Investigation into roadside zoos finds risks to guests and animals at some facilities

(NEW YORK) — Meeting an exotic animal at a public attraction can fill us with wonder, but critics say that this can also be dangerous. Dana Garber said she had just such an encounter at the Endangered Ark Foundation in Hugo, Oklahoma, in 2021.

She thought their family trip would be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get close to the world’s largest living land animals.

“It was my youngest son’s birthday,” she told ABC News. “It seemed like for his birthday, it was a wonderful thing. Something we could do as a family.”

The foundation advertises itself as a sanctuary for retired circus elephants, making them a popular attraction in the state.

“I was under the impression that this was a place that was a good place for these elephants to live out their lives after their circus life,” Garber said.

Their day kicked off with the elephants, along with their handlers, greeting the family by bringing them breakfast, according to Garber. Afterwards, she recalled that they fed the elephants graham crackers over a metal fence.

“We were encouraged to pet them,” she said. “We were encouraged to go up to them.”

She recalled taking photos as she says an elephant grabbed her father-in-law with its trunk. She took more photos as she said her husband distracted the towering animal with graham crackers so it would let go of his father. However, to her horror, she said that the same elephant then grabbed her as she tried to walk past it.

“I can tell you that it felt like an anaconda,” she said, referring to the species of snake that constricts its prey. “I was being squished and held very tightly, after the elephant grabbed me and kind of swung me and thrashed me to the ground.”

Garber isn’t alone in claiming to have been injured by an exotic animal at a public attraction. ABC News reviewed government records, lawsuits and local reports to find at least 150 people over the past decade who have alleged they were injured during exotic animal encounters in the U.S.

After the incident, Garber noted that foundation staffers rushed to her aid, offering her ice. She says no one, including her, realized how seriously she had been injured. However, she said her husband — a radiologist — grew increasingly concerned over time.

“He said I wasn’t speaking coherently,” she said. “And at that point, he decided we have to get her immediately to the emergency room.”

Garber said scans revealed the extent of the damage to her knee.

“It had a lateral and a medial tibial plateau crush injury,” she said. “That along with the head injury.”

She told ABC News it has taken almost two years and multiple surgeries for her to regain function of her leg.

In the process of sorting out some of the medical bills, Garber said she reached out to Endangered Ark Foundation to get in touch with their insurance company. She said the company left a voice message suggesting she fell at their location.

“All kinds of hairs stood up on the back of my neck,” she said. “There is absolutely no way that you can get the kind of injury I sustained just by falling.”

Garber eventually filed a lawsuit, which they settled out of court without any admission of wrongdoing by Endangered Ark Foundation. The company told ABC News that they strongly refute all allegations.

“The family of Mrs. Garber continued to enjoy a full day at the foundation after the alleged incident,” it said in a statement.

Since the day she said she sustained her injuries, Garber claims to have discovered that some of the elephants at the sanctuary aren’t retired at all, and are allegedly still performing under a license for a circus called Carson & Barnes. The founders of that circus opened up the Endangered Ark Foundation in 1993 to serve as a retirement ranch for circus elephants, they say.

The circus didn’t respond to ABC News’ request for comment.

“I was under the impression that this was a true reserve and that these elephants were retired elephants that we would be seeing,” Garber said.

The Endangered Ark Foundation is one of at least 900 facilities in the U.S. that offers human interactions with wild or exotic animals as part of their business. According to critics, some of these places — known as roadside zoos — are not accredited by the Association of Zoos & Aquariums and many have a bad track record in their treatment of animals.

In 2020, the Netflix series “Tiger King” shined a light on several such locations — particularly the since-shuttered Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park, which was founded and owned by Joe Exotic.

In the wake of “Tiger King,” the Big Cat Public Safety Act was enacted in 2022. The law prohibits public contact with big cats and the new breeding of cubs for private possession.

The Humane Society of the United States, a nonprofit organization that focuses on animal welfare, investigated Exotic’s Oklahoma roadside zoo years before “Tiger King” made him infamous.

Humane Society CEO Kitty Block said her organization often steps in to investigate these facilities because the Department of Agriculture (USDA), which is charged with overseeing them, is either too slow or does too little to act.

The Humane Society highlighted Tiger Safari in Tuttle, Oklahoma, as an example. They first recorded undercover footage of people interacting with tiger cubs there in 2014, after which the USDA filed a complaint and fined the zoo $15,000.

At the time, the founder Bill Meadows told local news outlets that his park was among the cleanest in the state and that the animals were treated well. He claimed the negative publicity came because the Humane Society wanted to cut out private zoo ownership, and that his zoo had corrected the USDA citations.

However, the Humane Society returned in 2021 and discovered that the facility had moved on to promoting interactions with other animals, including otter cubs.

The USDA cited them again for causing “unnecessary discomfort.” In total, the USDA has cited Tiger Safari at least 90 times in the past decade for issues like inadequate vet care and unsanitary conditions.

Tiger Safari did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment.

“The USDA is not even enforcing the meager standards that are there,” Block told ABC News. “They are stretched too thin.”

The USDA told ABC News, in part, that they take enforcement of the federal law seriously, and that they “work with facilities to ensure they comply.”

The agency said that if a facility is consistently unable to achieve compliance, that they are referred for investigation to determine if enforcement actions like “license suspension and revocations” are appropriate.

Advocates said it’s often their responsibility to work to shut such places down. In 2020, Special Memories Zoo in Wisconsin was sued by the Animal Legal Defense Fund for violating the Endangered Species Act. It also alleged that the zoo violated state law by “operating as a public nuisance because it was violating animal cruelty laws.”

A month after the lawsuit was filed, the zoo announced it would close and begin transferring animals to different facilities. However, a fire broke out and allegedly revealed serious neglect of its animals.

Police were dispatched to the property, and footage from their body cameras shows the officers discussing how several of the animals had starved to death before the flames erupted.

Instead of going to roadside zoos to see animals, advocates recommend doing so at locations accredited by the Association of Zoos & Aquariums, a nonprofit dedicated to the advancement of zoos and public aquariums in the areas of conservation, education, science, and recreation.

The Smithsonian Zoo in Washington, D.C., is one such facility, and it maintains a strict no-touch policy with its Asian elephants. Dana Garber agreed with this approach.

“I could’ve died. I don’t want that to happen to someone else’s family,” she told ABC News. “This is going to be with me forever, I will never be able to fully move on from this.”

ABC News’ Jessica Hopper and Laura Coburn contributed to this report.