![]() ![]() “The municipality kind of used that against us,” he said. The animals were sometimes uncaged, including a lion, foxes and wolves.īy summer 2016, there had been 10 incidents of bites and scratches involving seven of the animals, including the monkeys, foxes and coatimundi, according to Niagara Region public health records.ĭrysdale says he reported most of those incidents to the public health department as part of a mandatory reporting requirement. His collection grew to include lemurs, spider and squirrel monkeys, marmosets, foxes, wolves, a water buffalo, a kangaroo, a donkey, a lynx and, eventually, lions.Īlongside his then-wife, Joni Cook, Drysdale created the Ringtail Ranch and Rescue zoo in Wainfleet, Ont., in 2013. “People who know me know what I stand for, know how well I treat my animals, know how much my animals love me,” he said.ĭrysdale’s first exotic animal was a coatimundi, a raccoon-like mammal from Mexico and South America. Drysdale also faces charges under the Provincial Animal Welfare Services (PAWS) Act for failing to provide proper care for his animals.ĭrysdale said he has done nothing wrong, cares deeply for his animals, and his zoos educate the public about, and protect, at-risk species like tigers. Drysdale later pleaded guilty to assault. When Tamara died on July 4, Drysdale was in the custody of the OPP after an incident in a car with his now ex-wife, Tammy Cavers-Nyyssonen, who the tiger was named after. “Anyone who tries to pretend that I don’t and that I just do this for money and that I just stand back and let them get killed is just so disgusting for even someone to say that.” ![]() “I was bent over in pain like losing a child. “The minuscule regulations that are here are just not enforced.”ĭrysdale said he used a bulldozer to dig Tamara’s grave at the hardscrabble compound hemmed in by tall trees a few days before police arrived. It’s crazy,” said Julie Woodyer, campaigns director of the Toronto-based animal rights group Zoocheck. “Ontario is basically like the wild west when it comes to exotic animals. His story shows the difficulty Ontario has had in dealing with what animal rights activists, humane societies and accredited zoos say is a decades-old problem in the province that has led to the mistreatment and deaths of animals.Īs recently as Christmas Eve, the Ontario Provincial Police found the corpses of an alligator and five large snakes in a Caledon ditch. But without provincial legislation, the patchwork of bylaws is the only thing standing in the way of roadside zoos. In one incident, a lynx attacked a child.ĭrysdale’s travelling menagerie has triggered some small towns to pass exotic animal bylaws. He had zoos in two other Ontario communities that closed after complaints and running afoul of municipal zoning bylaws. The premature end of his zoo closed another chapter in a history of trouble that has followed Drysdale for nearly a decade. The enclosures were taken down and his animals sent away. Drysdale still lives on the remote property along a highway 25 km north of Bancroft, but the roadside zoo is gone. ![]()
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