Late at night, Amanda Zamora often heard a lion’s roar cut through the coastal breeze.
The sound came from West Coast Game Park Safari, down the street. The roadside zoo billed itself as “America’s largest wild animal petting park.”
As an animal lover, Zamora thought it was cool and eventually took a job at the zoo’s gift shop.
“My whole life revolves around animals,” Zamora said. “I was so stoked for this.”
But her excitement soon faded. Cages were filthy. Staff dumped bones and carcasses behind the property. She found mold, then maggots, in bags of deer feed sold at the gift shop.
She also learned those late-night roars weren’t coming from inside the park. The owner, Brian Tenney, kept a lion alone in an enclosure near a two-story mansion he was building just outside the zoo. Employees called it the “White Castle.”
Zamora started thinking of that nightly roar as a cry.
“I would play music,” she said. “I couldn't listen to it. It was too sad.”
The zoo had drawn scrutiny from federal inspectors. Over the past year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture cited it repeatedly for violations of the Animal Welfare Act.
Reports noted that animals had disappeared from the zoo without any documents of sale or death. An inspector found a dead tiger in a freezer. Other storage containers for animal meat were empty, besides a dead rat. The list of violations is long.
Then, in May, things escalated.
State, local and federal authorities raided the zoo after widespread allegations of animal neglect. Police also searched the White Castle. Within the home, in a jug labeled whey protein, they found 80 grams of methamphetamine. The officer who found it called it a "dealer amount." Packaging material and scales found at the property provided evidence of drug manufacturing, according to the probable cause statement from the Coos Bay Sheriff's Office.
In a concrete vault with a metal door within the White Castle, police found $1.6 million in cash, cashier’s checks, bonds and certificates.
They also found 44 firearms on the property, including one modified into a machine gun.
Tenney hasn’t responded to multiple requests for comment.
Former employees speak
Zamora said there were some red flags at the zoo, which for her suggested something potentially illegal rather than the operations of a disorganized business. For example, she said on one especially busy day, the park made thousands of dollars from admissions and the gift shop. But Tenney, she said, didn’t want the income documented.
“He told me to throw away the receipts and to not write it down,” Zamora said. “I thought that was very weird.”
According to court documents, a local detective thinks Tenney has buried buckets of cash and documents on the property. The Internal Revenue Service was one of the agencies that served a warrant at the zoo.
Yet, despite plenty of cash allegedly on the property, former employees said animals were often underfed. The zoo had a number to call for meat donations.
“Pretty much every single day there was either [an animal] born that was dead… or there was an animal that was dying,” said Alexi Farmer, who worked at the zoo in 2023.
Farmer said that when she worked there, she and three other employees cared for hundreds of animals. Federal inspectors reported lions with protruding ribs.
“The big cats only ate maybe once a week, and it was usually just bones that had been sitting in the freezer that somebody had donated to the facility,” Farmer said.
Employees at the zoo usually didn’t last long, Zamora said. She said she quit after the owner physically attacked her. She claimed Tenney accused her of stealing money.
“I wanted to stay there so bad for the animals,” Zamora said. Two other former employees, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation, had stories that align with accounts by Farmer and Zamora.
The zoo’s attending veterinarian, Donald Baum of Bandon Veterinary Hospital, said in an affidavit that he was never consulted about the condition of the large cats. In one instance, staff only left a voicemail, Baum said, after a tiger was found dead after a fight with another tiger.
A lengthy investigation
Oregon actually has some of the best resources in the country to investigate animal abuse. A 2012 law gave the nonprofit Oregon Humane Society its own law enforcement team. The organization also has one of only two animal crimes forensic centers in the country, used to collect evidence for prosecution.
“We're the only state in the country that has both of those things,” said Laura Klink with OHS.
Oregon Humane Society agents investigate hundreds of cases of suspected animal abuse every year. Klink said one of their officers and a forensic veterinarian helped search the West Coast Game Park Safari.
“Our chief of law enforcement likes to say, ‘If you don't have a veterinary report, you don't have a case,’” Klink said. “Animals can't tell us what happened to them.”
Even with Oregon’s impressive resources, the West Coast Game Park Safari had been operating without a state Wildlife Exhibitor's Permit since June 2023. In those two years, federal inspectors cited the park 80 times for violations. The zoo failed to get accreditation from either of the two national zoo associations, a requirement under state law.
In October of last year, legal counsel for the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals Foundation filed a complaint with the USDA, citing inspection reports and highlighting animal welfare laws the group accused the zoo of breaking. That email was also forwarded to state police.
But it seems the zoo was already on the authorities’ radar. A robbery in 2023 brought an FBI agent to the park. According to a federal indictment, a former employee stole $1 million in cash, gold and silver coins and 40 firearms from Tenney’s vault. Court documents mention that a local detective had been investigating the zoo’s owner since at least 2023, the year of the theft.
State police said it took months of preparation before the May raid. That included a reconnaissance flight of the 20-acre property in April, according to court documents. Officers noted potential dangers at the park.
“Brian Tenney is a firearms enthusiast… He possesses several large-caliber weapons, including a 20mm cannon and a .50 caliber rifle… Brian Tenney is also known to use hard drugs… Brian Tenney will sometimes keep wild and/or exotic animals inside his residences,” according to a search warrant affidavit.
In all, at least six agencies were involved in the investigation: the IRS, Oregon State Police, Oregon Humane Society, Oregon Department of Justice, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and Coos County Sheriff’s Office.
Sanctuary for George
Police arrested Tenney on drug charges. And they seized and rehomed 310 of his animals. Authorities euthanized three animals, including a camel, because of their poor health. Officers also took the zoo’s camera surveillance system and records from Bandon Veterinary Hospital.
One of the animals authorities seized was a chimpanzee named George. He was left alone after his mate died. Inspectors found him withdrawn, staring at the wall of his enclosure.
George is now at a Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest in Washington, surrounded by other chimpanzees. That’s given Farmer, the former employee, some relief.
“I cry about that almost every day,” Farmer said. “I'm really happy for them.”
