West Coast Game Park Safari sign.
(Beth Clifton photo)
West Coast Game Park Safari owner Brian Tenney apparently at last took a few chances too many
BANDON, Oregon––Brian Tenney, 52, owner/operator of the West Coast Game Park Safari just south of Bandon, Oregon, was on May 27, 2025 arrested in alleged possession of 80 grams of methamphetamine, 44 firearms, about eight grams of cocaine, and $1.6 million in cash, cashier’s checks, bonds, and certificates, the Coos County Sheriff’s Office announced in a media release.
Tenney, also a sometime Super Late Model stock car driver at the Coos Bay Speedway, 24 miles north, was charged with methamphetamine possession, manufacturing, and attempted distribution.
Also reportedly involved in the May 27, 2025 raid were the South Coast Interagency Narcotics Team, Coos County District Attorney’s Office, Oregon Department of Justice, and the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation Division.
Contrary to initial reports, updated Dan Kelly of NBC16 on May 28, 2025, suspect Tenney was not jailed.
“Coos County Sheriff Gabe Fabrizio says the Sheriff’s Office had to release Tenney,” Kelly told viewers, “because the drugs found need to be tested before they can hold Tenney in jail.”
West Coast Game Park Safari tiger gets bottle. (Beth Clifton photo)
310 animals rescued
The drugs and weapons were seized twelve days after veterinarians and other personnel from the Oregon Humane Society, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, and Oregon Department of Agriculture on May 15, 2025 began the four-day process of taking into custody the 310 animals found alive at the West Coast Game Park Safari.
“The West Coast Game Park Safari had been racking up violations since 2016 for offenses like a dead tiger kept in a freezer for months, and animals found dead, sick, or starving, or never examined by a veterinarian,” summarized Isabel Funk and Thao Nguyen of the USA Today Network, citing previous coverage by the Salem Statesman Journal, a USA Today network member.
The now closed West Coast Game Park Safari website boasted of exhibiting “more than 450 animals and 75 species, with certain animals allowed to free-roam in the park for a ‘hands-on’ experience,” Funk and Nguyen recounted.
“Following initial assessments,” Funk and Nguyen continued, “one camel was euthanized,” due to ‘multiple serious medical conditions and suffering,’ according to state police.
“A chicken and a kinkajou were also later euthanized due to their physical conditions, state police said. A USDA inspection report from April 1, 2025 said two older lions and a black African leopard were observed with ‘prominently’ visible hips, ribs, and spine. The report said a veterinarian had not been consulted or requested to examine or treat the animals.
“Food storage containers were also found contaminated by rodent feces, and live rats were also seen on site, the report said.
Caribou at West Coast Game Park Safari, 2015.
(Beth Clifton photo)
Coatimundi found dead
Another USDA inspection report, Funk and Nguyen added, found “no readily identifiable facility attendant present throughout the zoo in areas where between 50 and 100 combined sheep, goats, llamas, and deer roam free and have contact with and are hand-fed by the public.”
Paraphrased Funk and Nguyen, along with “Piles of rotting hay and molding food,” the USDA reports mentioned “a coatimundi found dead in her enclosure, a capybara with a skin condition who had not been examined by a veterinarian, unsafe enclosures, and a lioness confined to a cold, dark den with no light, ventilation, or drainage.”
At least “a few” of the West Coast Game Park Safari animals were taken to the Oregon Zoo in Portland for temporary care, Oregon Zoo spokesperson Hova Najarian told Hannah Seibold of the Portland Tribune on May 22, 2025.
Najarian, however, “did not say how many animals from the West Coast Game Park Safari the Oregon Zoo was caring for,” Seibold wrote, “could not disclose which animals were being cared for,” and said none of the animals would be rehomed to the Oregon Zoo.
West Coast Safari Game Park bear gets bottle. (Beth Clifton photo)
Citations since 2015
“The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal Care unit started routine inspections of the West Coast Game Park Safari about a decade ago,” Seibold reported.
“The earliest citations discussed needed care for a black leopard and two alpacas in September 2015, and a juvenile black bear with hair in October 2015.”
The USDA Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service noted after the October 2015 visit that, “This and the previous inspection are indicating a possible pattern of personnel not performing adequate daily assessment of animal health and communicating that information to supervisors and the attending veterinarian.”
Continued Seibold, “Federal inspectors visited the park 32 times over the past 10 years, with seven visits in 2024. On a visit to the park on December 3, 2024, Pharoh, a 10-year-old lion, was reported as having his ‘ribs showing, spine visible, jutting hip bones and muscle wasting.’ A 15-year-old black leopard named Onyx was reported as ‘quite thin with rib shadowing, and noticeable muscle wasting of his head and body.’
“Other adult lions, along with Onyx, were reported again in April 2025 with decreased muscle mass and their spines prominently displayed under their skin.”
West Coast Game Park Safari camel,
2015. (Beth Clifton photo)
USDA concern escalated
USDA concern about conditions at the West Coast Game Park Safari escalated after a 2016 incident, Funk and Nguyen described, in which “Two bears named Sugar and Spice were shot after a car backfired in the parking lot, causing a flock of peacocks to disperse and land in their enclosure.
“The peacocks agitated Sugar, and an employee shot the bear due to concerns she would escape and hurt someone.”
An intended coup-d’grace shot hit Spice instead, who was then shot dead along with Sugar.
West Coast Game Park Safari billboard.
(Beth Clifton photo)
PETA complaints
The West Coast Game Park Safari animals were at last impounded, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals spokesperson Elena Waldman recounted in a May 28, 2025 media release, after “multiple PETA complaints to the USDA, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, the Department of Justice, and the State of Oregon.
“The West Coast Game Park Safari used Lucifer, a black jaguar, in illegal, dangerous photo ops—even after the passage of the Big Cat Public Safety Act, which prohibits public contact with big cats,” Waldman charged.
“Handlers exploited Lucifer like a selfie prop, forcing him into stressful, unnatural interactions with visitors, which continued even when he was nearly a year old and much too large and dangerous for public contact,” after which “the facility condemned Lucifer to solitary confinement in a small, barren, concrete-walled gravel pit,” Waldman said.
Daphne. (Beth Clifton photo)
Lucifer went to Sandstone
“Recent footage of Lucifer’s conditions at the roadside zoo showed that he appeared to be unnaturally thin,” Waldman continued, mentioning also that Lucifer “and 14 other wild cats from West Coast Game Park Safari were safely transported to accredited and reputable sanctuaries.”
Lucifer, now three years old, went to The Wildcat Sanctuary, in Sandstone, Minnesota.
Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest, Waldman said, took “a 21-year-old chimpanzee named George,” who “was suffering in solitary confinement since the death of his companion Daphne, in November 2023.”
George, said Waldman, “was the last remaining solitary chimpanzee in a roadside zoo in the U.S.”
West Coast Game Park Safari kinkajou, 2015
(Beth Clifton photo)
“Neglect & mistreatment bound up with other criminal conduct”
Observed Animal Wellness Action president Wayne Pacelle, “There is often an ugly backstory to the operations of roadside zoos, as is the case with West Coast Game Park Safari.
“Often, neglect and even active mistreatment of animals is bound up with other criminal conduct, and that appears to be the case here.”
Founded in 1968 as Deer Park, the West Coast Game Park Safari was sold to Robert Stanley Tenney, father of Brian Tenney, and given the present name in 1976.
Robert Stanley Tenney, then a 31-year-old former overseas oil field worker, with his wife Mary, operated the West Coast Game Park Safari relatively uneventfully until Mary, 68, died in 2007.
Retiring at age 72, Robert Tenney turned the management of the West Coast Game Park Safari over to Brian Tenney in 2009.
Robert Tenney remained somewhat involved for some time, but died from mesothelioma in Myrtle Point, Oregon, at age 84 in 2021.
Tiger at West Coast Game Park Safari, 2015.
(Beth Clifton photo)
“Deteriorated over time”
“I think the West Coast Game Park Safari did deteriorate over time,” Pacelle told ANIMALS 24-7. “At least that’s what I’ve heard from several sources. We got particularly interested in the place because I worked hand-in-hand with Howard and Carole Baskin on the Big Cat Public Safety Act,” initially introduced in Congress in 2015, finally passed in 2022, “and we had reports of public interactions with a jaguar,” apparently the same or similar reports that PETA received, “in violation of the new federal law.
Beth & Merritt Clifton with friends.
“When we sent an investigator, based in Oregon there,” Pacelle continued, “he found other problems in addition to the illegal public interactions with a big cat. It does appear that visitors taking stock of the conditions for the animals felt compelled to complain. And I would think for the Oregon State Police to act, they must have felt like the situation required action.”
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