Wisconsin's most famous roadside zoo is a sad place
Pleading eyes, pacing, and problems galore
A few months ago, I went to ShalomWildlife Zoo in West Bend, WI.1 It wasn’t on high on my list of places to visit, but sometimes your best friend’s toddler gets to call the shots.
Shalom Wildlife calls itself both a “sanctuary” and “the world’s largest petting zoo”. Unsurprisingly, it’s the sanctuary piece that falls short. Shalom is an unaccredited roadside zoo that has been cited for numerous animal welfare violations and been in trouble for things like letting visitors enter the bobcat exhibit and hand feed bears.
I expected to be appalled throughout my visit. I was surprised to find it wasn’t all bad. Most of the ruminant animals had very large enclosures, much bigger than they would likely have at a sanctuary. The zoo sits on 100 acres, most of which goes to massive spaces for animals like buffalo and elk. If you are one of those animals, things could be a lot worse.
If you’re a carnivore, you’re out of luck.
American black bears in the wild can have a home range of up to 80 miles. The 3 black bears at this zoo had about 600 square feet total.
There were a weird amount of picnic tables in the bear area, some stacked on top of each other. I think visitors get a kick out of pointing and laughing at the idea of a bear on a picnic table. There was no other enrichment that I could see.
My friend knows I object to zoos, so he was curious to hear my thoughts on the place as we walked around. It was nice to have that outlet, but I couldn’t fully express myself either. It was not the time to tell a smiling 3 year old, “Did you know those tigers used to have cubs, but they drowned in the pond after falling through shallow ice?”
So, what better use of this blog than to sound off about what bothers me about roadside zoos.
Small Enclosures
Perhaps these foxes are lucky to have anything at all. Maybe their cage size is technically adequate based on zoo guidelines. All I know is it bummed me out to walk past it. I can be bad with anthropomorphizing, but they looked so sullen and bored. I think about the foxes I see gliding around my Milwaukee neighborhood, so lithe and determined, expressing their full foxi-ness, and the contrast with their zoo brethren is stark.
I wonder if they would trade places with the zoo foxes for the free food. I hope they would not.
If you squint at the above photo, you can see a lynx. Their normal range can be up to 1,500 square miles. The range for this individual is too depressing to calculate.
The memory that stuck with my most from my visit was of a coyote in it’s tiny cage, relentlessly pacing back and forth.
Coyotes can live up to 20 years in captivity. 20 years of pacing, wishing for a way out.
Why does a zoo even need coyotes? I can’t imagine they are a big draw.
Has a single person ever gone to a zoo and been excited to see pigeons? It feels so gratuitous.
Finally, there’s the glorious badger, the state animal of Wisconsin, the inspiration for Bucky, the beloved UW Madison mascot. This is what we give them for their 16 years of captivity.
Lack of Oversight and Limited Animal Care
At Shalom Wildlife you are allowed to feed basically all the animals except the larger predators. People still do that though, because of course they would, and also there are no employees around to stop them.
In general, there is not a lot of staff to keep an eye on things or tend to the vast amount of zoo residents. I saw just one single employee ride by on a golf cart during our two-hour visit.
I can’t help but compare the amount of animal care going on at Shalom with what I saw at a farm animal sanctuary I’m familiar with. The sanctuary only has ~150 animals compared to Shalom’s ~800. Yet the sanctuary has a crew of 4-6 people working all day and into the night on animal care. It’s a lot of work to make sure 150 farm animals are fed, watered, getting their medicines, and have clean living conditions. Then add on a whole bunch more work if there’s a sick animal that has to be taken to a vet.
I am no zoo inspector, but I just can’t fathom how all the animals at Shalom could get adequate care given the lack of workers I saw during my visit.
Violations
Shalom Wildlife has a history of engaging in illegal activity. They violated federal law by transporting tiger cubs when they were too young, and then they were cited with a critical violation of the Animal Welfare Act when those cubs drowned. Still, breeding efforts continue, as the tigers are the big draw. You can see them on billboards all over the state.
