Ex-West Coast Game Park Safari operator Brian Tenney cops a plea

Sloths meet the seven deadly sins of roadside zoo proprietors

            BANDON,  Oregon;  ORLANDO,  Florida––The now defunct West Coast Game Park Safari operated for 56 years just outside Bandon,  Oregon.

Sloth World,  on International Drive in Orlando,  between University Studios and SeaWorld Orlando,  has yet to open.

Both,  though,  exemplify why privately owned and operated roadside zoos exist in enduring disrepute among people who care about animals to look past promotional hype.

Brian Scott Tenney,  53,  last of three generations of West Coast Game Park Safari owner/operators,  on April 20,  2026 “pleaded guilty in Coos County Circuit Court to 43 charges of animal neglect and one count each of racketeering,  delivery of methamphetamine, unlawful possession of a machine gun,  short-barreled firearm or silencer,  and recklessly endangering another person,”  reported Maxine Bernstein for The Oregonian.

To be sentenced on July 20,  2026

Although potentially facing 20 years in prison,  “Tenney remains out of custody and will be sentenced on July 20,  2026,”  Bernstein continued.

“His co-defendant,  Edith Sarah Alline Beckner,  31,  of Bandon,  is scheduled to change her plea at a separate hearing that day,  according to court records,”  Bernstein added.

Tenney was on August 25,  2024 indicted by the Coos County grand jury on 371 charges,  but apparently managed to plea bargain away 328 of them.

The original alleged offenses included 20 counts of unlawful possession of wildlife,  351 counts of animal neglect in the second degree, unlawful possession of methamphetamine and cocaine,  unlawful possession of a machine gun,  racketeering,  and “violations of cervid [deer] disease testing and fencing requirements,”  KATU television news reported at the time from Portland,  Oregon.

Animals whom Tenney allegedly neglected included raccoons,  bobcats,  capybaras,  African lions,  a tiger,  a fishing cat,  a kinkajou, a camel,  a javelina,  and a porcupine.

The indictments came three months after Tenney was on May 27,  2025 arrested in alleged possession of 80 grams of methamphetamine,  44 firearms,  about eight grams of cocaine,  and $1.6 million in cash and other financial instruments,  the Coos County Sheriff’s Office announced in a media release.

Evacuated

The drugs and weapons were seized twelve days after veterinarians and other personnel from the Oregon Humane Society,  Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife,  and Oregon Department of Agriculture on May 15,  2025 began the four-day process of taking into custody the 310 animals found alive at the West Coast Game Park Safari.

The West Coast Game Park Safari had been accumulating federal Animal Welfare Act violations since September 2015.

Founded in 1968 as Deer Park,  the West Coast Game Park Safari was sold to Robert Stanley Tenney,  father of Brian Tenney,  and given the name by which it became best known in 1976.

Robert Stanley Tenney,  then a 31-year-old former overseas oil field worker,  with his wife Mary operated the West Coast Game Park Safari relatively uneventfully until Mary,  68,  died in 2007.

Retiring at age 72,  Robert Tenney turned the management of the West Coast Game Park Safari over to Brian Tenney in 2009.

            (See Risk-taking roadside zoo operator busted for drugs, firearms; zoo closed.)

Sloth World

Four days before Brian Tenney entered his guilty pleas,  Inside Climate News investigative reporters Katie Surma and Kiley Price on April 16, 2026 revealed the deaths of at least 31 sloths imported by Sloth World in 2024 and 2025 from Guyana and Peru.

Sloth World,  Surma and Price explained,  is “a $49 animal encounter marketed as a conservation-focused center scheduled to open soon.”

Both three-toed and two-toed sloths,  however,  are considered “species of least concern” by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature,  not protected by the U.S. Endangered Species Act.

In the warehouse where the wild-caught sloths were kept,  Surma and Price detailed,  “There was no running water.  No electricity.  The space heaters meant to keep them warm were plugged in with extension cords running from another building,  according to a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission incident report that Inside Climate News obtained through an open-records request. But the heaters repeatedly tripped the fuse and shut off.”

“Kept importing more sloths”

The first 21 sloths to arrive and the eight sloths who survived among a shipment of 10 replacements all soon died in Orlando, but “The company kept importing more sloths,”  Surma and Price recounted.

A review of the death reports by Ana María Villada Rosales,  identified by Surma and Price as “a member of the Council of Scientific Authority in Costa Rica and head veterinarian and conservation medicine research manager at The Sloth Institute in Costa Rica,  indicate that ‘systemic stress’ acted as a ‘definitive catalyst’ for the deaths of the sloths,  Surma and Price summarized.

