March 28, 2024

Wild Florida

Cash menageries: Exotic and wild animals as entertainment in Florida

Mike Vogel | 3/28/2016

The Stearns family moved from Tampa 20 years ago to its 22 acres in Dade City. "I was always rescuing anything I could get my hands on," Kathy Stearns says. Her husband had a pet monkey as a kid. Randy grew up with a human sister — and monkeys and tiger cubs. Wild Things opened to the public in 2007, doubling the number of animals since 2011.

Visitors assemble at a gift shop in town and take a bus to the grounds, which feature repurposed bits of Americana such as a tractor, a phone booth, a cut-up Peterbilt cab. This year, the Stearns added a reception tent to attract corporate events and weddings. Laid back with an easy smile, Randy Stearns dresses the part of his "Tiger Man" persona, with a hat on his head decorated with crocodile teeth and a revolver on his hip.

The animals at Wild Things, he says, come from a variety of sources, including old-time attractions like Cypress Gardens and staterun Silver Springs that wanted to unload some of their exotic stock. The "mystery monkey of Tampa Bay," an animal of unknown origin that roamed Pinellas County and became a national story until captured, wound up at Wild Things.

In its 2012 federal tax return, Wild Things' reported $330,163 in revenue against $324,140 in expenses. The revenue side of the non-profit is driven by tours. A basic tour is $15 — a bargain, the family says, compared to theme parks at $100 per day — but almost all guests pay additionally for add-on tours and "encounters" with animals. The encounters serve a mission, Randy Stearns says. "If we can let people come out and hold a tiger, then they want to save the ones in the wild," he says.

Taking a page from the swim with- the-dolphins trend in tourism, Wild Things added a 30-minute swim with a tiger cub or small alligator (with its mouth taped shut) for $200 per person or $300 to swim with both. That revenue booster, however, brought scrutiny from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, regulates facilities that keep exotic animals.

After ordering the tiger swims suspended in 2012, Florida's FWC, with input from the USDA, approved the swims if proper protocols were followed. FWC's most recent three inspections of Wild Things have been clean, with mi- nor structural issues that were immediately remedied. Animal housing exceeded minimum standards in a number of instances.

But in July, the USDA filed a complaint mainly over incidents in 2011 and 2012, saying Wild Things "has not shown good faith" and the gravity of violations "is great." Specifically, Wild Things "has continued to mishandle animals, particularly infant and juvenile tigers, exposing these animals and the public to injury, disease and harm."

The complaint cited an instance in 2011 when a distressed cub allegedly was forced to swim, and a segment on "Good Morning America" in 2012 — still on YouTube — when the USDA says a reporter doing a story on the swims restrained a distressed cub from leaving the pool. "A Good Morning America reporter abused an animal? Come on," says Kathy Stearns. She said she could have gotten off by paying a small fine but "I'm not admitting to anything I didn't do. I'm going to have my day when I go to court. The videos speak for themselves." Animals are treated worse on late night TV appearances, she says.

Defending against activist groups is a constant process, she says, and notes the USDA complaint followed a petition filed with the USDA by activist organizations, including the Humane Society and Tampa's Big Cat Rescue. Those groups want the USDA to prohibit public contact with big cats, bears and primates. Wild Things, Zoological Wildlife in Miami-Dade and 10 other operators in Florida were among the 75 nationally that the groups named.

The activist groups say letting the public have physical contact harms the animals and risks the spread of disease to and from the public. It also encourages frivolous breeding to keep the encounters supplied with cubs, they say.

Tiger cubs can be used in encounters only for a four-week window from when they're about 8 weeks old — mature enough by USDA standards to be held by the public — to 12 weeks, after which they grow too big to be safe. But they can live for decades after that. The Humane Society also is pushing for a federal law to ban private possession and breeding of big cats by anyone except pro- fessional zoos accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums and qualifying wildlife sanctuaries.

Randy Stearns says Wild Things advances conservation. "If they're gone in the wild, the only way to keep that species alive is in captivity," he says.

But that "Noah's Ark" argument, in and of itself, doesn't hold, some say. If it's Noah's Ark, then "those animals are sentenced to an endless voyage," says Paul Reillo, founder and president of global conservation organization Rare Species Conservatory Foundation. "Captive breeding by itself is not conservation." An animal serves no purpose unless it has a traceable pedigree and is part of a program to save a species in the wild.

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