Laurie Roberts

opinion columnist

Tucked away on the northeastern edge of the Valley is the home of Iggy the bear and Tocho the mountain lion and a rather prickly looking porcupine named Pinion.

Winema lives there along with 17 other endangered Mexican gray wolves. And there are coyotes and foxes and a pair of bobcats named Spot and Not.

The Southwest Wildlife Conservation Center is where wild animals are brought when there is no place for them to go -- where they are nursed back to health and set free if they can be, where they remain if they can’t.

In all, 300 animals are being cared for at SWCC.

For now.

A neighbor is suing the SWCC, saying the place is a “criminal nuisance” given the nightly howls of wolves and coyotes and the dust kicked up by visitors who must travel a mile down a county dirt road to get to the wildlife center.

“I believed I would be moving close to a wildlife rehabilitation center, not a zoo,” Dr. Seth Gortler told me, via email.

SWCC’s lawyer says the wildlife sanctuary is operating legally and that Gortler is trying to close it down.

“He’s the only neighbor who thinks that the sounds of wildlife in the desert are a crime,” attorney Sam Coppersmith said.

SWCC was started in the early 1990s after a farmer ran over a coyote den with his tractor and brought the lone survivor, an orphaned pup, to Linda Searles. She quickly realized there was no one to care for wild animals who were injured and orphaned.

So she decided to do it herself. In 1994, Searles purchased 10 acres in the desert northeast of Scottsdale and SWCC was born.

When a bobcat is hit by a car, it’s brought to SWCC to recuperate. When a mountain lion can no longer be kept (illegally) as a pet, it winds up here. When a sick beaver is found at Tempe Town Lake, Searles gets the call.

Most of the animals are patched up and returned to the wild. The others – the ones that can’t be released – live at SWCC.

The ones like Leonardo, a leopard/jaguar bred by a circus in Las Vegas. Eventually, he was sold to a Douglas man. After he was seized by USDA officers, he was brought to SWCC because there was no place else to for him to go.

The ones like Ash, a five-year-old mountain lion orphaned shortly after his birth when his mother was shot in California. He was found injured and starving near San Jose.

Like Tahoe and Griz, two black bear cubs found in Montana after their mother had been killed.

Searles also runs a rehabilitation program for Mexican gray wolves in conjunction with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Over the years, the wildlife sanctuary has grown and Searles, who lives on the property, says she has lived in harmony with her neighbors.

Until Gortler, that is.

He bought a house on just over two and a quarter acres next to SWCC in 2012 and another three and a half adjoining acres in 2015. He knew the wildlife sanctuary was there but says he had no idea he’d be living next to what he contends is a commercial zoo that has no business in a residential area.

“I’m not some east-coast city-slicker who discovers too late that the desert is dusty and has coyotes that make noise …,” Gortler told me, via email. “(But) I didn’t sign up for 7,000 visitor-a-year’s worth of dust and chewed up road being generated by a zoo operating in violation of the law and I didn’t sign up for cages full of wolves and coyotes howling at my house at all hours of the night and pre-dawn hours, every night.”

Gortler says he asked Searles to get rid of the dust and howling animals but she refused. He has repeatedly complained to the sheriff’s office and to the Maricopa County Planning and Zoning Department, pointing out – correctly -- that Searle was giving public tours without a permit.

Gortler notes that Searles holds a zoo license from the state Game and Fish Department. But the county says SWCC is "private wildlife reservation" and thus allowed in a rural residential zone. The county, however, notified Searles while investigating a complaint in 2006 that she would need a permit if she wanted to offer tours.

After Gortler complained, Searles got a temporary-use permit in February 2015. But it allows only so many tours in a six-month period. As a result, she’s had to eliminate summer camps for kids and cut back on tours and educational programs – a vital funding source for a wildlife sanctuary that runs on donations. Where in 2014, SWCC had 7,000 visitors, Searle estimates she had only a third of that in 2015.

She’s now seeking a special-use permit so she can have more tours. If she doesn’t get it, she says she’ll have to close and the animals? Well, most would have nowhere to go.

“The most probable thing that would happen is they would have to be euthanized because the zoos are full,” said Searles, who draws no salary for running the sanctuary and gets no reimbursement for housing the animals.

Maricopa County Supervisor Steve Chucri said he’s be surprised if his colleagues denied the permit, given the importance of the wildlife sanctuary.

“They are really kind of a one-stop shop for these unique animals that either are somehow cropping up in the wrong areas or need medical attention,” he said. “The function they serve, I think, is pretty critical to the community.”

To most of the community, anyway.

Four months after the county issued SWCC’s temporary-use permit, Gortler sued, saying the howling has lead to "long-term sleep deprivation and extreme stress" and the dust "endangers the health of Dr. Gortler." His noise expert reports that the howls are “clearly noticeable” inside his home and a violation of the county’s noise ordinance.

He is asking the judge to block the county from issuing a special-use permit until Searles gets rid of the wolves and coyotes and ensures the county's dirt road isn't dusty or rutted.

While Gortler insists that SWCC is operating illegally, he says he’s not trying to shut the place down.

”I just want to use my house as a house and I bought the land surrounding my house in order to preserve nature as it is,” he said. “SWCC is using their land to stick ever more cages into the area and to collect tourist dollars, and making me pay the price by effectively evicting me from my own home.”

His answer: evict the wolves and coyotes – the ones who were there long before he moved in – from theirs. And pave the road.

You know, make it more like the city.

Look for a fight from Searles, who believes the continued existence of the 22-year-old wildlife sanctuary is on the line.

“If we lose we don’t have any place to move to,” she said. “We don’t have land. I don’t have a big bank account where we could buy land. We pretty much just live from hand to mouth almost. Unfortunately, when wildlife comes in for treatment, they don’t have credit cards.”