First ticket given to a drone user in Grand Teton National Park

Other drone users just warned-

What rangers saw as a bad attitude by an illegal drone user in Grand Teton National Park resulted in the first ticket for drone use in that national park. According to the Jackson Hole News the man had got his drone stuck in a tree in the Gros Ventre Campground. When rangers came to provide “education” to the man with the stuck drone, not a ticket, the man’s behavior got him a ticket for “disorderly conduct.”  Other would be drone users in the Park got a lecture rather than a ticket, although someone didn’t get the message and flew a drone at a bison.

Drone use is now temporarily illegal in all units of the National Park System while the Park Service devises rules. Many people and groups want the temporary ban to become permanent with few to no exceptions. A few exceptions are currently allowed.

The News article says Yellowstone Park has so far been drone free.

We have written two earlier articles on drones and wildlife and the drone ban in the Parks. See Park Service bans private drones. June 21, 2014. Drones: both a menace and savior to wildlife. May 27, 2014.

The Jackson Hole News article gives a variety of information about recent drone use. Despite ban in parks, drones are in the air. Jackson Hole News and Guide. 


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Comments

  1. ramses09 Avatar
    ramses09

    9/11 started it – now the drones WILL be the downfall of this country.

  2. ramses09 Avatar
    ramses09

    In my opinion – how in the hell do you regulate drone use in a National Park system??? You can’t. You won’t be able to.

    1. Nancy Avatar
      Nancy

      Sharp shooters 🙂

      1. WM Avatar
        WM

        Rewards?

    2. JB Avatar
  3. Ida Lupines Avatar
    Ida Lupines

    Good! I hate ‘attitude’.

  4. WM Avatar
    WM

    Rewards?

  5. Ralph Maughan Avatar
    Ralph Maughan

    I wonder use of firearms to shoot down illegal or sort of illegal drones might be a way of using firearms legally?

    1. Amre Avatar
      Amre

      I don’t think thats the most practical option.

    2. Jake Jenson Avatar
      Jake Jenson

      Time for defenses against drones technology becoming available for the public mostly consisting of signal jamming or blocking technology. Drop the invasive drone then give it a good stomping. Another toy one might need at the TH or campground? I’d be against shooting at them because where does that bullet end up?

  6. Larry Avatar
    Larry

    The stupid congressional approval for firearms in national parks will come back to bite when someone whacks a drone out of the sky with a lodgepole pine limb and the drone owner is packing and only has half the bottle left.

  7. WM Avatar
    WM

    Speaking of drones and national parks, we just returned from a quick trip to Olympic National Park (90% of this NP is designated Wilderness) to look at the Perseid Meteor showers, which are at their best this week, before the moon gets bright. Drove to the top of Hurricane Ridge which reaches deep within the Park (but is not in Wilderness), and mostly had the mountain to ourselves. Two other cars and it looked like there might have been more smooching than star gazing in one of them).

    Several of the long exposure photos we took had strange dots – looked like somebody just took the ….. button and left it down, in white across a black star lit sky. Well, we got some good meteor trails, but also some satellites and airplanes with their darns strobes doing the “……..” business. Maybe we could zap them too. And, when we say wilderness, “untrammeled by man,” I guess the heavens are an exception (as well as about 1,000 feet above wilderness which, I think is the FAA rule).

    1. Louise Kane Avatar

      nice story…sounds better than my weekend

    1. Ida Lupines Avatar
      Ida Lupines

      I’m willing to put up with them if they will catch poachers!

  8. Immer Treue Avatar
    Immer Treue
  9. Jeff Martin Avatar
    Jeff Martin

    Rx; 12ga,3 1/2″ mag with non-tox # 2s

Author

Dr. Ralph Maughan is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University. He was a Western Watersheds Project Board Member off and on for many years, and was also its President for several years. For a long time he produced Ralph Maughan’s Wolf Report. He was a founder of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. He and Jackie Johnson Maughan wrote three editions of “Hiking Idaho.” He also wrote “Beyond the Tetons” and “Backpacking Wyoming’s Teton and Washakie Wilderness.” He created and is the administrator of The Wildlife News.

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