Meet the brand new P’nut.
Honey, a 27-year-old black bear and star attraction at a state-licensed animal refuge on Lengthy Island was euthanized final month after what animal advocates allege was years of horrific neglect and lack of medical care on the taxpayer-funded facility.
The doomed beast suffered from damaged and rotted tooth, and continual urinary tract infections and was steadily seen swaying forwards and backwards in her enclosure within the Holtsville Ecology Heart, based on Humane Lengthy Island, which accused workers of dismissing their issues.
Honey’s bitter finish got here on Nov. 22, after the animal suffered a stroke and misplaced the usage of the rear a part of her physique, a middle official stated. Black bears can dwell into their 30s in captivity.
Her loss of life comes a month after the state Division of Conservation infamously seized P’nut the Squirrel from an upstate house and executed him.
The three.5-acre Lengthy Island refuge, in the meantime, is licensed by DEC and, bizarrely, run by the City of Brookhaven’s Freeway Division.
It’s free to the general public and residential to greater than 100 sick or injured animals that can’t dwell within the wild.
However few staffers have the right veterinary coaching to care for his or her prices, former staff Cayleigh Kunnmann and Kathleen Conelly instructed The Publish.
Honey, alongside along with her brother Pooh, was donated to the middle as a cub within the late Nineteen Nineties by wildlife exhibitor Larry Wallach, who was compelled to close down his sloth-encounter storefront.
Towards the top of her life Honey would wrestle to stand up the hill in her enclosure to be locked into her concrete pen at evening, Kunnmann stated.
Humane LI claimed the pen was barely large enough for Honey to show round.
“They might harass her till she went up the hill,” Kunnmann contended. “They might yell, run alongside the surface of the enclosure. Generally if she actually wasn’t going, they might spray her with the hose.”
Ursine professional Steve “The Bear Whisperer” Searles stated Honey’s swaying is widespread for careworn bears in captivity.
“These are all continual signs that stem from even people who find themselves well-intended in zoos, but in addition those that possibly aren’t so considerate in these locations,” he stated.
The middle opened in 1974 on the positioning of a former landfill and is beloved by households with younger children who come to see every thing from goats and geese to bison, wolves, mustangs, lynx, and different animals.
No less than eight former staff allege Honey was removed from the one creature to undergo on the middle. A number of had been left with out correct medical care, and died or needed to be euthanized, together with not less than 5 since July, Humane LI alleged.
They embody Wilbur, a big farm pig; Lilly, a lionhead rabbit; Patrick, a mallard duck with mobility points; and Clarice, a white-tailed deer with kidney failure.
One longtime worker with out veterinary coaching was allegedly seen chopping into sick animals, together with a duck with an contaminated foot and a goat with an abscess, the ex-employees alleged.
Animals had been steadily stored in unheated, uncleaned cages, even in a single day and on winter weekends, staffers claimed.
And fundamental upkeep, together with caring for hooves or horns, was missing, to the purpose the place one goat had a horn develop into the facet of its head, the whistleblowers alleged to Humane Lengthy Island.
“We’ve already secured respected sanctuary placement for each single animal struggling at this garbage-dump-turned-zoo,” stated Humane Lengthy Island president John DiLeonardo, who led 30 protesters Friday evening as tons of of individuals flooded into the middle for the city’s annual tree lighting. “All that’s wanted is for the Freeway Division to confess they need to stick with fixing potholes as a substitute of confining animals.”
Brookhaven Freeway Superintendent Dan Losquadro vehemently denied the allegations and insisted the animals had been underneath the care of a licensed vet, although he couldn’t instantly affirm whether or not the medical skilled was certified to work with giant mammals like Honey.
“This isn’t one thing the city is hiding from or attempting to comb underneath the rug,” he instructed The Publish. “It’s simply irritating when somebody is spreading clear falsehoods introduced as info.”
He known as the allegations “insulting,” and stated his workers “categorically deny” spraying Honey with a hose to get her to maneuver.
“I feel the monitor file of the ability and the work that we’ve executed and the suggestions I’ve gotten has all been very optimistic,” slamming DiLeonardo as “a self-appointed sole arbiter of reality.”
The DEC stated it was not conscious of any complaints however would examine. The middle handed a shock inspection from the US Division of Agriculture in August.
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