie tourists fined, prison time for reckless behaviour

Three men were unwittingly caught on a live Park webcam, taunting the bears. Photo / Screenshot, NPR

Three tourists who were filmed getting far too close to feeding brown bears have been handed prison sentences and thousands of dollars in fines.

David Engelman, 56, Ronald J. Engelman, 54, and Steven Thomas, 30, pleaded guilty to leaving the trail in Alaska's Katmai Park to get closer to the animals.

Unwittingly, the men were captured on a park web camera wading out into a salmon run to take pictures with the bears.

A release by the District of Alaska's US Attorney's Office said the wandering tourists would pay a total of $9,000 "for illegally leaving the Brooks Falls viewing platform and entering a closed area of the Brooks River at Brooks Falls." They would each serve between a week and ten days in prison with a year's parole.

Judge Matthew Scoble called their behaviour "drunken capering, and a slap in the face to those who were there."

Fines would go towards the Katmai Conservancy, a non-profit that looks after the running of the park.

The incident which happened in Autumn 2018 caused outrage and the men were eventually identified by the National Park Service Investigative Services, with help of the web camera footage which had been broadcasting online.

"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," said Attorney S. Lane Tucker for Alaska.

Had the indecent resulted in death or injury, Tucker argued it would have huge impact on tourism to the area and the animals would have to be destroyed.

The National Park Service were alerted to the incident by viewers of their 'bear cam' which was being broadcast live to YouTube. The men were later also identified on CCTV at a local bar, according to a NPS spokesperson.

"These individuals behaved carelessly and put themselves at great risk. Brown bears are fierce, territorial predators, especially when concentrated in order to feed on migrating salmon," said Mark Sturm, superintendent of Katmai National Park and Preserve. "Things could have easily ended very badly."