It’s about 10 a.m. Tuesday morning and Steve Kroschel is getting ready to feed and water the 66 animals at the Kroschel Films Wildlife Center in Mosquito Lake.
It’s quiet. The bustle of the previous day’s four groups of cruise ship tourists fades into the distance as he considers what he’ll do with the rest of the 2024 tourism season now that he’s lost his USDA license to operate.
He walks up the hill sloping toward the interior of the compound and past log cabins and painted plywood buildings that look like they were lifted from an old movie set. There’s the Wild Kitchen where a sign hanging next to a pile of artfully arranged bones advertises a menu with things like salmon, squirrel, rabbit, moose, beaver, liver, and flax. A small, flat-roofed shed is labeled ‘’yü-ne-seks ‘lav-a-itōrē.”
A quick pause at the fox enclosure, where he lifts a long pole and demonstrates how he “fishes” treats to them. As if on cue, a red fox runs out and looks up – waiting.
Across the path, another enclosure plays host to a small silver fox. It’s skittish, but curious and follows Kroschel around after he steps inside. A little further up the hill, Kroschel stops and points at a spot along a tall chain link fence surrounding an enclosure where a 16-year-old grizzly bear named Kitty spends her days.
“That is what destroyed the park right there. Just one effing pole,” he said.
Visitors describe this part of the tour as a visceral rush, a moment of sheer, puckering terror, when Kroschel calls to her – holding a kettle of porridge – and the 1,200-pound Kodiak Island bear charges directly down a trail toward them before turning at the last minute and heading uphill to a small enclosure.
To understand what Kroschel is talking about, it’s helpful to know that in addition to the educational permit he has to get from the state’s Department of Fish and Game, Kroschel has to have a license from the United State Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service to remain open to the public.
He said both regulatory agencies have come down hard on him.
“I mean, all these questions, it’s not just USDA, it’s the state of Alaska, too, because the Fish and Game, they’ve all kind of converged on this place in the last two or three years,” he said. “I guess I’m just too well known now or whatever.”
He thinks the process of permitting a facility like his has become politicized.
“Yeah, so the Biden administration kind of opened up the USDA, and PETA is involved now, … and so it’s, it’s very political,” he said. “They don’t like places like this, see, but this is all I’ve ever done my whole life, you know?”
The Chilkat Valley News has a pending records request with the state to understand more about its relationship with Kroschel’s facility; no one from USDA responded to a request for more information by press time.
But, from the federal inspection records that are available, it appears that USDA inspectors have inspected the facility for the past decade and recorded few, if any, violations. Then, on May 8, 2024, veterinarian Ann Goplen showed up for what is labeled a routine inspection. Kroschel recalls that she was there with a group of Fish and Game staff and that he felt blindsided by the visit. He felt state and the federal regulators were teaming up against him.
“The last time she was here … guess what the results of her inspection that day were? Everything’s perfect, everything in compliance. That was her report,” he said. “The state was here saying ‘oh you can’t do this, you can’t do that .. then, she said ‘oh,” she started pulling out her measuring stick. She got really interesting.”
Goplen has not responded to a request for more information about her time inspecting the facility either.
Goplen cited Kroschel for a ‘sag’ in his brown bear enclosure fence, saying it wasn’t tall enough – perimeter fencing for the bear must be higher than 8 feet. An assertion that Kroschel denies, saying that from the inside of the enclosure the fence, which sits on a hill, is actually 12 feet tall.
“[The inspector] is saying it’s dangerous to the public. But that has nothing to do with the bear. Do you think the bear cares about this?” he said, gesturing to the chainlink. “No, this is made for the public. The bear cares about that electric line.”
A shorter electrified fence sits about 10 feet away from the fence, following along the path Kitty runs as she passes by visitors.
“So the people don’t get near the bear at all,” he said. “It has never changed since Kitty arrived here in 2008. For 16 years for the love of god, there’s never been any deviation.”
In her inspection report, Goplen also noted that Kroschel’s moose “Duck Moses” had escaped from his enclosure in September of 2023 and said the enclosure must be fixed by Aug. 1. She also cited Kroschel for a large pile of rodent droppings and old food near his food supplies, and buildups of old bedding, debris, fecal material and food waste in other enclosures including the lynx, fox and wolverine pens. She gave him until July 1 to correct those problems.
But at the same time that these citations were coming in, Kroschel was also going through a process to renew his USDA license. He said he filed in April and waited for the required inspections to be set up by Goplen, his USDA inspector.
“She was supposed to contact me for a mutually agreed upon inspection,” he said.
He maintains Goplen didn’t get a hold of him until late July to set up his first inspection which was scheduled for Aug. 2 – just a few days before his current license expired on Aug. 5.
“That’s so unfair, that’s 72 hours before my license expired,” he said.
According to the prerequisites for getting his facility re-licensed Goplen has to have a veterinarian visit the facility and do a site inspection before the federal inspector arrives.
