Animals Suffering at Roadside Zoos Need Your Help

Three Bears General Store

Pigeon Forge, Tennessee

Three Bears General Store is notorious for violating federal animal-protection laws. Visitors to this Tennessee tourist trap have been seen pelting bears with broken dog biscuits and chunks of fruit. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has repeatedly cited Three Bears for failing to allow the animals to enter their dens during the day in order to escape public view or take shelter from inclement weather. The bears apparently have only one water source. Employees have reported that if the bears are slow to come out of their night pens, they’re locked inside for the rest of the day.

In nearby Gatlinburg, there are yet more bear pits. Gatlinburg Wildlife Encounters keeps bears—often referred to as the “Ober bears”—in similarly appalling conditions.

Suncoast Primate Sanctuary

Palm Harbor, Florida

PETA has campaigned against this decrepit hellhole for many years—dating back to when it was called Noell’s Ark and then Mae Noell’s Chimp Farm. This facility is by no means a “sanctuary”—rather, it’s a roadside menagerie with a long history of AWA violations. Even though license revocations are extremely rare, the USDA yanked the facility’s exhibitor’s license in 1999—yet the same roadside zoo, operated by the granddaughter of the original owners, opened a few years later under a misleadingly grandiose name. The facility has been repeatedly cited for keeping primates in rusty, dilapidated cages with jagged edges.

Cherokee Bear Zoo and Santa’s Land

Cherokee, North Carolina

Cherokee Bear Zoo and Santa’s Land—two roadside zoos located on tribal land in western North Carolina—keep bears and other animals in grossly inhumane conditions. As if they were stuck in the 1950s, these facilities display often neurotic bears in desolate concrete pits or cramped cages.

Tregembo Animal Park

Wilmington, North Carolina

PETA has been monitoring this roadside zoo—one of the worst in the country—for over 20 years. Visitors have documented the horrible living conditions for animals, including algae-filled water receptacles and cramped, filthy cages, and have even found bodies of dead and decaying animals on the property.

An eyewitness documented that animals are kept inside small cages and are in apparent need of veterinary attention. Video footage shows a limping guenon monkey, a fox and a donkey with hair loss, and a bobcat who appeared to have difficulty navigating up a structure. Many animals at this facility exhibit neurotic repetitive behavior patterns.

In 2017, after two North Carolina residents filed a lawsuit against Tregembo alleging that the roadside zoo’s treatment of the bears Ben and Booger violates the state’s anti-cruelty statute, both bears were moved to a reputable animal sanctuary.

Clark’s Trading Post

Lincoln, New Hampshire

Clark’s Trading Post confines North American black bears to grossly undersized and barren concrete pits and forces them to ride scooters, be pushed on a swing, and eat ice cream from a spoon.

Pymatuning Deer Park

Jamestown, Pennsylvania

This notorious roadside zoo was hit with an official warning for more than a dozen AWA violations—including for confining visibly ailing bears to concrete pits, with no opportunities to swim, climb, dig, den, or engage in other types of natural behavior. Other violations included repeatedly failing to clean up animals’ waste, failing to maintain a current veterinary program, and failing to have a sufficient number of adequately trained employees—among many other issues.

Hovatter’s Wildlife Zoo

Kingwood, West Virginia

Hovatter’s allowed an alpaca’s teeth to become so overgrown that the animal’s ability to eat was impaired, and it failed to provide young lion cubs with adequate nutrition. The feds cited the roadside zoo for failing to provide chimpanzees with adequate enrichment after PETA filed a complaint, which presented evidence that the chimpanzees had experienced hair loss—possibly as a result of over-grooming caused by a lack of stimulation—and that one chimpanzee repeatedly sucked on his hand for over 30 minutes.

Natural Bridge Zoo and Virginia Safari Park

Natural Bridge, Virginia

The Natural Bridge Zoo keeps a lone elephant named Asha, who has spent years without the company of another elephant. During the winter, she’s locked inside a cold, damp barn, and in the summer heat, she’s forced to walk in endless circles while giving rides. The roadside zoo has been cited for nearly 150 violations of the AWA, including for denying dozens of animals adequate veterinary care, withholding food from bears, confining animals to mud-filled enclosures, and using cubs who were too young to be handled and others who were too big and strong for photo ops. The USDA has ordered Natural Bridge Zoo to pay more than $20,000 in federal animal welfare penalties and suspended its license on two separate occasions, and the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries has also suspended its permit because of unsanitary and inhumane conditions.

