Grant Rodgers

grodgers@dmreg.com

Animal welfare advocates hope a federal judge's ruling Thursday ordering a troubled northeast Iowa zoo to give up its endangered tigers and lemurs will bring more accountability to substandard menageries across the country.

U.S. Chief Magistrate Judge Jon Scoles ordered the Cricket Hollow Zoo outside of Manchester to transfer three lemurs and four tigers to another facility within 90 days, finding that unsanitary conditions and a lack of proper veterinary care endanger animals at the zoo and violate the Endangered Species Act.

The ruling does not affect the hundreds of other Cricket Hollow animals that aren't endangered species, including birds, reptiles, sheep, pigs, baboons, bears and other exotic cats.

Still, the judge's order is a significant victory for the group of Iowans who sued Cricket Hollow's owners, Pam and Tom Sellner, in 2014 after seeing animals living in dirty enclosures filled with feces, flies and foul water.

“Today’s groundbreaking decision creates a precedent for endangered animals living in captivity throughout the United States,” said Stephen Wells, executive director of the Animal Legal Defense Fund, which represented the Iowans who sued Cricket Hollow. “Too many zoos, roadside zoos and private owners keep endangered animals … in inadequate and squalid conditions.

"This is a major step in ensuring that we can move them into situations much better set up to meet their needs.”

Thursday's ruling also prevents the Sellners from acquiring new endangered species until they can demonstrate to a judge that they can give the animals proper care.

While Pam Sellner has owned and worked with exotic cats for two decades, evidence at the October trial on the lawsuit suggests that the menagerie of animals on the Sellners' rural 20-acre property, including a herd of dairy cattle, has become too big for them to manage, Scoles wrote.

"The Sellners are extremely hard-working," he wrote. "However, given the demands of operating a large dairy farm and Tom Sellner's employment off the farm, it appears to the court that the Sellners are overwhelmed by the amount of work required to care for approximately 300 zoo animals."

Thursday's ruling is believed to be the first time a so-called citizen suit has won the removal of captive endangered species from a zoo, said Jessica Blome, a senior attorney with the California-based Animal Legal Defense Fund. The advocacy group was one plaintiff in the lawsuit against the zoo, and its attorneys were on the legal team that brought the case to trial.

The group is preparing to file lawsuits against two other facilities, including a Minnesota petting zoo that displays wolf pups that are allegedly later killed for their fur.

"Now citizen plaintiffs know that they can do it, that it has been done successfully," Blome said. "And maybe some of these roadside zoos will be put on notice."

The Sellners did not return a reporter's phone messages Thursday, and neither did their attorney. But Pam Sellner promised during a November interview with The Des Moines Register that she would appeal if Scoles ordered animals removed from the zoo.

Should this zoo be shut down?

The Sellners could ask a judge to hold off on removal of the zoo's endangered animals while an appeal moves forward, Blome said.

Enforcement by citizens

In winning the ruling, the five Iowa advocates who brought the lawsuit accomplished what the federal government so far failed to do: Hold the Cricket Hollow Zoo accountable in a meaningful way for the neglect suffered by animals since the Sellners opened for business in 2002, Blome said.

The Iowans and the Animal Legal Defense Fund went to court under the citizen suit provision of the Endangered Species Act, which allows ordinary citizens to sue if they're distraught by the treatment the animals are receiving.

Blome said the provision allows private citizens to enforce the law if the government is "unwilling or doesn't have the resources."

In the Sellners' case, the U.S. Department of Agriculture did push the couple to accept $4,035 in penalties as part of a 2006 settlement after inspections found "chronic" problems, including excessive feces in enclosures. But years of USDA inspections since, including written reports that became a significant chunk of evidence at trial, continued to find animal welfare violations.

Multiple inspections found algae covering water for skunks, bears and other animals. In August 2012, an inspector wrote that two weeks' worth of waste had built up in a lemur enclosure.

An administrative case is pending, brought by the USDA in July, that could result in the zoo's license being revoked. But the Sellners filed a motion in January to have that case dismissed, arguing the agency missed a November deadline to disclose its exhibits and witnesses against the zoo.

A USDA media representative did not return a reporter's phone call on Thursday.

'Pervasive, longstanding' problems

In his decision to remove the zoo's tigers and lemurs, Judge Scoles wrote that he found "pervasive and longstanding" problems at the Cricket Hollow Zoo.

At trial, Duke University lemur researcher Peter Klopfer testified that the zoo's three lemurs — two ring-tailed lemurs and one red-ruffed — have "miserable," stressed lives because they're isolated from others of their species. At least five lemurs have died at the zoo since 2006, according to trial evidence.

Klopfer testified that lemurs normally would need social groups of eight to 10 animals, and Scoles agreed in his ruling. The magistrate also pointed to reports of excessive waste and flies in the primates' enclosures.

"Despite the Sellners' best efforts, cleanliness throughout the zoo has been a chronic problem," he wrote.

In tiger enclosures, inspectors routinely found food waste and excrement buildup, which can attract dangerous parasites, Scoles wrote. At the trial, Defense Fund attorneys argued that inadequate veterinary care was responsible for the deaths of five tigers at the facility since 2013.

Scoles concluded: "If the endangered species are not removed from the defendants' care, then violations are likely to continue."

The next steps

Scoles' order requires only that both the tigers and lemurs be removed to another USDA-licensed facility, but Blome said Thursday that the advocacy group hopes to ultimately be involved in relocating the animals.

The group has already been in discussions with sanctuaries in Colorado and North Carolina. Blome fears that the animals could end up at another roadside zoo if the transfer isn't monitored by a judge.

"We learned through the discovery process that the Sellners have friends in Wisconsin and Illinois who run separate roadside zoos there," she said. "Those facilities aren't any better. … Hopefully the judge will conduct some oversight over that decision-making process, and we will ask to be involved."