The private zoo in the hamlet of Ethel, Louisiana, shut down its animal encounters and safari rides when founder Gabriel Ligon signed over the roughly 125 remaining animals last week to a group of employees who are incorporating as Sanctuary Hill. Ligon, who started the facility with a $10,000 student loan a decade ago, said he wants to return to the jungle conservation work that originally drew him to animals after a monkey ripped his ear nearly in half during a college internship in Costa Rica.
“I can promise that I will never work and/or participate in the zoo industry again,” Ligon told the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the transition.
Former staffers say the facility’s problems ran far deeper than its founder acknowledges. Josh Webb, who worked as a zookeeper from April to November of 2025, described the operation as close to the dysfunction depicted in the Netflix series “Tiger King.” “It’s not as messy as ‘Tiger King’ was,” Webb said. “But it’s close.”
The zoo, originally called Barn Hill Preserve and later rebranded as Magnolia Wilds, began as a roadside rescue operation with a macaw and a cockatoo that Ligon brought to children’s parties. He scaled up aggressively, adding a safari park and paid encounters where visitors could swim with otters and penguins. But maintaining the collection proved expensive. Payroll sometimes arrived late. Food deliveries occasionally ran out before the weekend, according to former employees.
Wildlife inspectors from the U.S. Department of Agriculture documented 43 infractions between 2021 and February 2026, including the death of two alpacas from parasites and a flea infestation that killed a Sand Cat. USDA reports also cited an insufficient barrier between the zoo’s lynxes and the public. Ligon sued the USDA over its confiscation of a giraffe, saying the seizure cost the zoo a million dollars a year in lost revenue from bad press.
The most durable problem may be animal escapes. A baby Nile crocodile lived for weeks in a horse trough, staff said. After the crocodile ate a bird that had flown into the enclosure, workers moved the reptile outside and used cinder blocks to weigh down the grate covering it. The next morning the grate and blocks were still in place; the crocodile, which can grow to 16 feet and 1,000 pounds, was not. Ligon suspects an employee stole the reptile. Former employees think it escaped — and it remains at large.
In 2024, Ligon ordered staff to move two Indian crested porcupines, Owen and Rebel, to a larger enclosure the night before a USDA inspection despite the employees’ warnings that the animals were tunnelers and the new pen had no dig guards. Both porcupines disappeared overnight. Owen was found disoriented in the woods. Rebel was spotted dead on Highway 955, according to former employees.
The otter-swim experience, which cost visitors $215, also produced a stream of minor injuries. The otters were known to bite guests, and swim instructors said they were told to downplay the bites as “just animal things” and offer Neosporin and a bandage. The pool where the encounters took place was frequently bright green with algae, former employees said.
Employees routinely took newborn kangaroos, wildcats and goats home overnight for round-the-clock bottle feeding. Former animal care specialist Avery Stewart recalled playing with a wildcat kitten on her bed, aware that the animal could tear out her jugular. “I have videos playing with this kitten on my bed that could rip out my jugular,” Stewart said.
Ligon’s legal troubles intensified in January when he was arrested on a felony theft charge stemming from a business dispute with another zoo owner. Some former employees had hoped the arrest would force the animals to be sent to better-resourced facilities, but instead Ligon chose to hand the zoo to his staff.
Vet tech Lauren Cotton, 29, who signed a nondisclosure agreement with Ligon, will serve as animal care director at Sanctuary Hill. She said keeping the animals in their existing enclosures is the most ethical choice. The new operators plan to end all human-animal encounters, potentially excepting hand-feeding sloths, and seek accreditation from the Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries.
Valerie Taylor, the federation’s executive director, said she cannot remember any facility successfully transitioning from a for-profit zoo to a sanctuary, and that hand-feeding sloths would disqualify the facility under the federation’s rules. She said the federation would be glad to help the new nonprofit apply.
Around the same time Sanctuary Hill announced its formation, a large, bedraggled bird was spotted in Wisconsin. Zookeepers in an online group began asking whether any facility was missing a Marabou stork. Former Barn Hill keeper Allison Balsamo, who had moved home to Janesville, Wisconsin, recognized the description immediately. “You can’t get away,” she said. “Even if you want to.”
On a recent visit by the Wall Street Journal, the property appeared clean and the animals seemed content. Ligon, wearing ostrich boots and a duck-patterned shirt, acknowledged the problems but framed them as routine. “We had a bee escape once,” he said. “I have to tell you, PR nightmare.”