Poachers may want to avoid Yellowstone National Park
this fall. Rangers have begun photographing the park’s most
spectacular wildlife so that pictures are available if the animals
are killed and their heads mounted as trophies. “This way, if we
find that poachers have gotten one of these animals, we know
exactly what to look for and what to tell other agencies to look
for,” Pat Ozment, a Yellowstone law enforcement specialist, told
the Billings Gazette. Since elk are the most-poached animal in the
park, rangers are photographing all bull elk with antlers of at
least five points. Last fall, thieves killed two bull elk only a
few hundred yards from a main road. This year, on Aug. 27, a
1,500-pound bull bison was found killed and
decapitated.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Yellowstone makes bragging hazardous ….
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