Video of Alaska poachers illegally killing mother bear and cubs made public

Surveillance footage that captured father and son poachers illegally killing a black bear and her two cubs in Alaska last year has been made public this week through the Humane Society.

The bears were being monitored by the U.S. Forest Service and and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game as part of a study when they were killed.

{mosads}According to a local NBC station, the Alaska Department of Public Safety released footage of the April 2018 incident following a successful public records request filed by the nonprofit organization.

In the disturbing clip, which has since been viewed 300,000 times on Facebook and YouTube, Owen Renner, 18, and Andrew Renner, 41, can be seen firing into the bears’ dean, killing first the mother and then the shrieking newborn bear cubs.

“Would you look at that,” the elder Renner can be seen saying after he and his son pulled the mother bear’s body from the den. The men later high-five over the bear’s carcass. 

“They’ll never be able to link it to us, I don’t think,” Owen Renner says in the clip before posing for a photo with the bear.

The two men can also be seen in another clip returning to the same area days later appearing to retrieve their shell casings and dispose of the dead cubs, according to the Humane Society. 

The two were charged in August with killing the bears.

Andrew Renner was sentenced to five months in jail with two months suspended in January. The District Court for the State of Alaska also ruled he would be required to pay $9,000 of a $20,000 fine and will have his hunting license suspended for 10 years.

His son was sentenced to suspended jail time and community service, having to take a hunter safety course and having his hunting license suspended for two years.