Nearby, at the Virginia Safari Park, animals are subjected to a pattern of mistreatment. In 2018, CEO Eric Mogensen was assessed a $99,999 civil penalty to settle an administrative lawsuit brought under the AWA alleging that animals at Virginia Safari Park and Mogensen’s other facilities were denied veterinary care for diseases and injuries, including a spider monkey named Jethro who was euthanized after being left out for several days in frigid temperatures and was not given timely veterinary care for frostbite he sustained as a result. The lawsuit also alleged that Mogensen had falsified records to cover up the intentional drowning of a wallaby by his daughter, who was convicted of cruelty to animals for the crime.

The Preserve

Fredericksburg, Texas

The Preserve is the grandiose rebranding of Have Trunk Will Travel (HTWT), an “entertainment” company that rented out elephants for movies, photo shoots, elephant rides, parades, and cheesy reality television shows. HTWT is on record endorsing the use of painful electrical shock devices called “hot shots” to discipline and control elephants. And HTWT trainers were caught on video beating endangered elephants, including a baby, with bullhooks and shocking them with electric prods.

Not a lot has changed for the elephants under the exhibitor’s new name—trainers still wield painful bullhooks to intimidate the animals and force them to participate in photo ops as well as gimmicky “tricks” such as playing a harmonica, kicking a soccer ball, and painting with their trunks. No true preserve would ever force animals to perform for visitors.

West Coast Game Park Safari

Bandon, Oregon

A teenage chimpanzee named George is relegated to a small enclosure at this highway roadside zoo after he was cast aside by the entertainment industry when he became too large to control. He shares the already cramped space with another chimpanzee named Daphne, who has spent nearly half a century trapped in inadequate conditions. West Coast Game Park also forces baby wild animals to be used in photo ops, tearing sensitive bear and big cat cubs away from their nurturing mothers in order to make a profit. After PETA alerted the USDA to a suffering leopard named Ninja, who was found sucking on a raw, untreated wound on his tail, the agency cited the roadside zoo for failing to provide the animal with adequate veterinary care. On a follow-up visit, inspectors documented additional animals suffering, including a bear with extensive hair loss. A solitary peccary was also languishing at the facility with an inflamed eye and overgrown hooves. The USDA concluded that the safari park has a “pattern of personnel not performing adequate daily assessment of animal health.”

MarineLand

Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada

MarineLand displays beluga whales, dolphins, sea lions, and walruses in cramped tanks. The infamous marine park has imported beluga whales and dolphins who were abducted from their ocean homes, and visitors are allowed to feed and touch the belugas throughout the day. The park also keeps bears, deer, bison, and elk confined to cages that are surrounded by noisy roller coasters and other theme park rides. An investigation conducted by the Toronto Star detailed widespread reports of negligence, cruelty, and mass animal graves.

SeaQuest Aquariums

Multiple Locations

Nationwide, SeaQuest aquariums have popped up inside shopping malls, and in just a few years, the shady company has amassed dozens of reports of animal neglect, animal deaths, legal violations, and injuries to the public. Animals at SeaQuest are trapped indoors, confined to cramped and crowded enclosures and harassed by a steady stream of human visitors.

At SeaQuest’s Las Vegas location, which was cited and fined $2,000 for illegally possessing four baby otters, former employees reported seeing birds stepped on and killed, turtles crushed by children, and an octopus boiled alive when the tank’s water temperature changed. Officials suspended the state permit of the SeaQuest in Littleton, Colorado, after a series of state law and permit violations, including an incident in which a sloth sustained serious burns to his face from a heat lamp. And within a month after a SeaQuest opened in Folsom, California, a visitor reportedly found a dead stingray in a tank. Children were still touching the animal’s lifeless body.

Are there any SeaQuest aquariums on your road trip itinerary? Click on the link below to view our interactive Google Earth presentation with Chrome to find out: