A veterinarian from the Atlanta area and an animal rights organization from Ohio are suing Noah's Ark Animal Sanctuary for allegedly neglecting the animals at the Locust Grove facility.
Outreach for Animals and former Noah's Ark veterinarian Dr. Karen Thomas claim in a lawsuit filed earlier this week in U.S. District Court in Atlanta that the sanctuary violated the federal Endangered Species Act by failing to adequately feed, house, and care for about 60 animals, including tigers, macaws, cockatoos, a lion, a bear, a Lar gibbon, and two spider monkeys.
“Defendants are depriving ESA-protected species of adequate veterinary care, forcing them to eat contaminated food, and depriving them of safe and sanitary living,” Thomas and the organization allege in their lawsuit.
Outreach for Animals is located in Dayton, Ohio.
The lawsuit was filed around ten months after the facility, which had formerly been one of Henry County's most popular family vacation spots, was permanently closed to the public due to a bird flu outbreak.
The H5N1 strain of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) was found to be the cause of the deaths of numerous black vultures that occurred on the sanctuary's property in August 2022.
In the days that followed, about 100 birds cared for by Noah's Ark were put to death, including chickens, turkeys, peacocks, peahens, emus, ostriches, Guinea pigs, an owl, a crow, and sandhill cranes.
Visitors' favorite parrots were unaffected.
Jama Hedgecoth established Noah's Ark in Ellenwood in 1978 to take care of harmed, mistreated and abandoned animals. In 1990, it relocated to its present 250-acre location in Locust Grove.
Noah’s Ark leaders on Friday alleged the lawsuit by Thomas and Outreach for Animals was a continuation of a campaign against the facility’s current management since the outbreak.
Noah's Ark stated that the complainants and others have gone to the federal courts after failing to prevail in similar litigation filed at the state court level in response to a letter Thomas and Outreach wrote on March 22 declaring their intention to sue.
“This latest threatened lawsuit is part of your clients’ collective and ongoing strategy of scorched earth litigation to gain control — for their personal financial benefit — of a nonprofit organization that exists to care for the animals, not to benefit a specific human family,” Noah’s Ark officials stated.