Bison at Badlands National Park, or any other park, should be viewed from a distance/NPS

Long before two visitors to Yellowstone National Park felt compelled to come to the aid of a seemingly abandoned bison calf, a National Park Service employee at Badlands National Park went a step further when he came upon a sickly calf and decided to take it home.

According to an Office of Inspector General investigation, the unidentified supervisory natural resource specialist at Badlands took the bison calf to his home in May 2010, against Park Service regulations. The calf later died, said the OIG report, which did not indicate if the employee thought he/she could nurse the calf back to health.

"We discovered, however, that the former Badlands deputy superintendent, who was the acting superintendent at the time, authorized the buffalo’s (sic) removal. We determined that removing the buffalo from the park violated NPS policy and federal and state law," the report released Wednesday said. "The local police chief chose not to cite the supervisory natural resource specialist for the misdemeanor violation and the U.S. Attorney’s Office declined prosecution."

In the Yellowstone case this year, a Canadian man was worried the calf he came upon would end up as "road kill" if he did nothing. In the end, the calf wound up dead just the same, as its mother abandoned it and it "was continually approaching visitors and vehicles" and so rangers put it down.

The man was cited for picking up and disturbing the calf, and fined $110 plus a processing fee of $25.