Watching a river otter trying to turn flips in muddy, 5-inch-deep water almost made Dawn Fox cry.
But Fox, a former volunteer with Florida Wildlife Care Center, said she was only allowed to change the water in the child’s size plastic pool once a week.
“It really brought tears to my eyes to see that poor little guy in that filthy, dirty water,” she said. “The bottom line is that it was a poor setup.”
But since the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission charged Leslie Straub, the owner of the center, on Sept. 5 with failing to comply with animal neglect rules, a lot has changed.
Now, Fox said, the otter swims in a tank of sparkling water at the Clearwater Marine Aquarium, where he will live permanently.
“I can rest easy to know he’s in a wonderful environment,” she said.
As of March 27, Straub is facing a two-year deferred prosecution agreement instead of criminal charges, and her license to care for wild animals has been suspended for three years.
Normally, deferred prosecution only suspends the charges for a year, said Ken Holmes, a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission investigator. The agreement gives the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission inspection rights to Straub’s home for two years, allowing investigators to make sure she doesn’t have any wild animals on her property. If she complies, the charges will be dropped.
Holmes said he was willing to give her deferred prosecution because she didn’t have a criminal history, and she had been rehabbing since 1995.
“She did a lot of good for a lot of years,” he said. “Obviously, she wasn’t doing what she should lately.”
Meanwhile, animals that were formerly in Straub’s care have been passed on to other organizations.
Rehabilitators typically have niches of animals they work with, Holmes said, but Straub took in a wide variety. Now that Straub is out of the picture, Fox said it’s exposing just how far the wildlife rehabilitation system has to go.
“We’ve always had the void,” she said. “People just didn’t know about it.”
Some of Straub’s former volunteers are using Florida Wildlife Care as a call center to help connect people with injured animals to rehabbers.
Volunteers like Amy Morton, 28, are also working to put together a web of foster homes to give residents options.
“A lot of people don’t know where to turn to when they find an injured animal,” she said.
Contact Kelcee Griffis at kgriffis@alligator.org.