Kroschel said he was not able to line his veterinarian up to visit on short notice. He requested a license extension but said USDA would not grant it to him because of the citations he got during the most recent inspection of the facility.
So, the license lapsed on Aug. 5 – that was the last day he did tours of the facility for tourists. And now Kroschel said he’s not sure what he’s supposed to do to reopen. He plans to reapply for his USDA license, but right now with the loss of income from tours – he estimates he can make more $5,000 a day doing them, he’s questioning how he’ll continue to feed and care for his animals.
“[That] could [cost] anywhere from $5,000-$15,000 a month,” he said.
Right now, he believes he could make it through the winter, but after that he’s not sure what will happen with the loss of tourism income.
The ripple effect of the loss of his tour is likely to be felt across the tourism industry in Haines, said borough tourism director Rebecca Hylton. A lot of people pre-purchased tickets to his tour.
“We saw that [Tuesday] on the pier with [Norwegian Cruise Lines]. People purchased tickets in advance and were told the tour was no longer operating so they had to make other plans while in port,” she said.
Additionally, many people who book the popular excursion are coming from ships that dock in Skagway and have seats booked on the Haines-Skagway Fast Ferry. It’s not clear how many of those seats will go unfilled now through the end of the season.
There’s further trouble on the horizon for Kroschel as well because the permit he gets from the Department of Fish and Game requires that he have a USDA license.
Fish and Game Division of Wildlife Conservation assistant director Mark Burch said the state is now in the process of revoking his Fish and Game permit. It’s made particularly complicated by the fact that the vast majority of Kroschel’s menagerie are technically considered wards of the state, as they were wildlife that landed in the state’s care for one reason or another.
“When one of them is orphaned or in danger, we often send them to an educational facility if they’re not able to survive in the wild,” he said.
Fish and Game doesn’t pay for their care, Burch said. The people or facilities that get them take on that responsibility.
“They have to feed them, water them. They have to secure them, not only just not to leave the facility – but they need to secure them relative to other threats as well,” he said.
Burch said that means securing animals against people being able to bother them and also against the threats of external predators.
It’s not clear how many of those requirements Kroschel may have run afoul of because Burch wouldn’t immediately turn over inspection reports and Fish and Game hasn’t yet responded to a records request for them. But, in May of 2021 a brown bear did break into the facility and kill two tamed moose.
The loss of the state permit would mean that all of the animals the state currently housed at Kroschel’s facility would need to go elsewhere.
Kroschel worries that they’ll be euthanized.
“I’ve asked Fish and Game this too,” he said. “What’s going to happen to that grizzly bear? You’re going to euthanize it? I’ve sent this to the Commissioner last year even because I can see where they’re going. I’m saying you’re going to euthanize that moose. You’re going to do that to the wolves here. What are you going to do? They won’t answer it.”
Burch said euthanization is an option.
“We’re not inclined to use it,” he said. “None of us want to do that… we’re going to work really hard to avoid it.”
But, the paradox of Kroschel’s facility is that the thing that makes it wildly popular with visitors – animals that are heavily habituated to human interaction – may be more likely to lead to their euthanization because it makes it more difficult for the state to place them in other facilities if regulators do shut him down.
“The bear knows only me,” Kroschel said. “The moose knows only me. It’s not just any Tom, Dick and Harry who can come in here. The bear would die of a broken heart.”
Burch said the reality is that there’s a lot of animals in the facility that may or may not be compatible with others.
“It may affect the kind of places we could send them too,” he said.
Any decision with regard to the animals and alternative placement or potential euthanization would take the state some time to arrive at – in part because this is an extremely complex situation. Burch said they’ve never had to shut down a facility of this size before.
“We may have had to remove some animals from other facilities in the past, but nothing at this scale,” he said.
Burch didn’t have a timeline for a resolution to the question of what will happen to the animals in Kroeschel’s facility; he said Fish and Game staff are currently working that out.
“There are a lot of animals in there. Can we just come in there and rescue them so to speak?” he said. “No… we can’t. We don’t have that capacity. That’s not the real business of the Department of Fish and Game to basically go in and capture and rescue a whole bunch of animals. So, it’s not going to happen today.”
There is a possibility that if Kroschel gets his USDA license re-issued, he could also keep his Fish and Game permit. Burch said the two are distinct processes but they’re linked in that they have similar requirements for care of the animals. So, if Kroschel were to address the things he needs to do to get his USDA license back, he might be able to address the things that Fish and Game finds objectionable too.
And, ultimately, Burch said he feels a lot of empathy for Kroschel.
“We realize that he has kept these animals for a long time. Part of his business and, in some ways his well being – at least psychologically – is tied to the animals too. This process is likely to hurt him,” he said. “We all have the right to pursue happiness, and we understand that we’re having a pretty substantial effect on his pursuit of happiness at the moment. That’s not our intention, but we have this larger need that we have to look at the care of the animals, too.”
