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Men get prison, fines in grizzly killing


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POCATELLO, Idaho (AP) -- Two Idaho men were sentenced to prison and fines Wednesday in the 2002 killing of a yearling grizzly bear in eastern Idaho and destroying a radio tracking collar attached to the cub's mother.

In January, Tim Brown of Island Park pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for shooting the young bear near Sawtelle Peak and Brad Hoopes of St. Anthony pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for destroying government property, the radio collar. The collar was removed from the yearling's mother, which had been killed the previous day by Dan Walters of Kentucky, who pleaded guilty last year and was ordered to pay $15,000 restitution.

Wednesday, Brown was sentenced to three months in prison for killing the cub, fined $1,000 and ordered to pay restitution of $19,300. Hoopes was sentenced to two months in prison, fined $500 and ordered to pay $500 restitution. Both men also lost their hunting privileges for two years.

The grizzlies were protected under the federal Endangered Species Act as a threatened species. U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill found that the yearling grizzly was not shot in self-defense as the two men had claimed.

Officials said the adult bear, known as number 346 by the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team, which tagged it in 1999, was the only radio-tagged grizzly living in Idaho and one of only a few resident female grizzlies in the state. Conservationists had hoped that her cub would extend the species range westward.

Walters shot the 300-pound, 7-year-old mother bear with a bow on Sept. 23, 2002.

The next day, Brown and Hoopes went with Walters to search for the downed bear, which Walters said was a black bear.

Brown said that when they found the dead bear, the yearling charged them. According to court documents, Hoopes fired an arrow in self-defense.

Brown said that the arrow wounded the yearling, which they afterward found bawling, and that he then shot it to put it out of its misery -- an account disputed by Scott Bragonier, a special agent with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Bragonier said it did not appear the yearling had ever been wounded by an arrow and that it would have been old enough to survive on its own.

Other archery hunters in the area found the dead bears and notified authorities.

The restitution paid by the two men will go to the Yellowstone Association, a group of state and federal wildlife agencies in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming that distributes money to the interagency team working on grizzly recovery in the Northern Rockies.


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