Saturday, Nov. 15, 2014
By Tracey McManus
Staff Writer
TRACEY MCMANUS/STAFF
An albino raccoon stands in a cage at Graystone Ranch. The Animal Welfare Act regulates animals in captivity.
When Andrea Fuchs went to Hephzibah’s Graystone Ranch in September to go ziplining with her husband and was told the couple could take an exotic animal tour while they waited for their turn on the ropes, the animal enthusiast was intrigued.
She expected to see the 500-acre conservation center’s Bengal tiger romping around a green enclosure with room to run. She figured the foxes and raccoons would be scurrying through natural vegetation, or at least be able to feel the ground beneath their feet. “What I saw actually made me want to cry,” said Fuchs, 22, a paralegal in Augusta.
The female tiger was housed in a chain-link cage with just enough room to pace back and forth. In the reptile room, an Eastern box turtle sat in a tank where it could only “walk in perpetual small circles.” Two gray foxes and three raccoons lived in wire cages raised a few inches above the ground without so much as a blade of grass inside. “(The tiger) was in a container that looked like the cage on an animal cracker box,” she said. “It was panting, it was hot and didn’t have any water. It didn’t have room to be a tiger.”
The conditions are perfectly legal under the federal Animal Welfare Act, a law meant to protect animals in captivity and preserve public safety. Enacted in 1966 and amended only a handful of times, it is enforced by Department of Agriculture through annual inspections and regulates exhibitors, breeders, research labs and dealers.
USDA licenses are easy to acquire and difficult to lose and require only bare minimum standards for care and housing of the animals it regulates, which has prompted animal welfare advocates to call for an overhaul of the law. “We have documented many, many instances where animals are in a great deal of suffering, but (the facility) is not violating the law,” said Debbie Leahy, the captive wildlife protection manager for the Humane Society of the United States. “We do pursue stronger laws for captive wildlife. What we generally recommend is (Congress) should limit the possession of certain species, especially dangerous animals with really complex needs, to facilities that have the knowledge and resources for proper care.”
Graystone owners Rusty and Kandi Eskew refused to talk to a reporter when contacted by telephone and did not respond to an e-mail with questions about the facility. However, a reporter took an exotic animal tour Oct. 21 as a private citizen and viewed the facility on McManus Road, confirming the conditions.
According to its Web site, Graystone offers a variety of services beyond the animal exhibition, including camping, fishing, swimming, ziplining, hayrides, educational field trips and horseback riding.
As of April 2013, the last time the ranch was inspected by USDA, Graystone had 51 animals regulated by the agency – pigs, sheep, goats, cows, alpacas, raccoons, a fox, coatimundi, ferret, small spotted genet and a tiger. Horses and reptiles on the property are not regulated by the department.
The department has 126 inspectors responsible for inspecting 10,433 facilities every year, and even in cases where Animal Welfare Act violations do occur, consequences are rare. Facilities are most commonly given notice to resolve the issue within 30 days, or even less likely, are given minimal fines that are barely an incentive to comply, Leahy said.
Graystone, which bills itself as a rehabilitation center and preserve, for example, hasn’t received a penalty since 2012, but had 10 Animal Welfare Act violations in that time, according to USDA inspection reports. Violations included dumping soaked hay and feces outside of the sheep and goat enclosure and not providing dry hay, “causing the animals’ feet to sink in while walking” in April 2013; a coatimundi (an animal in the raccoon family) lost large patches of hair to dermatitis on her back, side and leg in September 2012; and the tiger in September 2012 was kept in an enclosure that was 6-feet high, 8-feet wide and 43-feet long, which was too small “to allow the tiger to make normal postural adjustments,” according to the report.
Records show Graystone canceled its exhibition license with the department in January and is operating as an unregulated facility and allowing the public to view the animals, which officials said would be a violation of federal law.
On Wednesday, USDA spokeswoman Tanya Espinosa said the department has no record of Graystone applying for a new license this year. She said USDA does not have an open investigation into Graystone operating without a license, but that the department is looking into a complaint it received regarding the facility.
In Georgia, facilities licensed by USDA for regulated activity must also be permitted with the state Department of Natural Resources in order to operate. Graystone has held a wildlife exhibition, a wild animal and a rehabilitation permit with DNR since 2004, but only the rehabilitation permit is current.
Lt. Wayne Hubbard said DNR gave Graystone until Saturday to prove it has started the process of applying for a new USDA license or face the possibility of losing its operating approval from the state. He said a decision will happen soon.
And even if the state were to shut down a wildlife exhibition facility, Hubbard said the process to find homes for the animals, especially exotic pets such as a tiger, comes with a myriad of challenges.
There are 3,791 USDA licensed exhibition facilities in the U.S., but only 135 are accredited by the Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries, an international agency that promotes humane sanctuary conditions that go above and beyond the minimum standards required by the Animal Welfare Act.
Hubbard said when confiscating animals, which is rare, DNR must locate a facility willing to take the animal that has better conditions than the place the animal is leaving, and also go through an administrative court process to revoke a permit.
However, Hubbard said the public attitude toward exhibition facilities and zoos has shifted. People are less likely to pay entry fees or donate to a facility with substandard conditions, which is slowly shaping the expectations for sanctuaries. “A lot of these facilities are kind of in a transition, and it’s more from a social aspect,” he said. “People just don’t accept animals being in a small cage situation anymore.”
Carole Baskin, the CEO of Big Cat Rescue in Tampa, Fla., a federation accredited facility that rescues or finds homes for abandoned or unwanted big cats, said legislation change is the strongest way to protect animals in captivity.
In 2003, her facility was asked to take in 312 unwanted big cats from across the country, but after a federal bill passed that year making it illegal to sell those animals across state lines as pets, those calls dwindled to about 30 in 2013.
Baskin said animals that are kept in substandard exhibitions can pose serious public safety risks because they can develop dangerous habits out of psychological trauma such as chewing, growling and trying to escape.
She said her sanctuary often receives animals with behavioral or emotional issues from facilities that operate as conservations but have housed big cats in small enclosures with little enrichment. “We’ve seen cats that have come here from very small enclosures that were so beaten down by being kept in such small quarters that it took them a lot of time to feel comfortable enough to walk out in the open,” Baskin said. “It pains me to think how damaged their psyche must be when these are top of the food chain predators, they should fear absolutely no one, yet the fact is they have been so repressed in captivity they become fearful, with emotional issues.”
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