Note: This article is subject to legal complaint by Marineland.

NIAGARA FALLS, ONT.—After an extensive Toronto Star investigation into the treatment of sea life at Marineland , serious allegations are now being levelled about the diet and conditions of its land animals.

Casual brutality when animals need to be put down is common and substandard enclosures are prevalent, according to Jim Hammond, the former land animal care supervisor at the facility who resigned last year.

It was the death of a little Red deer in the summer of 2010 that was the final straw for Hammond at Marineland. The deer’s foreleg was badly broken, with the bone sticking out, and it had to be killed. Hammond accepted that, but it was how the deer died he’ll never forget.

Hammond, an 11-year veteran at the sprawling facility, begged owner John Holer to bring in a vet to euthanize the animal. He says Holer refused, instead taking out his 12-gauge shotgun, shooting the deer and then driving off. But the wounded animal didn’t die.

“He was twitching quite a bit and his head would flop up and down,” Hammond recalled. The deer had been shot through the windpipe and was gasping for air.

He called Holer at home to say the deer was still alive and asked if he could call the vet to “do it right” or would Holer come back. According to Hammond, Holer refused, telling him: “I just got back to the house and got sitting down . . . You’ve got a knife in the back of the wagon.”

Hammond acted reluctantly.

“I don’t want to dramatize it, but when you do that to an animal, you remember it,” said Hammond, a big guy who clasped his hands and stared bleakly at the floor. “And it was a dull knife . . . If you take a dull knife across hair, it’s very hard to cut. It was like trying to cut into concrete. And you’re there not for a few seconds, it’s a few minutes.”

He paused and struggled to speak. “I’m ashamed.”

The Star could not independently confirm Hammond’s account, and Marineland would not address his version of events.

“As always, we are focusing on what we do best: ensuring our guests enjoy their visits to our park, confident in the knowledge that all of our animals are well cared for,” said Marineland’s marketing director, Ann Marie Rondinelli, in refusing an interview or to provide written comment on shooting animals rather than having them euthanized

Hammond said it wasn’t unusual for Holer to shoot his animals from his truck. He spoke to the Star after seeing the series on Marineland, in which former employees blamed serious health problems in sea mammals on poor water and a shortage of trainers.

The Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty for Animals, in conjunction with the Niagara Falls Humane Society and the Canadian Association of Zoos and Aquariums, announced an investigation, expected to be completed soon.

In the wake of the Star investigation , hundreds of readers wrote to express concern over the health of Marineland’s animals. Some also said they had complained to the humane society and/or OSPCA, without results. Others asked when the Star would pay attention to the plight of the deer, bears, elk and bison. Wrote one reader about the deer: “They were filthy and scraggly looking and were living . . . with no grass or shade.”

Tayler Staneff, a volunteer with the Niagara Action for Animals, said she has complained to the Niagara Falls Humane Society several times in writing. In August 2010, she complained that land animals were in “horrible condition, but did not even receive the basic necessities (of) food, water and shelter” and asked for an official investigation.

She included a video with her official complaint. Staneff emailed the Star: “I was told that I was giving ‘hearsay’ information, even though I had sent video evidence of what I was telling them.

“I was told numerous times (by the humane society) that they have a veterinarian there to look after the animals.”

The Star failed in repeated attempts to speak to Marineland vets about conditions. Rondinelli did not respond to another written request Friday.

According to CAZA director Jim Peters, the investigation by his group, the OSPCA and the humane society includes land animals at Marineland.

CAZA has written animal care guidelines that include a risk-free environment, opportunities to exercise, provision of adequate shelters for protection from sun, rain and snow and “facilities . . . for the isolation and treatment of sick or injured animals and for the quarantine of newly arrived animals.”

Hammond, who grew up working on the family dairy farm, has a diploma in agriculture management from McGill University and was hired in a supervisory role. He found it hardest to deal with the manner in which some animals died. He said Holer would cull the herds by driving through the grounds and shooting them from his truck.

The Star called the humane society to ask whether it’s acceptable for Holer to dispatch animals in this manner. Nobody called back. The agency has also ignored numerous calls to discuss readers’ complaints.

Const. Richard Gadreau, social media officer for Niagara Regional Police, said in an email: “John Holer is within his rights, as is any other animal owner to do that.”

Gadreau said he’d consulted with the humane society for his answer.

Peters, of CAZA, said there are no restrictions against shooting a sick animal, adding that the self-regulating agency is developing a policy on euthanasia.

Hammond will never forget sawing into the neck of a dying deer with his knife. “When you are putting down an animal, there’s a humane way to do it,” he said.

“He has two very capable veterinarians to put down the animal and, as far as I’m concerned, that’s a lot more humane way than using a firearm to do it. Because a firearm is not always accurate.”

Holer, 76, opened Marineland 51 years ago. It has since grown into a 400-hectare zoo, aquarium and amusement park.

In a visit Sept. 5 to the tourist attraction, the Star saw about 80 Sika and Fallow deer, far fewer than earlier in the summer. In July, for example, there were dozens more deer, some of them limping and some with grotesque growths and wounds on their bodies. Hammond said the tumours are the result of inbreeding. (The park also has larger Red deer.)

