"To have a drone come into view can obviously be distracting and dangerous," said Howard Levitt, a spokesman for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, recalling the incident. "This has been a problem in the park."
He spoke after the National Park Service weighed in Friday on the sometimes prickly issue of when technology goes too far, ordering an outright ban on drones in the nation's 401 parks.
The order clears up confusion over the legality of the unmanned devices on parkland, where cameras outfitted on the aircraft have increasingly taken to the skies to capture breathtaking footage of the continent's most dazzling real estate.
Rangers at places like Yosemite National Park and Golden Gate National Recreation Area have cracked down on pilots whose flights became disruptive, but they've done it mostly under the pretense that the activity was threatening public safety or harassing wildlife.
Friday's order directs each park, within 60 days, to put a drone prohibition on the books. Over the next year or two, the National Park Service will seek to create an official systemwide ban. Agency spokesman Jeffrey Olson said officials wanted to act before the problem spun out of control.
"We've been getting calls and complaints for a year," he said.
Drones have been spotted buzzing the cliff-side faces of the presidents at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. They've crashed into the walls of the Grand Canyon in Arizona. One even pestered a herd of bighorn sheep at Zion in Utah, prompting the young to be separated from their parents.
At Golden Gate National Recreation Area, flights are frequent at Ocean Beach, Crissy Field, Baker Beach and Fort Mason's Great Meadow, officials said. In the past, rangers have often asked visitors to ground their craft.
Under the new directive, model airplane flights will still be allowed at designated sites within the recreation area: Fort Funston and Muir Beach Overlook.
The popularity of drones has increased over the past year as their price dropped and their capabilities soared. The devices range in size from a bird to a small plane and often carry specialized cameras to take aerial video and photographs.
In May, Yosemite began getting tough on fliers. The park announced a campaign to rid the park of drones, warning visitors who used them and threatening fines if the practice persisted.
"There are so many things wrong with it," said Yosemite spokesman Scott Gediman. "It's just not conducive to what we're trying to do here in Yosemite."
But a ban does not come as good news to everyone.
Colin Guinn, a vice president at consumer drone maker 3-D Robotics Inc. in Berkeley, said he would rather see people punished for irresponsibly using drones, not simply for flying them.
"I feel like putting blanket bans on new technology is unfortunate," he said. "A lot of this harkens back to punishing the technology."
©2014 the San Francisco Chronicle
