Keystone Safari Thoughts on Keystone Safari

Pantheraman

Pantheraman

Well-Known Member
Has anyone here been to Keystone Safari in Grove City, Pennsylvania? If so what are your thoughts on the place? I ask these questions because it's a sister park to one of the Living Treasures Animal Parks and I've learned Living Treasures has had animal welfare violations in the past. So is Keystone Safari a place a takes good care of its animals?
 
I have! It's not a sister zoo to both living treasures parks. The two LT are separate entities, not run by the same people or in connection now. The owner of the northern LT (new castle) also owns Keystone Safari. The more southern location, Jones Mills, has the worse reputation. I can't speak for the past, or what goes on behind the scenes, but the LT in New Castle was better than I expected. Keystone is brand new, with all new exhibits and everything. Both LT and Keystone have some species rarely found in US zoos (I specifically went because of LT's honey badger). My main complaint about Keystone would be lack of of trees and other flora, but being brand new, stuff hasn't had time to grow.
 
TinoPup said:
I have! It's not a sister zoo to both living treasures parks. The two LT are separate entities, not run by the same people or in connection now. The owner of the northern LT (new castle) also owns Keystone Safari. The more southern location, Jones Mills, has the worse reputation. I can't speak for the past, or what goes on behind the scenes, but the LT in New Castle was better than I expected. Keystone is brand new, with all new exhibits and everything. Both LT and Keystone have some species rarely found in US zoos (I specifically went because of LT's honey badger). My main complaint about Keystone would be lack of of trees and other flora, but being brand new, stuff hasn't had time to grow.
Click to expand...
On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate Keystone Safari and Living Treasures New Castle?
 
I'm not good at rating things... for non-AZA, they're both decent appearing, with Keystone being nicer than LT (the advantage of being new).
 
Here's something related to it. Adam Guiher, owner of LT Moraine and Keystone Safari got Levi the giraffe when he was less than 3 weeks old, and Levi is a son of the famous April the giraffe. Not to downplay the guy, but why would he get Levi at such a young age?
 
Thoughts in summary.

Keystone Safari isn't AZA-accredited, which is the big way to tell if a place is good or bad. They don't plan to at the moment unless it would end up being in their best interest to do so.

They do, however, work with AZA-accredited facilities. Like the time they loaned two of their camels to a zoo once for example. So I can at least give them credit for that.

Another thing I can give them credit for is that their animal care manager does have a college degree in biological sciences, so the one managing the animal keepers is a knowledgeable person.

The owner, Adam Guiher, was elected in 2012 as a professional member of the highest level of the ZAA. Now let's be honest. ZAA accreditation means pretty much nothing in terms of how good or bad a place is since it looks like a large number of their facilities have had violations. But it doesn't look like they're even ZAA accredited.

In this case, you do have to go against the don't judge a book by its cover idea. Looking at the enclosures, they actually look pretty nice. And they do have decent enrichment I think also.

I have noticed that there are some baby animals by themselves in an enclosure that are bottle-fed. Some would be worried this might just be a way to make more money, on the other hand, sometimes mothers reject their offspring. I don't know about you, but I'd hope it would be the last part.

All in all, in this case, I don't think them not being an AZA place doesn't mean they're a bad place.
 
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