Several Marineland sources, all involved with marine mammals, said there was a massive cleanup in the wake of the Star series once it was announced there would be an inspection by authorities.

Else Poulsen, a biologist and consultant on captive wildlife management, has worked at the Detroit and Calgary zoos. She criticized overcrowding of deer in a concrete and gravel enclosure, with only a little shade along the fences and no privacy areas. She said that begging for pellets in sugar cones (sold for $2.50 each) isn’t healthy. They can’t graze as they’re used to doing throughout the day as there is no grass and no trees with leaves to eat.

As well as sweets, visitors often feed what they want to the deer, with few staffers to stop them. Their regular diet includes a mixture of oats, barley and corn, as well as grain, according to Hammond.

Poulsen, who was asked to inspect the land animal facilities for Zoocheck Canada, a national animal protection charity, simply paid her $48.53 entry fee and walked into the park.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

During her recent visit, Poulsen documented a Sika deer limping, with red and raw sores on her hindquarters.

In a report for Zoocheck, she wrote that the concrete grounds are dangerous because “deer can fall and hurt themselves when being chased by humans or antagonistic deer.”

Hammond said deer break their legs in wire mesh at the feeding station, when they are pinned by pressure from hungry deer behind them. He couldn’t estimate how many times that’s happened other than to say “it’s not uncommon.”

Howard Smith, a retired big-game biologist with the provincial ministry of natural resources, runs Aspen Valley Wildlife Sanctuary, a Muskoka animal rehabilitation centre. He said: “The environment should be as natural as possible. Deer live in open country and mixed forest and need grass and natural shade.”

Smith said he hasn’t been to Marineland, but that as a biologist who’s always rehabilitating injured animals on his 190-hectare compound, he is in regular contact with animal welfare groups throughout the province and has heard about Marineland.

There are also problems at the bear compound where, as with deer, the primary daytime activity appears to be begging for food from tourists. These are animals that, in the wild, wander through their own territories and are noted for their survival skills, particularly in outsmarting fish. They are usually solitary creatures, or in groups of a mother and cubs.

At Marineland, 15 black bears are held in a cramped enclosure with four dens, two feeding stations, a moat with filthy water and a tourist booth that sells corn pops in sugar cones. Tourists lean over a barrier above and toss the sugar pops down to the bears, a practice animal behaviouralists have criticized.

“Bears are sentient creatures, highly intelligent and complex with daily routines (apart from winter denning) in the wild,” said Poulsen. “The bears are apparently there only so humans can feed them corn pops,” she said.

It was tough, said Hammond, to hear newborn cubs squealing in the spring, knowing they would end up dead, devoured by adult males. There was no enclosure for birthing mothers and no way to keep the young protected. Hammond said you’d hear them and then, “one week you’d go in to clean and there would be only silence.”

He said at least four cubs — two pairs born in separate years — perished in this way. He also said he complained to Holer but was told that it’s the circle of life — some animals live and some die — and there was nothing to be done.

Naomi Rose, chief scientist at the Humane Society International, has visited Marineland on two occasions and said she was repulsed both times by treatment of sea mammals and land animals.

“Tourists watch the bears up to their chests in water, straining upward and slamming into each other to catch a single corn pop,” she said in an interview. During one of her visits, she was horrified to realize an inert bear was actually dead. Soon after a bulldozer came in and scooped up the carcass to take it to a mass grave on the Marineland property.

Several trainers told the Star about a massive grave. In one particularly gruesome story, a former trainer told of having to pull in a crew to dig up a killer whale carcass because the brain hadn’t been preserved after the necropsy.

Rose chronicled bears with rotting teeth from all the refined sugars and patches of missing fur. She criticized the lack of space and argues that only dominant aggressive males have den access. “Bears cannot exercise normal behaviours due to the presence of too many dominant males.”

As well as the candy, bears get a daily diet that includes lettuce, tomatoes, grapes, oranges and beef, according to Hammond.

However, Hammond says there has to be a “delicate balance” in feeding the bears so that they are hungry enough to go after corn pops tossed by tourists from a platform. After the park closes and the bears are fed, Hammond said fights are common because they don’t get enough food.

After 11 years, a month and a day, Hammond decided he’d had enough. He already couldn’t get the image of having butchered the Red deer in July 2010 out of his mind. A family member who asked not to be named said he’s never recovered from having to kill the Red deer.

“It really messed (him) up,” said the relative. “It still haunts him.”

Over the winter and spring of 2010-11, a number of Fallow deer were kept in another part of the sprawling Marineland complex. In the spring, their hooves became very soft as they walked around on mud.

Hammond recounted how they were moved to the regular deer area at the start of the tourist season. There, they must walk on concrete and gravel and immediately developed hoof ulcers. “This would be severely painful for them,” he said, “and we wanted to set up healing foot baths for them. But John wouldn’t go for it.”

At the start of his shift on July 6, 2011, he said he went into his office, took a look at his diploma and asked himself what he was doing there when he couldn’t change anything.

“For that reason, I walked out . . . I know I’ll never go back to the park again, but I’m always wondering about the animals.”

Read more about: