A popular wildlife center in the Chilkat Valley has regained a federal license to open to the public, but lost its state permit to operate and appears unlikely to regain that permit in time to open the facility as a cruise-ship excursion destination in 2025.
Steve Kroschel, who owns the Kroschel Films Wildlife Center, said he believes state and federal regulators colluded to close his Mosquito Lake facility to the public and – ultimately – seize the dozens of animals he has housed there. Meanwhile, state regulators contend that the center has been out of compliance with the terms of his state permit for so long that they don’t expect that he’ll resolve their animal welfare and public safety concerns well enough to regain his state permit to operate.
“We’ve been working with him for quite some time on those various concerns,” said Department of Fish and Game, Division of Wildlife Conservation assistant director Mark Burch. “It’s pretty questionable whether that’s likely to happen to resolve all those issues but they would need to be resolved for him to carry on.”
What’s permitted
In order to be open to the public – and conduct the popular tours he’s predominantly known for – Kroschel is required to have an United States Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service license and an educational permit from Alaska’s Department of Fish and Game.
In 2024, as Kroschel was going through the process of getting his USDA license renewed, it lapsed on Aug. 5 and he closed the facility to tourists before the end of the season. At the time, Burch said the state was in the process of revoking his Fish and Game permit.
According to documents shared by Kroschel and Fish and Game records, the state then revoked his educational permit on Dec. 27, citing his lack of a USDA license and a list of other issues including fencing and containment of animals and how close guests were able to get to the moose paddock.
Kroschel appealed that revocation and in the meantime resolved his appeal for his USDA license on Jan. 17. That federal license has since been reinstated. But Fish and Game commissioner Doug Vincent-Lang sent a letter on Feb. 20 saying the state permit/license revocation would stand. Kroschel has since appealed that permit revocation.
And he questioned why, if the state had so many unresolved issues with his facility, staff would wait until he lost his USDA license to revoke his state permit, according to a Jan. 20 email to several state Fish and Game employees,
“If the Department staff members truly believed that I was violating state standards with respect to animal welfare and that I was not providing proper care to the animals in my charge, then why did they leave the animals in my care?” he wrote in an email. “It is illogical and preposterous to think that a reputable and responsible state wildlife agency would not intervene if they truly thought that animals were being neglected, and if they believed that the agency had a legal right to intervene.”
When asked why Kroschel was allowed to remain open if he had persistent violations to his state permit, Burch said the conclusion he draws from the protracted back and forth between the state and Kroschel is that the issues are not “easy to resolve.”
“Some of them, they take time and money and effort: things like fencing and keeping electrical wires cleaned and maintained so that they would work and not be interfered with and grounded out by vegetation,” he said. “I think we’ve been trying to get him in compliance in general for a long time and I think we’re recognizing that it’s just not going to happen.”
In a 2024 letter, Vincent-Lang alluded to a persistent history of what he called “apparent negligent care” that resulted in avoidable suffering and deaths of some animals including an 8-year-old wolf that died of a ruptured bladder in 2011, a 7-year-old moose that died of intestinal necrosis from being fed a banana stalk in 2003, a wolf with a spinal condition that wasn’t euthanized until a year after the condition was reported, and a 2-year-old wolf who died of a kidney disease.
“Necropsies of other animals in your care found high parasite loads, untreated infections, and poor body condition indicating those animals should have been provided veterinary treatment and possibly euthanized well before they died,” Vincent-Lang wrote in a Feb. 8, 2024 letter.
Those assertions were supported in part by a letter from a state wildlife veterinarian accusing Kroschel of not following basic animal husbandry and welfare conditions.
Kroschel maintains that state and federal animal welfare officials have been changing the rules of what’s required in order for him to reopen and said he will continue to fight to reopen and clear his name.
Burch, at Fish and Game, said that the state does not have different expectations for Kroschel than it does for any other wildlife facility in Alaska. And, he questioned Kroschel’s capacity to continue to care for the volume of animals in his facility.
“One of the things that makes that place unique is that it’s Steve [Kroschel] and some people who love the animals and love him and maintain everything – but he’s basically a one- or two- or three-man show, literally,” he said. “When you consider other entities in the state, they tend to be nonprofits with boards and plans for succession and things like that. That’s not to diminish the assistance he gets, but he’s basically the one having to deal with everything himself. So he’s taken on a responsibility that’s very unusual for one person to be responsible for.”
Kroschel applied for a new state permit last week but said he has yet to hear anything back on the status of that application.
“I will exist and run this park for as long as it takes,” he said. “I am fine right now and I have resources and ways to continue on. There’s nothing wrong with the animals, everything is fine.”
But, he said even if he successfully gets a state permit, it’s not likely that he’ll be able to coordinate tours with the cruise ships this season – tours he estimates brought in about $5,000 a day and helped with the care and feeding of the animals.
Animal removal
Without an educational permit, state staff say most of the animals currently housed at Kroschel’s facility would need to go elsewhere.
According to his most recent annual report filed with the state, Kroschel has one wolverine, eight pine martens, three gray wolves, more than a dozen ermine, two lynx, 11 mink, a snowy owl, a red-tailed hawk, four cross foxes, four silver foxes, one moose, one grizzly bear, and seven arctic foxes in his menagerie. He also has a reindeer herd, bringing the total to 64 animals, according to his USDA license application.
He maintains that only the grizzly bear and moose were brought to the facility by the state but according to state regulation, all wildlife of a certain classification are regulated by the state.
That means, Burch said, that the state could remove any of his animals – except the reindeer.
When Kroschel first lost his license in August of 2024, Burch said Fish and Game staff were considering all of their options for relocating the animals, up to and including euthanasia. At the time, he did not give a firm date for when that removal could occur but said that the fall and winter months were not a good time to conduct that type of operation.
Last week, he said the state has not made a final decision about whether to remove the animals from Kroschel’s facility.
But, he said, if the state were going to remove the animals “by definition it’s closer than it was back in August,” he said. “We are getting down to the wire.”
He said Fish and Game has a list of facilities, including some out of state, available to place the animals in but would not provide that list when asked for it.
“We’re not going to have to get into some kind of mass euthanasia-type situation,” he said.
If the state removes his animals, Kroschel said he plans to sue and will ask for millions for defamation and loss of income. He said he has extensively documented all of his interactions with state and federal regulators and intends to build a case against them.
“All of that will come when push comes to shove,” he said. “It’s super emotional and horrible.”