Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 26, 1994 TAG: 9403010184
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KARL MOGENSEN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
On July 21, 1993, our resident pair of geriatric mountain lions gave birth to a single male kitten. The mother was a third-generation cat, born and raised at the Natural Bridge Zoological Park. The sire was an aged animal that had been held for Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries for approximately 12 years.
One of our Virginia Tech student caretakers for animals, Anne Georgiades, presently a veterinary student, requested permission to raise the kitten for a few months until it was ready to be placed in another institution or returned to the Natural Bridge Zoological Park. She is an extremely capable young lady and had previously shown great skill, diligence and compassion in the hand-rearing of young birds and animals at our institution.
On Sept. 23, while attending a meeting of an exotic-wildlife coalition in Missouri with some of our staff members, we received a frantic phone call from Ms. Georgiades stating that a Virginia game warden, Lee Wensel, and five other law-enforcement officers had barged into her private residence and were demanding that she relinquish the mountain lion kitten. Our general curator, Debora Barreda, told Wensel that the kitten would be picked up the following day by one of our staff members, to which he agreed. When our people arrived the next day, the kitten was being removed by Wensel, who refused to allow its return to the Natural Bridge Zoo.
Game Warden Wensel's gestapo tactics, arrogance and abusive treatment of Ms. Georgiades certainly do a discredit to the Virginia game department. My later attempted phone conversation with Wensel confirmed Ms. Georgiades' allegations of his extreme arrogance. What an extremely brave group of six law-enforcement officers, state game wardens and Blacksburg police to descend upon a 20-year-old veterinary student with an 8-week-old mountain lion kitten.
A later phone call to Bob Duncan with the game department in Richmond resulted in the case being turned over to Maj. Joe Cook, assistant chief of law enforcement. He informed me that the mountain lion was an endangered species. Maj. Cook seems to be unaware that the Eastern cougar (Felis concolor cougar) has been extinct since the late 1800s and the Florida cougar (Felis concolor Coryi) has been gradually reduced to approximately 20 specimens, many of which are older nonreproductive females or cryptorchid males. The mountain lions on display at the Natural Bridge Zoological Park are of Western subspecies and are in no danger of extinction in their native habitat.
As we keep almost no indigenous species, other than those for the state game department, we had unknowingly allowed our game permit to expire. It seems odd that department officials couldn't return the mountain lion kitten to us, yet we had been keeping and assuming all vet bills for a female black bear and a male mountain lion for them for approximately 12 years. There didn't seem to be any problem with the expired permit during that period. Our Department of Agriculture permit showed that the kitten had been placed with Ms. Georgiades for temporary rearing during its infant stage.
Let me make it clear that we are not animal dealers and do not sell large predators to the general public. We have, in the past, allowed trained and competent people to bottle feed some of our tiger cubs or mountain lion kittens for us. Pet City in Roanoke, owned and managed by Charlie Harvey and family, has been extremely helpful in rearing some of our kittens over the years. Pet City has done a very professional job of allowing the children of Roanoke to view the cubs during their infancy at no charge.
We received a rather brusque letter from Ed Clark of The Wildlife Center stating that the mountain lion kitten was to be picked up and a large boarding bill was due. The Virginia Game Commission removed the mountain lion kitten from our caretaker and transported it to The Wildlife Center, so let them pay the boarding fee.
We feel it's a shame when so-called nonprofit institutions capitalize on an animal situation like this to solicit donations for their general funds, while threatening euthanasia for the unfortunate large predator involved, unless the necessary funding is provided.
We also feel that this whole situation was blown out of proportion by an overzealous game warden, Lee Wensel, an uninformed assistant chief of law enforcement, Joe Cook, and an overly eager Ed Clark, always trying to promote himself and The Wildlife Center.
Karl Mogensen is director of Natural Bridge Zoological Park.
by CNB