The prosecutor who convicted a father and son who shot and killed a hibernating black bear and her cubs, said he could not understand what was going through the men’s minds when they killed the animals.
Earlier this year, Andrew Renner of Wasilla, Alaska, was sentenced to three months in jail and barred from hunting for a decade, after pleading guilty to killing the animals on Esther Island, in Prince William Sound. His son, Owen Renner, 18, received a 30-day suspended sentence and was required to perform community service.
The two men believed there was no way their actions would be discovered. But a video camera set up by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and the US Forest Service as part of study, and located opposite the tree where the bears were hibernating, captured their actions and statements.
This week, video of the incident was released the the Humane Society of the United States, to global outcry. It showed the men shouting at the bear and its cubs, as the youngsters shrieked in terror.
Assistant attorney general Aaron Peterson, who prosecuted the case, said it was the most egregious case of poaching of bear cubs he had ever dealt with.
Speaking from Anchorage, Alaska, he it was important the two men had received stiff penalties by the court and that their actions had been recognised as poaching.
Asked what he believed was going through the men’s minds when they carried out the killing of the animals, he said: “I could not try to get inside their minds.”
He said most hunters he had spoken to had been angry when they saw the video and learned what the Renners had done.
“Nobody was more outraged than the hunters. Ethical hunters get as upset about this as everybody else,” he said. “It’s not hunting, it’s poaching. That sense of outrage is still there.”
