Saw this video posted not long ago. Won’t be able to watch it until tomorrow but I’m sure it’s interesting.
This was a much better video than I was expected tbh. It's a shame they focused mostly on parrots and domestic camelids and didn't actually see the whole zoo but they conducted this very professionally. I wonder if this person has ever come across ZooChat, seeing as they appear to be just an avid enthusiast. ~Thylo
I'd disagree! I know very little about the zoo, but the attack within this video is filled with all sorts of claims that might be seen as being somewhat one-sided. There seems to be a great interest in Llamas - the "profits" from this video (?) will go to support some Llama rescue thing - and a great deal of mud is slung. I always find such mud slinging to be somewhat uncomfortable, and when someone with a platform like this - a Youtube channel - uses that platform to put forward a point of view, I struggle, a little. Quotations from anonymous keepers don't really persuade me either. The whole thing seems to be a personal attack on the zoo owner, Mickey Ollson.
Judging from the advertisement for channel-centric merchandise underneath the video, I think it's safe to assume her videos are monetized, meaning the money she's giving to the Llama rescue will be the revenue from people watching her and from the ads present. As she says, the keepers have to remain anonymous, which will always call the quotes into question regardless of how she delivered them. The fact that she shared her conversation with Mickey with us, and had multiple experts comment on his claims when she clearly is knowledgeable to do so herself, adds a lot of validation for me. I find it hard to dismiss this as mudslinging when we can listen to Mickey declare these outrageous things himself. But perhaps the fact that, as you say, you don't know much about the zoo whereas I have visited and thus seen the things she's talking about (and much more!) first hand might cause me to buy into it all more easily than someone going into the situation fresh (and thus healthily skeptical). ~Thylo
I don't have the patience to watch the video (almost an hour long), but I can say having been to Wildlife World several times that I refuse to visit again. There are certainly some decent exhibits, primarily the large hoofstock yards, but there are some deplorable exhibits. The last time I visited, which is when I decided not to return, was when Adventure Land had just opened. The first exhibit, for American black bears, was a barren dirt plot with one wood platform. This is a brand new exhibit? It is awful and there was not much to commend in the rest of this new expansion. One of their "new" jaguar exhibits has one hundred percent mock rock (plus a pool) with no natural substrate. On a previous exhibit with some friends from my local zoo (a board member and a docent) we saw a jaguar cub in an older exhibit with plain dirt and a few logs. Keepers were inside cleaning and moving the logs. When one of my friends asked what they do for enrichment, the keeper answered (in all seriousness) move the logs!
The zoo is definitely a bad one, but I don't know that it's worse than somewhere like this - Clay Center Zoo- Clay Center, Kansas
I didn't thought zoos this bad existed in US. I know there are bad zoos but I have never seen something like this.
Since it is not clear from the post (at least to me), "the zoo" referred to is Clay Center Zoo, not Wildlife World Zoo.
I agree. I was brought to the Southern Nevada Zoo as a child and god that was awful. It is scarred into my brain the conditions those animals live in. Thankfully it shut down, but while it was open the San Diego Zoo often sent animals there. Claws and Paws in Northeastern PA is another atrocious one I visited as a child. That ones still open. Just google it to see how horrible it truly is, so bad that my not animal obsessed family members compared it to Tiger King last week.
I spent 5 years of my childhood in Arizona living next to Wildlife World Zoo and going to it frequently; I had fond memories of the place. Now however I agree that the zoo could be far better than it is. It keeps expanding with each expansion differentiating in quality, and I think they should've renovated the main area of the zoo and the bad exhibits there instead of moving ahead with so much expansions.
While it is not the worst zoo ever, it has problems and in my opinion keeps getting worse. There is a reason I have not visited in years and will not return. A case in point is a lengthy statement they recently posted on Facebook about their new white lion cub (which ends with a link to a dubious site called white lions dot org). Here are some choice excerpts: "Critically endangered WHITE lions were born at Wildlife World... ...they hold significant conservation value, carrying a unique genetic marker... ...we hope CITES, the IUCN and the South African Government will list the White Lion as a critically endangered subpopulation..."
Priceless masquerading wordy mumbo jumbo drivel unbecoming any serious conservation organisation! It really disqualifies the place absolutely on the back of that ... ahum nice little video! I seem to remember the recent network interest in the very fact the South African government had just finally shut down the canned lion hunting business in the country or so it was motioned by the majority in Parliament House in Cape Town (yes seat of Govt. is Pretoria, just parliament being elsewhere sited).
