Pymatuning Deer Park Hit With Official Warning Over Animal-Welfare Violations

PETA Complaints Prompt First Action of Its Kind Against Confining Bears to Barren Concrete Pits

For Immediate Release:
March 23, 2016

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has hit notorious roadside zoo Pymatuning Deer Park with an official warning for more than a dozen violations of the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) found during six inspections of the facility over the last year—including confining visibly ailing bears to concrete pits, with no opportunities to swim, climb, dig, den, or engage in other natural behaviors. The warning, the first ever for confining bears to concrete pits, informs Pymatuning that any further violation of the AWA may result in fines, criminal prosecution, or other sanctions.

Other AWA violations noted in the USDA’s official warning include Pymatuning’s repeated failure to clean up animals’ waste, failure to maintain a current veterinary program, and failure to have a sufficient number of adequately trained employees—among many other issues.

“This official warning shows, yet again, that Pymatuning Deer Park either can’t or won’t provide bears and other animals with the most basic care,” says PETA Foundation Deputy Director Brittany Peet. “PETA is calling for this ramshackle roadside zoo to send these neglected animals to proper sanctuaries where they’d have the space and the veterinary care that they desperately need.”

The USDA recently promised to offer training sessions and issue new policy statements, factsheets, and technical notes to ensure that bears are better protected under current AWA regulations—in response to a petition for bear-specific standards in the AWA from PETA, whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment.”

For more information, please visit PETA.org.