Shalom has been given “non-critical” citations as well, such as when a USDA worker noticed that a porcupine had inadequate shelter:
There was no shelter inside the enclosure to fully allow the animal to hide or to shelter from strong winds or blowing precipitation. The facility representative stated that this porcupine is well-acclimated to weather conditions at this time of year and they do place an igloo kennel shelter inside the enclosure from October until April.
Gotta love the worker going, “Oh this guy? Definitely acclimated.” Seems like a real tight ship they are running.
They were also cited in 2022 when an inspector noted that animal feedings by the public could cause harm2:
Members of the public were observed feeding the exhibited animals in the water buffalo, elk and deer areas, however, no employee or attendant was present at the time. Failure to have an employee or attendant available during periods of public contact exposes the exhibited animals to potential safety hazards from resulting from improper contact and/or food sources that may not be appropriate for the nutritional needs of the animals.
I’m sure there’s a lot more if you keep digging. It seems clear they operate with a loose ethical framework.
To be fair, sometimes they do kind and honorable things, like taking in a fox that was found living next to a Walmart so it wouldn’t be put down. I’ve never saved the life of a fox and I love that they did that. (There’s a controversy over whether they deliberately misidentified the species of fox in an attempt to gain publicity, but I don’t know enough about fox genetics to adjudicate that dispute.)
Overall, I find it hard to trust the zoo owners when they are the kind of people who respond in the following way to online criticism:
A terrorist group disguised as an animal rights group posted on their Facebook page this past Saturday a video of this person climbing over the 4' high chainlink barrier fence that completely surrounds the bobcat exhibit. […] This selfishly motivated group's agenda is to shut down all zoos. They are willing to do and use any means possible including illegal activity to do so.
The “terrorists” did nothing illegal. They just shared the video of someone petting a bobcat and criticized the zoo.
As a side note, a 4-foot high chainlink fence does not seem high enough to contain a bobcat!
Roadside zoos do not put animal welfare first
Though it bills itself as a sanctuary, Shalom is a business at the end of the day, charging $16 for an adult and $11 for a child. Given it’s popularity, and the bare minimum they appear to put into animal care, I’m assuming the owners make decent money. It’s the number one attraction in West Bend, Wisconsin, according the Trip Advisor. It gets mostly high ratings, but I agree more with the negative takes.
Sadly, what I saw at Shalom Wildlife can’t hold a candle to some of the worst roadside zoos out there. Just google the phrase “roadside zoo problems”. You’ll learn about appalling conditions, animals without water, animals being fed maggot infested food, animals attacking people, and all other kinds of other craziness. One Wisconsin zoo let some of their animals starve to death.
If things get bad enough, the USDA will step in and shut things down. They rescued 150 animals from Even Keel Exotics in 2023, but only after issuing 75 different violation citations starting in 2015. Why do I feel like this outcome does not strike fear into the hearts of the slightly less unhinged zoo owners? Still, it’s something.
No zoo is perfect, but if you go to a large accredited one you at least won’t have to wonder whether the animals have protection, food and water. That’s a low bar to clear, but it’s one that roadside zoos fail again and again.
They get their unusual name because an angry businessman got annoyed when the taxes on his land went up, so he gave the land to the untaxable catholic church as a middle finger to the man. The city then asked the nuns to rename the road leading up to it so that it wouldn’t be named after the businessman who hated them. The nuns apparently chose Shalom, because that means peace in Hebrew, and the area was a very peaceful place. Then when the zoo got built on that road they named the zoo after the street.
I feel like there’s more to this story. Catholic nuns in the 1940’s got to name a street and chose a Jewish word? Was it some sort of Holocaust guilt thing? A bored local journalist should get to the bottom of this someday.
It’s hard to link to PDFs, so you’ll have to trust me or search the USDA inspection service site to find these citations.
They’re in the public eye again and unfortunately, they’re drumming up their followers to get their pitchforks out and harass their neighbors. That place is NOT a sanctuary.
A good but sad read. Well done on visiting and reporting—I don’t think I’d have the stomach.