For Instant Launch:
Might 1, 2023
Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382
Wisconsin Dells, Wis. – Based on data simply obtained by PETA, the Wisconsin Division of Pure Sources (DNR) just lately slapped Matt and Alice Schoebel—exotic-animal sellers who personal native roadside zoo Timbavati Wildlife Park and close by Shamba Safari—with three citations for years of shoddy and inaccurate recordkeeping, together with failure to report the deaths of a number of animals.
The citations comply with PETA’s criticism to the DNR, which offered proof that the sellers repeatedly submitted required quarterly and annual stories months late or under no circumstances and that they typically contained errors, had been lacking essential data, and didn’t correctly disclose actions they had been required to report, together with transfers and gross sales of black bears and cougars and deaths of black bears, cougars, bobcats, grey foxes, and skunks. The stories additionally contained quite a few situations of lacking particulars on gross sales, transfers, and deaths of animals, in addition to proof suggesting that animals had mysteriously disappeared between stories and stay unaccounted for.
“These roadside zoo profiteers have repeatedly proven that they’re unable even to maintain monitor of the animals at their services, making it inconceivable to know what number of have died or gone lacking below their watch,” says PETA Basis Director of Captive Animal Welfare Debbie Metzler. “PETA urges everybody to steer clear of Timbavati, Shamba, and different seedy roadside zoos that exploit animals for a buck.”
Studies submitted to the DNR additionally present that a number of animals had died of “unknown” causes, together with two black bear cubs and a fisher, an grownup cougar whose reason behind demise was listed by the house owners as “breeding aggression,” and a bobcat their granddaughter was retaining as a “pet.”
For years, the Schoebels have been brokering offers between breeders and roadside zoos—similar to Michigan-based Oswald’s Bear Ranch—for the merciless cub-petting business, which tears weeks-old bear cubs from their moms, vans them throughout state strains, and forces them to endure photograph ops that depart them with lifelong psychological and bodily harm. Oswald’s has an extended historical past of federal Animal Welfare Act violations that embody untimely cub deaths, bodily abuse of bears, inappropriate diets containing restaurant scraps and pet food, insufficient enclosures which have allowed bears to flee, and mendacity to inspectors.
PETA—whose motto reads, partially, that “animals are usually not ours to make use of for leisure”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For extra details about PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please go to PETA.org, hearken to The PETA Podcast, or comply with the group on Twitter, Fb, or Instagram.