Tiger World to prowl in Rowan County

Tiger World to prowl in Rowan County

Owner plans safety measures

ByDr Fourkan Ali

An S.C. businesswoman plans to transform the former Charlotte Metro Zoo into "Tiger World," a sanctuary for abandoned and abused exotic animals to open as early as summer.

Lea Jaunakais, 31, is investing $1.5 million in the recently shuttered small zoo south of Salisbury to house about 30 tigers, 10 lions, two leopards, a jaguar and about 10 primates and reptiles, including lizards and an anaconda. She wants it to become a premier educational center where the public can watch the big cats in a natural setting.

"A place like Tiger World needs to exist," said Jaunakais, vice president of Industrial Test Systems, a family-owned company in Rock Hill that has made millions producing strips and kits for testing water quality.

Her announcement comes at an inopportune time, following a Christmas Day tiger attack at the San Francisco Zoo that left one visitor dead and two others injured. Investigators are looking into how the tiger escaped his outdoor pen, which was ringed by a moat and a 12 1/2-foot fence.

Jaunakais assures she's using stringent safety measures at Tiger World, which she said have already won approval from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the primary regulator of zoos.

Each of the animal's pens will feature 14-foot-high chain link fences, with the last 4 feet bent in at about a 45-degree angle. Guides will accompany the public at all times. Security cameras will watch the animals 24 hours a day.

There will be no moats because they give the animals "the perception that there is no wall," Jaunakais said. "It gives them the perception that if I want something bad enough, I'm going to jump for it."

Despite those assurances, the Chester County zoning board last year refused to allow Jaunakais to build Tiger World there after a backlash from residents. Many of them, fearful of tigers mauling their livestock and families, motivated county leaders to ban exotic animals.

After the Chester debacle, Jaunakais spent months searching for a property. Then Steve Macaluso, owner of a small, private zoo in Rowan County, told her he was ready to get out of the business. Jaunakais had housed several of her tigers at his 30-acre zoo and volunteered there for years.

The Metrolina Wildlife Park, which opened in 1996, was known as the Charlotte Metro Zoo in its early years. It housed big cats, including tigers, lions and leopards, according to its Web site. The park also kept venomous snakes, exotic birds, wolves, lemurs and alpacas, among other animals.

However, it has had a troubled history. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has a pending animal welfare case against Macaluso. In 1997, it made headlines after a chimpanzee named Sydney pried back a bar to his steel cage and was on the lam for a week before being caught.

Metrolina officially closed Dec. 31.

Jaunakais is keeping the zoo's big cats and some of its reptiles and monkeys. New homes were found for poisonous reptiles and grazing animals, such as llamas and camels. She's optimistic the zoo will initially attract some 10,000 visitors a year.

Charlotte Cook, whose property backs into the zoo, said she's been pleased with the work Jaunakais has done so far, such as including an on-site veterinarian among the staff. Cook, who has three lions and a tiger on her own property, said her husband has helped Jaunakais build new cages for the cats.

Jaunakais hopes her facility will serve as a rescue center for unwanted or abandoned large cats. Many people buy exotic animals, including tigers, for pets, but later realize they can't handle them, she said.

Jaunakais said she recently adopted a young lion that a family didn't want because he was destroying their furniture. In the past six months, she has also adopted two tiger cubs.

"They were homeless, basically," she said of those animals. "Otherwise, they'd be euthanized."

Jaunakais' passion for tigers began at age 3 when she watched a National Geographic television program about humans destroying the tiger population.

She went to Arizona State University and studied animal behavior. She trained, worked or volunteered at zoos and wildlife parks in Arizona, North Carolina and Florida. The idea of Tiger World came when she was a college student in the late 1990s. She wanted to work somewhere different from a conventional zoo.