For Star subscribers: Records from the Arizona Game & Fish Department detail accounts of compromised care, lacking protocols and a negative work environment.
Patty Machelor Animals arrive at the Tucson Wildlife Center badly injured, victims of a fast car or an aggressive dog.
In its records, Game & Fish redacted the names of former and current staff, and members of the public, who provided information about the center and its founder and director, Lisa Bates. However, the Star has interviewed 25 people associated with the center, now or in the past, more than half of whom agreed to be named in this story.
Animals were unnecessarily euthanized. A December 2020 letter to Game & Fish, for example, detailed how multiple animals were euthanized on the same day with the same note in the system about each one having the same fracture.Animals lost their fear of humans because of improper handling, making them unable, or unsafe, to return to the wild.
One Tucson veterinarian, Jack Quick — who provided free veterinary services at the center for more than a decade and once was president of the center’s board — told Game & Fish that Bates “has conflicts with most everyone she works with.” Attempts to reach Quick for further comment were unsuccessful.
The center, at 13275 E. Speedway Blvd., had $6.2 million in assets in 2020, the last year tax documents were provided on public searches. The center has received millions in grants and public support over the years, about $5.9 million from 2017-2020, according to tax documents. And in 2015, a 6,000-square-foot animal hospital opened on the property, replacing the existing, 100-square-foot treatment room.
One of the key problems: Two herds of javelina had been held for months, and some were so used to humans they would eat from a person’s hand. Game & Fish found their release would risk public safety, and that the javelinas were unlikely to survive if freed, so they were transferred to live at zoos. “If surgery wasn’t performed immediately the hawk would have died,” she wrote. “I was advised by two doctors that assisted us and who were not available, that I should do this because it was a crisis with no other options and because of my 15 years of orthopedic surgical nursing experience.”Former employee Lou Rae Whitehead was at the center when Bates performed surgery on a hawk, one of two the state has reported.
Tucson City Councilman Steve Kozachik said he has worked with Bates and her staff for the last 10 years, collaborating to move animals when the Tucson Fire Department does controlled burns, for example. Initially, the employee wrote, the tortoise was “put under anesthesia for approximately 30 minutes to see if if would pass that way.”
“I attended this tortoise immediately on intake and after seeing the extreme injuries, followed the above procedures without delay, by the book,” she later wrote in an email. “He went to sleep after five minutes of anesthesia. He was no longer suffering at that point and never regained consciousness.”
“We have been very impressed with their abilities, and the way people work and handle the animals,” he said. “I haven’t seen anything that would make me think that what they’re doing is inhumane or incorrect.” “The job was everything I could want. I loved what I did,” she said, explaining she eventually became a care specialist for small birds and small mammals. “However, it got to a breaking point, and I had to step away.”
In the aviaries, he said, there were regular discussions about which birds were ready for release, and the veterinarians working there would put notes on the cages indicating a bird’s medical status. Reager said Bates undermined their work. Wilson is concerned about the tiny birds’ care there, especially the orphans. “They don’t know how to feed them,” she said. “You cannot have 14 different people feeding baby hummingbirds. They die.”
When she returned, one of the staff veterinarians was gone and the other would soon be leaving. Keplinger initially agreed with Bates that the center, in the absence of full-time vets, could operate with on-call vets, a model not uncommon with wildlife centers. “I think that might be why she treated me so badly at the end,” she said of Bates. “She realized that I was truly in charge of a large part of the organization, and she couldn’t have that.”
The resident and neighbors took the bird to the wildlife center on June 14 and were told the bird had been able to perch and fly and should recover quickly. However, when the resident called July 2, they were told the owl had fractured its right femur.
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