The National Park Service announced Friday it was barring drones from Yosemite, citing as reasons everything from wilderness protection to climbers' safety. But the cited legal basis for the regulation, which carries up to six months in jail and a $5,000 fine, doesn't even apply to drones, according to experts.

There's no doubt the beauty of Yosemite and other national parks could be undermined if their horizons were clogged with buzzing drones filming everything below. If the park service has its way, there will be no Ansel Adams in this Digital Age. The park service currently regulates machines like snowmobile and off-road vehicles, but not even those are banned outright. And so park authorities, after noticing "an increase in visitors using drones within park boundaries," rested its ban on a section of the Code of Federal Regulations that some view as far afield from drones.

"The National Park Service has just decided, based on a very absurd interpretation of their regulations, to ban the use of drones," Gregory McNeal, a Pepperdine University legal scholar, said in a telephone interview.

The law in question, the park service says, states "delivering or retrieving a person or object by parachute, helicopter, or other airborne means, except in emergencies involving public safety or serious property loss, or pursuant to the terms and conditions of a permit" is illegal. This, the service says in a statement, "applies to drones of all shapes and sizes."

Charles Warren, an environmental attorney with Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel in New York, is skeptical.

"I think it's a questionable interpretation, frankly," he said in a telephone interview. "The reason is the drone is not delivering or retrieving a person. I think it's meant to apply to aircraft and gliders where people are actually in them. I think this would be difficult to uphold on a serious challenge."

The announced ban is so new that there are no reported citations involving drones at Yosemite yet. The park service did not return repeated calls for comment.

Both Warren and McNeal said that the National Park Service has the power to ban drones. The agency, however, cannot just cite an agency regulation willy-nilly to make that happen. Instead, they argue it must first hold hearings and consider public comments.

This new dispute is just the latest chapter in an ongoing tussle between drone enthusiasts and regulators invoking what many experts and even one court has suggested are insufficient or invalid laws to crack down on the growing use of small, unmanned aircraft across the nation. Regulators' attacks on the commercial use of drones have included everything from drone journalism to a non-profit search-and-rescue outfit using drones just a few feet big. The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International maintains the US is losing billions and thousands of jobs because of the government's relentless attack on drones. The group reported that ending the uncertainty over drone use could add 34,000 manufacturing jobs and 70,000 new jobs in three years with an overall impact of $82 billion.