It what could have ended in tragedy and 7-year old girl from New York was revived and listed in satisfactory condition by doctors after having been nearly electrocuted from touching a metal plate, charged with 110-volt house current used to ward off bears.
George Kately of Sparta, NJ, operates the historic Delaware View House on leased property inside the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. He was subsequently arrested and charged with maintaining a hazardous device on federal land and disorderly conduct.
I certainly wish the best and a speedy recovery for the young girl.
An Additional Note:
Upon investing into this story of a young girl somehow coming in contact with a electrified device used to ward off black bears, I visited the web site of the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. I found a page about black bears.
It offers much of the same information generally found about steering clear of bears and what to do to help prevent bears from bothering you. However, there is a section that I found that I don’t recall having seen in other places regarding bears. Here’s what it said:
Don’t Kill a Bear!
If you feed a bear, or leave food around for the bear to find, you “teach” the bear to approach people. Bears that approach people can be easily hit by cars or shot by poachers. “Problem bears” that annoy or threaten people must be trapped and removed from the park, or even destroyed.
People feeding bears is also a serious safety problem! If you feed a bear, you can be fined up to $5,000 and jailed for up to 6 months.
While the notion that a poacher can, for all intent, kill a bear anytime they want to, (isn’t that what poaching is?) I have never seen an official declaration that puts the blame of poaching partly back on the shoulders of someone who feeds bears.
A question I have is whether there is a problem with poaching bears inside the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area? I assume there must be otherwise why does it become necessary to warn users of the park that if they feed or cause to be fed, bears, they are partly responsible for a bear to be poached?
Tom Remington
