Roughly once a week, sometimes more often, a drone pilot uses the airshed of Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park to launch his hobby, only to be told it's not permitted. While most say OK and go away, a law enforcement ranger used his taser the other day to subdue one pilot who tried to flee into the night.
There are conflicting reports over whether the ranger used excessive force in arresting 35-year-old Travis Ray Sanders, who is to appear before a federal judge in July on charges of interferring with agency operations and illegally operating an aircraft in the park, Hawai'i Volcanoes spokeswoman Jessica Ferracane said Wednesday.
“We have witnesses that we’ve interviewed and actually called me to say that wasn’t the case," she said of the excessive force claims during a phone call.
Although the National Park Service banned drones in all 407 units of the National Park System last year, drone pilots continue to head to parks to fly. The small motorized drones are perfect for carrying equally small cameras high overhead to capture unique photographs of park settings, such as Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone National Park or, perhaps, the large lava lake that is steadily rising at the summit of Kīlauea volcano.
Mr. Sanders, of Pahoa, apparently wanted to capture images of the lava lake last Saturday night when he encountered the ranger on an overlook crowded with "hundreds of people" at the Jaggar Museum, the park spokeswoman said. The ranger, after shining his flashlight into his own face and identifying himself, asked Mr. Sanders to land the drone. At that point, according to park reports, the man became "belligerent and confrontational."
When he refused to identify himself, the ranger decided to arrest him; at that point Mr. Travis ran off through the crowd, according to the park. The ranger chased him and used his taser to stop him, Ms. Ferracane said.
According to a report in Hawaii News Now, Mr. Sanders claimed that, "A guy approached me in the dark and said, 'Bring it down!' and he was very angry. I had no idea he was a ranger. He sounded very angry, confrontational -- like he wanted to fight -- and I didn't really want to stick around for it so I just told him, 'I don't have ID and I'm leaving'."
Drones in the past year or so have been a headache for some national park officials. In Yellowstone one actually crashed into Grand Prismatic Spring; it hasn't been recovered. At Zion National Park in Utah another was sighted harassing wildlife.
One drone hobbyist who reached out to the Traveler counters, however, that their activity is safe when compared to many others and that the Park Service is finding a problem where none exists. Areas such as Grand Prismatic Spring could be placed off limits for drone flights, rather than simply banning the aircraft throughout the park, he said.
