Scranton’s commitment to wildlife center faulted

BY LAURA LEGERE
STAFF WRITER
Published: Monday, April 06, 2009
Updated: Monday, April 6, 2009 3:51 PM EDT
Second of three parts

Genesis Wildlife Center moved to Nay Aug Park seven years ago in what seemed to be a perfect marriage of circumstances: the city of Scranton had a long-vacant zoo building, and Margaret Miller, the center’s director, had wild animals.

At the time, city officials hailed the return of exotic animals to the park a decade after the Nay Aug Zoo had been shuttered. The city agreed to pay the utility bills and let Ms. Miller use the building for free. There was no written contract, no rent, nothing to prevent Genesis from pulling out or the city asking the center to leave, said Mayor Chris Doherty, who helped instigate the move.

“Seven years ago, there was literally nothing else in the park,” he said. “So we fixed up the building and we had the wildlife center come down.”

But people who voice concerns about the health and safety of the center’s animals, staff and visitors say the current arrangement between the city and Genesis is less a convenient match than a recipe for substandard animal care.

With the partnership, the city gets to offer citizens and visitors an attraction that approximates a zoo, without shouldering the funding or responsibility required for a real zoo, they say.

Ms. Miller considers her center a “sanctuary,” a place where “throwaway” abused, abandoned and confiscated exotic wildlife can have a “home filled with love and caring.”

But between 2005 and 2007, inspectors with the U.S. Department of Agriculture found 17 examples of how the center was out of compliance with minimum standards of animal care defined in the Animal Welfare Act, including regulations pertaining to animal diet, veterinary care and public safety.

Beatrice Heveran, a new area resident who has served on the board of Zoo New England, has been an outspoken critic of the center since she first visited it.

“What the mayor’s got, he’s pointing to as an attraction,” she said. “It is a cesspool. It is an infested public disaster. The citizens can get very hurt there.”

Lisa Wathne, a captive exotic animals specialist with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, said many cities provide funding to local zoos that are accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, which sets a rigorous standard of care that is much higher than basic USDA requirements.

But “for a city to be providing funding to what is really a roadside zoo or one person’s personal little project is pretty unusual,” she said. “It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”

Ms. Miller defends her care of the animals, pointing to the vitamin-enriched meat she feeds her big cats and the fresh fruits and vegetables the primates eat every day. But she admits the partnership did not work out as she had hoped.

“I was excited about it,” she said last week as she leaned against a glass wall in the center that separates visitors from cages of monkeys, lemurs and a lynx. “I thought, I have these great animals, they have a building, why not let people enjoy it? That’s what I thought. And it didn’t turn out that way.”

Ms. Miller said the city promised her a new building for the animals, help with fundraising and an operating budget. The city increased the center’s annual funding from $20,000 to $50,000 in 2005, and the allocation remains her only source of steady funding.

While the city Parks Department is responsible for maintaining many aspects of the facility, Ms. Miller said she has to “fight for every little thing I get,” including the recent installation of a fence to partition two young tigers from a cougar that has no claws or fangs.

In 2005, the city began to investigate the possibility of building a full-scale zoo in Nay Aug Park and used a $175,000 Commonwealth Financing Authority grant for a feasibility study. But, according to the mayor, such a zoo would cost $10 million to build and $500,000 a year to operate.

“That’s just too expensive for us,” he said. “I don’t think a city of our size could handle something like that. It would be too big of a responsibility.”

Currently, the city has no plans to expand Genesis Wildlife Center or dedicate more funding to its operation. The mayor also said he does not immediately plan to cut the center’s funding, but he added that “somewhere along the line we’re going to have to be tightening our belts, so we’re going to have to make decisions at that time.”

When asked about Genesis’ noncompliance issues, Mr. Doherty said the city is “aware of everything. We study this all the time.” He also said cited problems have been fixed.

“I know there’s a tremendous amount of love there given to the animals,” he said and added that representatives from national zoos who have visited the center agree that “there’s a lot of love and care.”

“It’s a wildlife center, it’s not a zoo,” he said. “They just try to take care of animals.”

Read more from the Concrete Jungle series

Contact the writer: llegere@timesshamrock.com
http://thetimes-tribune.com/articles/2009/04/06/news/sc_times_trib.20090406.a.pg1.tt06genesis_s1.2421473_top2.txt