Troubled zoo's fate rests with judge

CEDAR RAPIDS, Ia. — For three years, a group of Iowans have complained about the way Cricket Hollow Zoo near Manchester treated its animals, kept in enclosures reportedly filled with feces, dirty water and buzzing with flies.

The squalid conditions they reported have been vehemently disputed by the roadside zoo's owners, Pam and Tom Sellner, who boast three decades of experience with exotic animals. The Sellners maintain that they clean the cages daily and dismissed the federal investigators who've cited them for subpar conditions as "nitpicky."

Now, a judge will decide whether conditions at the Cricket Hollow zoo are indeed harmful to its tigers, lemurs and wolf hybrids.

Testimony ended Thursday in the four-day trial initiated by a federal lawsuit that five Iowans and California-based Animal Legal Defense Fund brought against the Sellners, asking U.S. Chief Magistrate Judge Jon Scoles to bar the couple from keeping animals regulated under the Endangered Species Act.

"Our goal is not to file more lawsuits," said Elisabeth Holmes, an Oregon lawyer on the team bringing the lawsuit. "Our goal is for this lawsuit to be sort of a bold attempt and a loud message to the roadside zoo owners of the world to clean up their act."

Underscoring the case are the vastly different stances represented by the two sides.

Animal welfare advocates argue that federal and state oversight agencies need to do much more to protect animals in captivity.

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For instance, a 2007 law banning Iowans from owning dangerous animals such as wolves and exotic cats specifically exempts Cricket Hollow from most regulation by state inspectors because it is licensed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, said Tom Colvin, the executive director of the Animal Rescue League of Iowa and one of the law's proponents.

"That does kind of take the knees out of it," he said.

Others such as the Sellners believe animal ownership is a basic right and balk at government intrusion.

Pam Sellner received much of her training on exotic cats from the nonprofit Feline Conservation Federation, a group that has fought nationwide against state laws banning private ownership of exotic cats.

Cricket Hollow's attending veterinarian, John Pries, testified Wednesday on behalf of the zoo, standing by a comment he'd made during a deposition calling the work of government regulatory agencies "bureaucratic (expletive)."

A victory for the Iowa plaintiffs would be significant for animal welfare advocates, Animal League senior attorney Jessica Blome said.

The Cricket Hollow case is one of only two lawsuits since the 1973 passage of the Endangered Species Act, in which laypeople have been granted a trial on claims they were harmed by witnessing the environment of captive endangered animals, Blome said.

The judge heard testimony through the trial from plaintiffs such as John Braumann, a Marion resident who said he was depressed after seeing a bear confined in a corn crib on a visit to the zoo.

"People are suffering because of these places," said Holmes, the Oregon lawyer.

The other case, also brought by the Animal League, involved two grizzly bears at a North Carolina zoo and is still under consideration by a judge.

During her Thursday testimony, Pam Sellner defended her care of the animals, saying that Cricket Hollow often took tigers that were already in bad health because she didn't want cats to be euthanized.

Seven tigers have died at the zoo since 2005, and one veterinarian who testified for the plaintiffs earlier in the week faulted the Sellners for not having exams done to determine exact causes of death.

But Sellner testified that she knew her animals' personalities well enough, like a tiger named Sherkhan who died at age 20, to feel comfortable that others at the zoo were not in danger after the deaths.

"If they're an older animal, you can watch them go downhill as they age and it's not a surprise," she said.

Sellner told the judge that she often believed that inspectors from the USDA "nit-pick" when finding certain violations, and that the inspectors also have inconsistent standards for zoos.

The agency in July filed an administrative complaint against the zoo that could end in its license being revoked.

The plaintiffs' attorneys, however, pressed Sellner to answer questions about whether tigers at the zoo receive adequate care. The zoo is not accredited by the well recognized Association of Zoos and Aquariums, and Sellner admitted during cross-examination that in the past she called the association a "snob club."

Sellner also admitted during cross-examination that the zoo does not do routine screenings of its tigers for external parasites, infectious disease and cancers, despite such screenings being recommended in a manual published by Feline Conservation Federation, to which she belongs.

Sellner also said she doesn't perform regular dental exams on tigers.

Those measures are "recommended, not required," she told the judge.