![]() "Oversight of the care and husbandry of the wildlife at the Center is provided by experienced and passionate animal caregivers, consultants, and multiple cooperating veterinarians," the department said in a statement. But in a lengthy statement provided to New Times, Tony Guiles, assistant director for the Game and Fish Department's Information, Education and Recreation Division, cited consulting veterinarians who vouched for the center’s animal practices. In the agency's view, the volunteers' recollections are inaccurate.ĭemlong declined to be interviewed for this article. The department strongly disputed the allegations with testimonials from experts and countervailing explanations of events at the wildlife center. The Game and Fish Department employee who supervised the center, Mike Demlong, resigned effective May 18 after Phoenix New Times made a series of inquiries probing the animal deaths. They complained, sometimes in writing, to their superiors about the center's management and need to improve its animal rehabilitation procedures. ![]() Wilbur and several other former volunteers at Adobe Mountain say that the reptile deaths fit a pattern of mistakes and bad practices during the center's final years before it closed in May 2018. That Monday, they were supposed to assist in a scheduled live animal presentation for a group of kids. Wolf and Wilbur had been assigned to take some of these reptiles - part of a collection that the state used for education and outreach - to the Game and Fish Department’s headquarters. The freestanding reptile shed had become an oven by the time Wolf arrived, so she carried the reptiles from their hut into the nearby animal hospital. Unlike mammals, reptiles are cold-blooded and cannot regulate their internal body temperature, so when the shed’s temperature climbed in the June heat, they baked to death. The power to the reptile hut’s air-conditioning unit had failed sometime before staff arrived at the rehabilitation center that morning. A Gila monster was hyperventilating in its Plexiglass container, lethargic and unresponsive, Wilbur said. Other animals appeared to be clinging to life, clearly in distress due to heat exposure, he recalled. Peering into the trash bags, he saw limp, dead rattlesnakes. “She said, ‘I don’t know, it was really hot in the reptile hut.’”Īround a dozen of the center’s reptiles had overheated, according to Wilbur. “‘What the hell happened?’” Wilbur remembers asking her. Most were lifeless.Īnother employee, Tegan Wolf, had arrived before Wilbur. The recently shuttered center, surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire, is next door to a juvenile prison near Interstate 17 and Pinnacle Peak Road.Īs Wilbur recalls, when he walked into the center’s animal hospital on the morning of June 20, 2016, reptiles were scattered around the room - rattlesnakes, Gila monsters, toads, and boas. SCI (Former V.P.Matthew Wilbur arrived at the Adobe Mountain Wildlife Center to an eerie scene.Īt the time, Wilbur was working with raptors as a paid college intern for the Arizona Game and Fish Department, which maintained the wildlife rehabilitation center. We also may be able to avoid multiple trips to an out-of-county court. Please contact us if you are cited or charged with any Game & Fish violation. He is a Native of Arizona and is a member of many outdoor conservation groups. He has the unique experience of being on both sides of these cases.īen is also an avid hunter and outdoorsman. Ben has appeared before the Arizona Game & Fish Commission to assist those facing license suspensions or revocations.īen Green is a former prosecutor with the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office where he prosecuted many Game & Fish cases. In addition to the criminal charges, Arizona Game & Fish violations can result in hunting or fishing license revocation and civil penalties. We have successfully defended hunters, fishermen, guides and outdoorsmen in such matters. Public Defenders are not typically appointed in these cases. Most, if not all, Arizona Game & Fish violations are criminal in nature. In addition to other types of criminal matters, this firm also defends clients charged or cited with Arizona Game & Fish violations.
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