A man from the Seattle area is facing federal charges after, prosecutors allege, he threw a rock at an endangered Hawaiian monk seal.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Hawaii said in a release Wednesday that Igor Lytvynchuk, 38, chucked the stone at the female seal, named Lani, as the marine mammal frolicked along the shoreline in Lahaina on the Hawaiian island of Maui on May 5.
The rock did not hit Lani, but she did rear up and react to the disturbance, then lay immobile for a while. Witnesses contacted local law enforcement and confronted Mr. Lytvynchuk, who told them he was “rich enough to pay the fines,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
“What he was picking up was like a rock the size of a coconut. It wasn’t no small rock. It was the size of a coconut. And he threw it right, directly aiming towards the monk seal’s head,” witness and Maui resident Kaylee Schnitzer, 18, told Honolulu’s KHNL.
Only 1,600 of the seals exist in the wild, and they’re protected by the federal Endangered Species Act, federal Marine Mammal Protection Act and Hawaii state laws, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service.
Mr. Lytvynchuk, a resident of Covington, 20 miles southeast of Seattle, was arrested by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration agents near Washington’s biggest city on Wednesday. He was hit with two charges related to harassing a Hawaiian monk seal.
If he’s convicted, Mr. Lytvynchuk would face up to one year in prison for each charge, plus a fine of up to $50,000 under the Endangered Species Act and another fine of up to $20,000 under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
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