Conservators Center brings big cats to Burlington

In an unlikely location northeast of Burlington lies a facility filled with lions, leopards and other big exotic cats

By Oliver Fischer

Dec. 5 2018

A serval hisses at another serval at the Conservators Center on Dec. 1. [Oliver Fischer]

Burlington is not known for its exotic wildlife, but travelers who venture out to Caswell County may be in for a surprise.

Less than 20 miles northeast of Burlington lies the Conservators Center, a non-profit organization housing dozens of wild cats and carnivores. But the center does more than offer exotic animals a home. “We built a facility with the goal in mind of connecting people with wildlife using education,” said Mindy Stinner, executive director and co-founder of the center.

Stinner, who founded the center in 1999 with husband Douglas Evans, said she chose the location on East Hughes Mill Road because Caswell County regulations made it a suitable place to house big cats in a facility. There was also a safety concern. “We didn’t want people to feel like there was a lion or tiger right next door to their school,” Stinner said. The county makes sure that the facility is both safe and provides quality care for the animals.

“We spoke to the people who run the counties to make sure we were going to be welcome as economic development and not seen as a nuisance,” Stinner said. But the rural location can still be challenging at times.

The center is always trying to get more people to visit them. “Attracting people who are in urban centers or spread out in our rural community is important, but since we do everything by tour, it’s sometimes hard for people to plan in advance,” Stinner said. For the 20-year anniversary, Stinner said the center will make changes that will allow visitors to just hang out, rather than book a tour. At the moment, the center offers six different tours, including a tour at dusk, when the animals are more active.

Getting the animals

The Conservators Center acquires its animals through a number of means. Sometimes, people bring animals, especially carnivores, to the center because of their expertise with particular species. “Government officials and people who are looking at fixing a problem, will sometimes reach out to us,” Stinner said. Ideally, the center offers its knowledge and skills so that an animal can stay where it is, but sometimes that isn’t enough and an animal needs a new home.

Wolves howling at the Conservators Center.

A wolf howling at the Conservators Center on Dec. 1. [Oliver Fischer]

Some reasons for relocating animals include facilities that are downsizing, overcrowded or closing down. “If a person wants to retire, it’s pretty challenging to sell a zoo,” Stinner said. “If you’ve held animals and you love them and you want to provide for them, then you want to find a really good home for them.” The Conservators Center can provide such a home.

Government officials also look for a new home for animals if they are forced to shut down a facility due to animal welfare act violations. This is how Daisy, one of the lions, came to the Conservators Center. Daisy was displaced from her home in Ohio as part of a government raid in 2004. The facility that housed her had about 900 animal welfare act violations.

As a result, there were 14 big cats that needed to be relocated. “We agreed to take four of them,” said Heather Davidson, a volunteer and tour guide at the Conservators Center. The owner of another facility who agreed to take the other 10 developed health problems, so all 14 big cats ended up at the Conservators Center. “Because we are licensed by the USDA, we needed to have spaces that were the right size and all the right things inside the enclosure,” Davidson said. “It was a real financial struggle.”

Lions calling to one another or “oofing” at the Conservators Center.

A leopard at the Conservators Center on Dec. 1. [Oliver Fischer]

Another way the center gets its animals is when owners give up their pets that they are not prepared to care for, but this has become less common in recent years. “What we see now occasionally is a small cat where the owner is moving somewhere where the animal is no longer legal, so they have no choice,” Stinner said. Often times, the owners will continue to support their pet at the center.

Working at the center

Unless they come in direct contact with the animals, a lot of the employees at the center don’t necessarily have animal care backgrounds. The Conservators Center hires people with backgrounds in PR, media and journalism because there is more to taking care of animals than feeding them and providing them with a home. “One of the things you have to do to take good care of animals is be able to explain those animals to people and be able to help advertise a facility and encourage people to come,” Stinner said.

Those who take care of the animals directly follow established best practices, like feeding the animals the right diet. But the center also does some things its own way. “We may give a vaccination by having a big cat lean against the fence instead of using a dart,” Stinner said.

With its focus on big exotic cats, the center’s two main challenges are safety and animal welfare. “With big cats, there is an additional level of responsibility because those animals present a genuine risk to the public if they are not properly contained,” Stinner said. In order to provide safe care to the animals, the Conservators Center tries to bring the world to the animals, rather than the animals to the world. “They get all types of enrichment,” Stinner said. One day the center may give animals a cardboard box with an interesting smell, another day they may give them a banana peel.

Tours and donations keep the center afloat but covering basic expenses to run a facility like the Conservators Center can still present a challenge. Paying for the land, maintaining buildings, power and phone bills, equipment for workers, maintaining the animal facilities, training tour guides, fairly paying keepers, paying for further training of employees and several other expenses all add up over time.

A gray wolf at the Conservators Center on Dec. 1. [Oliver Fischer]

There are years where the center receives enough money to pay for all expenses, but there are also years, such as in 2015, where they may lose over $50.000. “The base cost of running a facility with about 80 animals in it, with as many donations as we can possibly get, still relies on about half a million dollars in cash per year, just to stay afloat,” Stinner said. In order to be thriving, the center would need an additional quarter of a million dollars on top of that.

Constantly evolving

Increasing funds isn’t the only thing the center is working on. “In order for the center to thrive in the future, we need to make ourselves more accessible for parents with kids,” Stinner said. While the center is still trying to figure out an exact plan going forward, some possible ideas Stinner had in mind included bringing in different types of animals that people could touch, providing experiences to people outside of the main park and offering rolling tours, allowing people to drop by the center at any time during the day and see the animals. These changes are planned on time for the 20-year anniversary of the center. “We are hoping to do a reveal for that in the spring of 2019,” Stinner said.

 

 

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