The Garold Wayne Interactive Zoological Park is Exonerated by USDA of PeTA Allegations "Just cleaning up the rumors."
By Larry Russell - Page 2
As one investigator told Schreibvogel, "There's no way you could have cleaned this place up overnight or put healthy weight on these animals." I have been in and out of The Garold Wayne Interactive Zoological Park dozens of times, often without their prior knowledge that I was coming. On every visit I have been amazed by the park's growth and improvements and the homes they have provided for animals down to their last chance when they arrived here. I've had my heart broken over the rescue stories and the pictures I've taken. I was there in 2006 when Dr. John Jameson did a root canal on Hercules, a mountain lion whose fangs had been sawed off by his previous owner. I did a story on the three Siberian bears rescued from a closed van in Purcell during the hottest part of the summer. I saw Joe and his staff agonize over the possibility they might have to return the bears to their former owner, and saw the months of love and care it took to nurse those pitiful, starved creatures back to health. I saw the alligator from Mill Creek the park took in in the dead of winter and provided a tank in the barn with a heat lamp. As with the Siberian Bears, that rescue was at the request of the Wildlife Department who never reimbursed GW Park so much as a dime. That didn't matter: the park never asks for a payment for a rescue, and they never sell animals for profit. All that in contrast to PeTA, whose kill rate of "rescued" animals in 2005 was 90.7 percent with only 6.8 pets adopted. We're talking here about a not-for-profit foundation that rakes in around $24 million a year from animal-loving donors and avoids over $3.5 million in federal income tax. If anyone's license should be revoked, it's PeTA's.
The FBI lists PeTA as domestic terrorists right along with the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front because their members are interchangeable, and PeTA helps foot the bill for ELF and ALF to commit felonies against institutions, restaurants and their fellow Americans, and then helps to pay the defense attorneys and brags about it.
No one is a bigger animal lover than I am, and as such I can't help but wonder why PeTA isn't putting its money where its mouth is and offering to help sanctuaries like GW Park instead of trying to steal away their donors for their own personal gain. GW Park has received at least 100 derogatory calls and e-mails since PeTA's most recent attack. Most have been death threats, which authorities are investigating. The damage to reputation and loss of productive time to GW Park has been enormous. The media in Oklahoma City certainly haven't helped. They were quick to jump on PeTA's allegations, but they're surely slow off the mark to broadcast the park's exoneration of those allegations by the USDA. The one exception is News Channel 4, and that station is to be commended. |
