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A haven needs a new home

An exotic-animal sanctuary's owner needs land, but cash flow is a problem.

By S.I. ROSENBAUM, Times Staff Writer
Published January 4, 2008

WIMAUMA 

Elmira's Wildlife Sanctuary is looking for a new home.

Robin Greenwood, who runs the Wimauma sanctuary, said she hopes to find a place to relocate her collection of lions, tigers, capybaras, lynxes, servals, leopards, wolves, cockatoos and bears by late December.

The sanctuary now sits on a former fish farm that had belonged to a friend, David Kitchen.

Like Greenwood and her husband, Ted, Kitchen collected exotic animals, and years ago offered to house the Greenwoods' growing menagerie alongside his own lion, tiger and two bears.

After Ted Greenwood died in 2006, Robin Greenwood applied for a license to exhibit the animals to the public, and Elmira's Wildlife Sanctuary was born.

But Kitchen died last June, and his widow recently asked Robin to move her animals somewhere else.

"She's decided she doesn't want the liability of the animals on her property," Greenwood said.

There are no hard feelings between the two women, Greenwood said.

"The hardest part is I can understand where she's coming from, 100 percent," Greenwood said.

"She's just trying to get her arms around everything and make a life for herself, and it's not an easy thing to do."

Greenwood said business had been picking up at the sanctuary, but she still relies on donations to keep feeding her animals raw chicken.

Finding money to buy property is out of the question.

"We're broke, we're shot, yeah," she said.

She's been calling friends and acquaintances, hoping to find someone who will give her a long-term lease on some rural land.

"I don't know what else we can do," she said.

She can't give her animals away because there's no one to take them.

In fact, Greenwood got many of her animals as refugees from other sanctuaries that folded.

And she won't consider more drastic solutions.

"Euthanasia just isn't an option to me," Greenwood said.

Since her husband died, she's been constantly struggling to raise enough money to care for her charges.

But even this new obstacle, she said, is well worth it.

"This is the challenge of a lifetime," Greenwood said.

"It's a chance to do something from the bottom up and stick my neck out to do something worthwhile. ... I just want to give them the best life possible."

S.I. Rosenbaum can be reached at srosenbaum@sptimes.com or 661-2442.

[Last modified January 3, 2008, 08:14:20]