Lion Country Safari history: Animals bit, gored and mauled visitors, staff
Fifty years ago, visitors lined up for miles for the opening day of Lion Country Safari , a drive-through wild animal park that was the country’s first cageless zoo.
In its half-century history, the park in rural Palm Beach County has been a favorite of local residents and of famous chimp researcher, Jane Goodall , who still visits once a year to study the park’s chimp population.
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Lion Country Safari is also home to the largest herd of zebras outside Africa, a 93-year-old tortoise, southern white rhinos and a herd of giraffes.
Its ambassador is an elderly lady named Little Mama, a former Ice Capades performer, who, at close to 80, is the oldest living chimp in the world.
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But mixing dangerous animals with humans during 50 years means accidents sometime happen.
In a half century, Lion Country Safari in Loxahatchee has had one fatality, as well as a number of maulings and bites. Most happened during the early years of the wild animal park when state and federal regulations were vastly different.
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In fact, the rules were so casual in the 1960s and ‘70s that visitors could arrange to cuddle with lion cubs.
Here’s a list of incidents from The Palm Beach Post archives:
August 1967: Two weeks before the park opened, a worker revived a female lion after pulling the unconscious 11-month old from a canal, where she’d fallen in. The game keeper gave the lion mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, putting his whole head in the lion’s toothy mouth.
November 1967: A mother lion mauled her rare, white cub, which was taken to Glades Central Hospital where it recovered in a baby incubator attended to by the LCS vet and the hospital’s nurses.
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January 1969: Former ‘Tonight Show’ host Jack Paar, who was making a documentary at LCS, was bitten on the wrist by Jack Paar, his namesake lion.
October 1971: A 24-year-old elephant warden was hospitalized after the 8,000-pound pachyderm he was tending stepped on his head.
August 1973: Gus, the park’s 7,000 pound white, rhino trampled a worker who was injured but survived.
January 1974: In the park’s only fatality, a 4,000 pound water buffalo named Ralph trampled and gored to death the animal keeper who fed it every day. Malcolm Gallop, 60, of West Palm Beach, was attacked in front of a carload of tourists.
“It picked him up and slammed him down,” said Mrs. Robert Morton from Phenix, Va. who witnessed the attack while visiting the park with her family. “It just kept slamming him down.”
Park staff said Ralph had been acting aggressive since a calf he sired was born nine days earlier.
December 1975: Former lion tamer Emma Bates was given permission to feed the cubs she raised at her Royal Palm Beach home before she gave them to LCS. During one visit to the lions’ enclosures, she arrived with 40 pounds of raw meat in her car’s trunk. A group of lions burst out the door and one tackled Bates, gripping her head in its jaws. A nearby worker fought off the lion with a rake. Bates survived with multiple bites and broken bones.
July 1989: A chimp attacked workers trying to move a group of chimps to another island. One worker slipped and shot another worker in the abdomen with his park-issued .357 handgun.
March 1990: JoJo, a four-ton female elephant, picked up a worker with her trunk, spun him around, then gored him. The worker survived.
December 1993: A 400-pound male lion named Helmut mauled a caretaker who was hospitalized with puncture wounds, a severed jugular vein, and two collapsed lungs.
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