Actor Pierce Brosnan maintains he did not walk in closed thermal areas at Yellowstone National Park/NPS file
Actor Pierce Brosnan through his attorneys has entered a plea of not guilty to walking in closed thermal areas of Yellowstone National Park, negating a court appearance for next week.
The two citations filed against the James Bond actor in the U.S. District of Wyoming carried few details, other than that the offenses occurred on November 1, 2023, on the Mammoth Terraces near park headquarters. The actor’s plea was entered January 4. A status conference via telephone for the matter has been scheduled for February 20 before U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephanie A Hambrick.
Among the many movies Brosnan has appeared in was Dante’s Peak, a 1997 film in which he played a volcanologist investigating a dormant stratovolcano coming to life.
Yellowstone holds the world’s greatest collection of thermal features, with some 10,000. The park enables safe viewing of hot springs, geysers, mudpots, and fumaroles through the use of boardwalks, defined trails, and patrolling rangers. Over the years, numerous people have suffered injury or death for walking off boardwalks or designated trails into the park’s thermal areas. Park warnings stress that the ground in hydrothermal areas is fragile and thin, and there is scalding water just below the surface.
Back in July 2022 a park visitor somehow fell into Abyss Pool, a hot spring with a temperature of 140 degrees Fahrenheit. All that was found was a foot floating on the surface.
In June 2016 an Oregon man who wanted to see just how hot one feature in the Norris Geyser Basin was died when he fell into a spring with a temperature of nearly 200 degrees Fahrenheit. No remains were recovered.
