Escape Of Big Cats Probably Not The First Investigators Find Worn Path From Compound To Nearby Creek

Investigators believe Wednesday’s escape of more than a dozen full-grown African lions from a rickety wild animal compound outside Lava Hot Springs was not the first.

“We have reason to believe the cats frequently roamed free,” Bannock County Sheriff’s Detective Andy Thomas said. “This time they just got caught.”

Thomas said investigators have found trails leading from the Ligertown Game Farm compound to nearby Fish Creek. That suggests at least some of the 50 lions, tigers and crossbred “ligers” used the creek for drinking water, and that they could get in and out of the squalid, makeshift pens cobbled together with scrap lumber, chicken wire and chain-link fence.

“We’ve pretty much discovered this is an ongoing thing,” Thomas said.

The final straw was Wednesday night’s large-scale escape that forced Lava Elementary School to close on Thursday, brought in scores of law enforcement personnel and reporters from throughout the region, and resulted in 16 lions being shot to death.

A neighbor shot the first when he spotted it stalking his livestock. Sheriff’s deputies responding to the scene killed two other lions that charged them.

Using a federal helicopter fitted with an infrared-imaging system, officers gunned down another dozen lions that had wandered out of the compound. On Friday, a 16th lion was killed after it lunged at Bill Torgerson, director of ZooMontana in Billings, and David Pauli, Northern Rockies regional director of the national Humane Society.

The dead lions were loaded onto forklifts Friday and moved into a refrigerated truck.

After officials took five bottle-fed cubs to a Pocatello zoo, Torgerson and Pauli began tranquilizing the 30 or so remaining big cats for transport to a holding facility in Idaho Falls.

But anesthetizing the animals is a slow process, Pauli said, and officials do not expect to have them all removed until sometime early in the coming week. Tests also will be performed to determine if the cats and about 70 wolf hybrids at the compound are diseased.

Meanwhile, Bannock County Sheriff Bill Lynn said it would be the middle of the week before prosecutors decide whether to file animal-cruelty charges against Ligertown owners Robert Fieber and Dotti Martin.

The pens are nothing more than pallets strung together with various types of wire. Pieces of plywood, cardboard, carpet and corrugated metal make up most of the walls and ceilings of the small, dark cages.

“It’s a series of mazes and connections,” Pauli said.

The floors of the cages and the aisles separating them are covered with bones, feces, garbage and fur, sometimes more than an inch deep.

Pauli said the conditions are a sign that there’s “no disease control, no disease containment” at Ligertown. Officials found a male lion dead in one cage and said other lions had been eating its carcass.

Martin and Fieber have housed big cats and wolf hybrids for years. They settled in Lava Hot Springs after leaving northern Idaho and before that Oregon. They have a record of citations for improper care of animals.

The couple was attacked by one of the escaped lions Wednesday night. A friend said they were in a lot of pain and returned to a Pocatello hospital Friday afternoon for more treatment.

Another friend said the couple was “just devastated” by the loss.

“They love their cats,” Jo Ellen Norkevich said. “The biggest problem is that they don’t have any money. They drive 45 to 50 miles one way just to get (donated) meat scraps.”