Yellow River Game Ranch Found Repeatedly Violating State Laws Governing the Keeping of Wild Animals, Native Wildlife
For Immediate Release:
March 29, 2012
Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382
Gwinnett County, Ga. — After compiling evidence, including eyewitness accounts, photographs, and expert opinion, indicating that the Yellow River Game Ranch has sorely neglected and abused animals, PETA is asking the Georgia Department of Natural Resources (DNR) not to renew the ranch's operating license, which expires on March 31. PETA is also asking the DNR to confiscate all animals who are being abused or are in the ranch's possession unlawfully. Georgia law forbids the DNR from issuing an exhibition license to applicants who do not comply with specific humane handling, care, and confinement standards.
Information obtained from eyewitnesses indicates that animals at the ranch have been repeatedly subjected to egregiously inhumane treatment and neglect, including a raccoon who was beaten to death with a hammer, a bear who was fiercely attacked by other bears from whom he could not escape because the ranch confined them all to an inadequately sized pen, two cubs who were crushed to death because bears were allowed to breed in violation of the ranch's license, a deer who choked to death after being fed a plastic bag by an unsupervised ranch visitor, and other animals who have been forced to live for weeks or months in their own excrement.
"The law is clear, and—if the DNR confirms our concerns—so are the Yellow River Game Ranch's violations of it," says PETA Foundation Director Delcianna Winders. "The DNR cannot allow animals to suffer and die and must slam the door shut on a facility operated by an owner who has shown nothing but contempt for the welfare of animals and Georgia law."
The reports—coupled with evidence of the ranch's filthy and dilapidated enclosures, inadequate staffing, and defiance of the DNR's orders, including its order to prohibit direct contact with exhibited deer—indicate not only that the ranch currently fails to comply with license prerequisites but also that it cannot and/or will not comply in the future. Under these circumstances, it would be unlawful for the DNR to renew the license for this deplorable facility.
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