“Benjamin Agresta,  owner of Sloth World,  said his organization wants to teach people about sloths and intends to study them,  work with researchers,  and provide grant money to conservation organizations,”  Surma and Price mentioned,  but he declined,  they said,  “to disclose what conservation organizations Sloth World is working with,  or intends to work with.

“Sloth World has continued importing wild sloths through a related business,  Sanctuary World Imports,  acquiring at least 38 more wild sloths,”  Surma and Price learned.

Surma and Price were unable,  however,  to determine how many of those sloths are still alive.

Verbal warning

“Roughly six months after the initial 31 sloth deaths at the facility,”  Surma and Price found,  “the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission gave the company’s import business a verbal warning for housing some of the animals in cages too small for them,  without tracking how long they had been confined.”

However,  Surma and Price added,  “The agency told Inside Climate News this week that Sloth World didn’t violate any state regulations and ‘there are currently no active investigations.'”

Surma and Price noted that roadside zoo critics “say Sloth World reflects an industry pattern—commercial companies framing wildlife encounters as conservation or rescue operations while relying on a steady supply of animals taken from the wild.  Under current law,  those animals are largely treated as property who can be captured,  sold,  and imported if basic permitting requirements are met with the exporting countries and U.S. officials.”

“No justification”

But Rebecca Cliffe,  founder of the Sloth Conservation Foundation,  told Surma and Price that,  “There is no justification in 2026 for acquiring wild sloths for exhibition.”

“Unlike most mammals,”  Surma and Price paraphrased Cliffe, sloths “lack a strong fight-or-flight response and instead rely on camouflage to survive.  When handled by strangers or placed in noisy,  high-traffic environments,  they don’t scream or struggle.

“Instead, Cliffe said,  they internalize the stress—sometimes curling into a ball and closing their eyes. Their bodies flood with cortisol,  triggering a cascade of physiological stress that can end in organ failure.

Sloth World,  Sloth Institute executive director Samantha Trull alleged to Surma and Price,   “are pretending it’s conservation,”  while “trying to really greenwash what they’re doing.”

Neither Sloth World nor Sanctuary World Imports have been licensed to exhibit wildlife by the USDA,  Surma and Price said.

Northwest Wildlife Sanctuary

Sloths,  since U.S. President Joe Biden on December 20,  2022 endorsed the Big Cat Public Safety Act into law,  curtailing the baby tiger petting business,  are among the hottest commodities in the roadside petting zoo racket,  and even among American Zoo Association-accredited nonprofit zoos,  exemplified by recent hoopla over the addition of a two-toed sloth to the newly renovated World of Primates exhibit at the Fort Worth Zoo in Fort Worth,  Texas.

Among the notorious roadside zoo examples is the so-called Northwest Wildlife Sanctuary,  operated by an entity called Alpha Encounters,  housed in a former bar and convenience store just south of Deception Pass State Park at the northern end of Whidbey Island,  31 miles north of ANIMALS 24-7.

            (See “Wolf dog is doing well” at large, but “For how long?” community wonders.)

The wonderous vanishing sloths

            Opened in 2022,  the Northwest Wildlife Sanctuary had five sloths when Kathy Reed visited for Whidbey Weekly in July 2023.

Postings to the Facebook pages of both the Northwest Wildlife Sanctuary and owner Dave Coleburn showed two sloths there as of August 25,  2025.

Only one,  named Flash,  has appeared on those Facebook pages since then.

During the same time frame,  reported Jesse Stensland for the South Whidbey Record on June 10,  2025,  a sloth bit a Northwest Wildlife Sanctuary visitor the arm in 2024.

Later in 2024 a binturong bit visitor Wendy Hansen,  who sued both the facility and Coleburn for damages.  No case outcome has been reported.

Predators of the Heart

Coleburn previously operated Predators of the Heart,  a traveling wildlife show and roadside zoo headquartered southeast of Anacortes,  on Fidalgo Island,  just across the Deception Pass bridge from Whidbey Island.

Operating there from 1998 until losing the property in a 2021 divorce settlement,  Coleburn in 2003 and 2008 reportedly led lobbying efforts against state legislation to ban private possession of dangerous wild animals.

The bill passed anyway,  but Coleburn won an exemption for the owners of traveling animal shows.

Partnering with a pet bobcat and puma keeper who lived on the far side of Greenbank, Washington from ANIMALS 24-7,  Coleburn formed an entity called the Alliance for the Conservation of Exotic Felines to continue to try to thwart the efforts of communities to protect themselves from dangerous “pets” who were never intended by nature to be “pets.”

That organization later moved to Chehalis,  Washington,  several hours drive south.

Predators of the Heart now calls itself the Because We Matter wildlife sanctuary.

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