BONSALL WILDLIFE CENTER REOPENS FOR TOURS
With 100 animals to feed, Wild Wonders officials say they have no choice but to get back to business
Over the past 29 years, Wild Wonders has survived devastating wildfires and the Great Recession. But the COVID-19 quarantine has dealt a near-death blow to the 5-acre wildlife rescue, education and conservation center in Bonsall.
So at noon on Monday, executive director Jackie Navarro announced in a Facebook Live video that she has reopened the center for small-party, socially distanced paid tours to avoid a permanent closure. It was a leap of faith for Navarro, who was acting without the state and county’s permission to reopen. But she said she’s in a desperate situation, with 100 animals to feed, including cheetahs, binturongs, wallabies, tortoises, alligators, armadillos, monkeys and Arctic foxes.
“We’re dying here,” she said. “Something’s got to give.”
Fortunately, at the same time Navarro was making her public appeal on Facebook, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced plans to allow some retail businesses to begin reopening as soon as Friday. San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond, whose District 5 includes the Bonsall area, said Monday that he couldn’t comment directly on Wild Wonders due the fast-changing nature of the pandemic. But he did express a desire to aid businesses that are in similar dire straits.
“We know businesses are struggling and are doing everything we can to get businesses open,” Desmond said.
Located on a sloping hillside north of state Route 76, Wild Wonders is crisscrossed with wide dirt trails dotted with shaded enclosures housing an exotic mix of birds, mammals, marsupials and reptiles from the Americas, Europe, Asia, Australia and Africa. There’s no wolf in the center’s collection except for the one that’s been howling at the door since March 19.
That day, Navarro said, a “cascade of phone calls” began early in the morning as one by one all of the center’s future educational event and birthday party bookings through July were canceled as stayat-home orders closed schools, libraries and summer camps. Because of the ban on public gatherings, she also had to close the center to tours. Most of the center’s annual income is earned at these events from March to August each year. With the cancellations to date, she estimates a loss of $200,000.
“I don’t think I’ve slept a night since March 19,” she said. “We survived the 2008 recession and the Lilac fire in 2017,” she said. “We’re a pretty scrappy organization. But what we’re going through now has
me really worried.”
Before she started Wild Wonders in 1991, Navarro was a wildlife biologist who had worked as an educator at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park.
“I thought I’d be out in the wilds of Africa or the tundras of Alaska studying wild animals, but I took a detour into captive animals when I was at the Wild Animal Park many years ago,” Navarro said. “I fell in love with the idea of making captive animals’ lives better. I also fell in love with educating kids about the natural world around us. It just kind of stuck, and I stuck with it.”
Over the years, Wild Wonders outgrew locations in Carlsbad and Vista before moving to its present location. It’s run by a team of eight paid employees and a few dozen volunteers.
Wild Wonders didn’t capture any of its animals. Some are surplus animals donated by other wildlife parks and zoos, some were orphaned, and some were unable to survive in the wild. Some of the animals were seized by wildlife officials and others were simply abandoned, like Lola, a common green iguana from Central America that a Fallbrook family found wandering in their backyard.
The cost to maintain the property, as well as the animals’ veterinary and feed bills, averages $20,000 a month. By deferring payments on feed orders and suspending insurance on the now-idle vans used to ferry animals to schools and libraries, Navarro said she’s been able to reduce expenses to $15,000 a month. But now May bills are rolling in and she hasn’t paid all the April expenses yet.
Navarro said she applied without success for federal Paycheck Protection Program and Economic Injury Disaster loans. And because Wild Wonders is a for-profit business, she can’t solicit donations online. A few private donations have come in from supporters. And she has been able to make some money offering virtual safaris on video and “Cheetah Chat” sessions for corporate Zoom meetings. But that income is just a fraction of what she needs for the center to survive.
With nothing left to lose, Navarro said she reopened for tours Monday because she believes the Wild Wonders operating permit qualifies the property as an outdoor recreation area, like the parks and beaches that recently reopened. She also believes that with the center’s wide walkways and touchless tours, visitors will be safe. Tours start at $175 for parties of four at wildwonders.org.
She hopes to offer three one- to two-hour walking tours each day. Visitors will be required to wear masks and sanitize their hands and shoes at the gate. The tours will only be open to groups from the same household to maintain social-distancing measures, and they will be led by just one masked animal caregiver. Navarro said she has also split her working staff into two teams so that no employees have overlapping hours in the event of a COVID-19 infection.
Before going on Facebook, Navarro sent a letter on Sunday to Desmond and the other county supervisors explaining her decision in the hope that her argument can help her avoid a fine she can’t afford.
“They can’t keep going on indefinitely without providing a plan for business owners,” she said. “You gotta give people some hope.”