The Yellowstone National Park tourists who loaded a baby bison into an SUV last month say they thought the calf was already abandoned and believed they were doing a “nice thing” for the animal, which was later euthanized.

“It was the way it was presented, it was like we didn’t know what we were doing,” one of the men, Shamash Kassam, told ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

The media, Kassam said, reported that “we picked up the bison because it was shivering – that was not the reason why. We picked up the bison because it was abandoned by the herd.”

He also noted: “We thought we were doing a nice thing by taking it to the rangers.”

A photo of the calf in the SUV sparked outrage in the wake of the early-May incident, with the actions of Shamash Kassam and his son, Shakeel, widely criticized.

In a news release, the park cautioned that “interference by people” can cause mothers to reject their young. The park also said that the calf the Kassams had picked up had to be killed.

“In this case, park rangers tried repeatedly to reunite the newborn bison calf with the herd,” a Yellowstone statement said. “These efforts failed. The bison calf was later euthanized because it was abandoned and causing a dangerous situation by continually approaching people and cars along the roadway.”

ABC News reported that the father and son thought the calf would have died if they hadn’t stepped in.

“We didn’t have the heart to, kind of, just leave it there and let it suffer, you know, as the darkness descended,” Shakeel Kassam told ABC News.

“I thought it was going to be a happy ending, and the calf was going to be integrated with another herd, and everything was going to be fine,” he said.

Shamash Kassam was fined after pleading guilty to a wildlife disturbance citation. As part of his probation, he was also told that he “shall not pick up any more bison.”

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