Wildlife harassment charge for woman in moose video

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Wildlife harassment charge for woman in moose video
Local | March 2, 2020

Sawyer D’Argonne
Summit Daily

BRECKENRIDGE — State officials are once again asking residents and visitors to leave wildlife alone after a video of a woman harassing a moose in Breckenridge went viral late last week.

“We’ve seen the video, and we’ve been in touch with our local Summit County officers,” said Lyle Sidener, an area wildlife manager with Colorado Parks and Wildlife for Summit and Grand counties. “Obviously, it’s a very scary situation, and the video reflects that what this person was doing was not in the moose’s best interest or hers.”

In the most recent example of wildlife harassment caught on camera, a woman is seen approaching a moose from behind and touching it as onlookers call for her to leave the animal alone. The moose then turned around and stomped the ground, nearly kicking the woman.

Anna Stonehouse, an Aspen resident who caught the incident on tape, said it played out at about 4:45 p.m. Thursday afternoon near the Breckenridge Transfer Station on Watson Avenue, not far from Main Street.

While some have since postulated that the woman was trying to distract the moose from approaching another woman on the sidewalk, Stonehouse said the moments leading up to the conflict suggest otherwise.

“She was following it across the street, clearly going in to harass it,” Stonehouse said. “I’ve been hearing that, ‘Oh, she was trying to help the older lady back there.’ That was not the case. She was aggressively beelining, following this moose and smacked its butt. … It was shocking to see it unfold. I thought she was going to get trampled to death. And I’m glad we didn’t have to witness that.”

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