Montana Mountain Lion Poachers Caught, Sentenced
When you get caught poaching, sentences can be pretty severe. Especially in a national park.
Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks authorities were very active in a case in which three men from Livingston violated the Lacey Act in Yellowstone National. The Lacey Act prohibits hunting in the park.
Austin Peterson, Trey Juhnke and Corbin Simmons crossed a park's marked boundary to hunt mountain lions. Each hunter admitted to shooting the lion and transporting the carcass back to their vehicle. But then one of the men falsely claimed to have harvested the animal north of the park boundary in Montana, which according to the state quota system would deny a legal hunter to opportunity to legally harvest a lion. Didn't happen!
The three men's sentences varied slightly, but in a nutshell: $1,700 in restitution and fees, and serve three years of unsupervised probation, during which time they are banned from hunting, fishing and trapping worldwide.
Congratulations to Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks and Yellowstone National Park rangers for their thorough work and tenacity to solve this crime.