Off Highway 115 on the way to Peterborough, the last thing you might expect to see is a pair of lions or a capuchin monkey amid the typical rural Ontario sights of gas stations and wind turbines. As you arrive at Jungle Cat World Wildlife Park in Orono, Ont., just past the small white gates, it’s hard to decide where to look first: the odd drawings of cavemen and animal statues, the families of lemurs, or the pale-furred, pacing Transvaal lions waiting for mealtime behind a chain link fence. A crowd of a dozen parents and children gather to watch a tiger eat a whole plucked chicken every day at 1 p.m., and a keeper throws meat over the fence to a pack of wolves as cars whiz past.
For decades, the province’s exotic animal parks have attracted road-tripping visitors eager to see giant cats, primates, and marine mammals. With places like Jungle Cat World making up about 70 percent of the province’s facilities housing exotic wild animals, Ontario has gained a reputation as the “roadside zoo capital of Canada,” where families make formative memories feeding pellets to gentle herbivores from their outstretched hands. But the province has long lagged behind other jurisdictions with weak and patchwork zoo regulations. As growing awareness of animal welfare issues has led to mounting criticism of what some see as poor treatment of animals in these zoos, and a push for better legislation, the days of these zoos may be numbered.
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“Ontario is the Wild West when it comes to exotic animals, and especially exotic animals kept in zoos,” said Camille Labchuk, executive director at Animal Justice, a legal advocacy group for animal rights. “The only two animals you can’t keep in captivity in Ontario…are an orca and a pitbull.”
As of 2025, besides orcas and pitbulls, Ontario does not have any laws governing what kinds of animals can be kept in captivity, and in what conditions they should be kept. On a 2023 scorecard for provincial animal welfare created by Toronto-based advocacy organization World Animal Protection, Ontario placed dead last, whereas every other province had some form of zoo regulation or restrictions.
Almost anyone in Ontario can open a zoo, Labchuk explains, as long as they can get their hands on some animals by way of the province’s extensive exotic animal trade—and it’s up to individual municipalities to regulate which kinds of animals can be kept there.
“If I wanted to open up a zoo in my backyard, fill it with dangerous, exotic animals who don’t do well in captivity…I would be perfectly able to do that,” she said, adding that in contrast, she would need a permit to build a patio. “It’s really serious under-regulation.”
Zoos can choose to partake in international zoo accreditations, but they don’t have to. Jungle Cat World lost its Canada’s Accredited Zoos and Aquariums (CAZA) membership in 2018 after 35 years of business because it wasn’t willing to pay for some of the required veterinary standards. Local municipal records indicate that after CAZA changed its accreditation standards to require onsite facilities for visiting veterinarians, the zoo decided against building the facilities given the cost. Jungle Cat World said it had a vet and no history of care issues, and it was part of other accreditation organizations focusing on animal well-being. It still operates every day of the year except Christmas and New Year’s. Many of the animals stay outside year-round.
A year after losing the CAZA accreditation, Jungle Cat World came under fire for what animal activists called “cruel outdated activities,” including reportedly allowing people to take selfies with chained-up animals, usually very young. The zoo also sells tickets for individual meet-and-greets, allowing visitors to hold and snuggle the wild animals.
“These animals are handled all day by different people to take a photo,” a campaign director for World Animal Protection told Durham Radio News in 2019. “If the animal’s feeling stressed or not wanting to participate, it’s likely forced into that situation.”
In a statement to The Local, Jungle Cat World said their decision to end their membership with Canada’s Accredited Zoos and Aquariums was because they were “not able to accommodate CAZA’s rising membership fees…Since departing as a member, the park has continued striving to meet the standards set by these associations, despite no longer receiving formal recognition for doing so.”
The zoo additionally said their “purpose is to connect our guests with the animals in our care in a respectful and mutually meaningful way…Animals are always given the freedom of choice when it comes to interacting with staff and guests, and are never forced to participate if they do not wish to do so.”
“Our goal is to educate visitors. [Jungle Cat World] aims to facilitate connections between guests and the natural world through programming that offers immersive experiences with wildlife and 1:1 time with our Animal Care staff,” they said.
While Provincial Animal Welfare Services (PAWS) in Ontario sets out some requirements for “basic standards of care applicable to all animals,” including adequate food and sanitary conditions, many of these controversial activities fall through the cracks, which is “not what you would expect from a professional zoo that’s expected to focus on conservation,” the World Animal Protection campaign director said.
Over the past decade, Animal Justice has done several undercover investigations of these kinds of Ontario zoos. In one family-owned zoo near Ottawa, Animal Justice says they found a dead rabbit decomposing in a cage with other live rabbits, which staff had not noticed. In 2015, the organization sent a representative to pose as an employee of a family-run park called Papanack Zoo, an hour outside of Ottawa, where they say their footage caught a zoo manager describing how he trained a baby lion cub by repeatedly beating the animal in the face, among other abuses. Papanack Zoo did not respond to The Local’s request for comment.
Then, in 2022, the organization visited almost every zoo in Ontario and said they witnessed egregious conditions, including big cats, wolves, and bears suffering due to lack of space: “These creatures have vast ranges in the wild, but in zoos, they often pace back and forth listlessly, with little else to do,” reads the report.
During this investigation, they discovered a monkey named Boogie kept at Bervie Zoological Park in Kincardine, Ont. Animal Justice filmed Boogie biting herself and performing other repetitive behaviours, typical signs of stress from confinement. The small brown macaque grabbed the attention of animal lovers around Canada when videos of her obsessively spinning in circles in her enclosure made it onto the news. Bervie zoo told The Local that their facilities are regularly inspected by the province and by veterinarians, none of whom have expressed concerns about Boogie nor recommended she be rehomed.
Often, these zoos prioritize the welfare of their bottom line over that of their animals, animal welfare advocates allege.
“When you start to look at these smaller scale zoos, in order to stay solvent, they have to cut corners,” Labchuk said. “Paying for what the animals would require to improve their conditions just wouldn’t make financial sense.”
Jungle Cat World told The Local it “prioritizes the welfare of the animals in its care above all else…While the park relies on profits from guests in order to operate, if an animal’s health or happiness is at risk, we will do everything we can to rectify that regardless of how it may affect the guest experience, business or finances.”
In recent years, proposals for stricter provincial laws started making it to lawmaker’s desks. In 2024, there was Bill 236 implementing stricter licensing in Ontario, and Bill S-15, which would ban new captivity of elephants and great apes in all of Canada—including through breeding, except in the interest of the animal’s welfare, conservation, or scientific research. While Bill 236 died when the last Ontario election was announced, S-15 made it past third reading in the Senate in December 2024, which groups including Humane Canada lauded as a “historic win.” But it has yet to be passed into law by the House of Commons, and the subsequent Bill S-241, the Jane Goodall Act, aimed at strengthening protections for animals in captivity and banning the captivity of over 800 species, was dropped from the agenda for being too similar to Bill S-15. Provincial progress, though promising at times, has been painfully slow.
Federal changes have been more effective: one of the most significant was Canada’s ban on whale and dolphin captivity in 2019—legislation that made the business of the infamous Niagara-region amusement park Marineland untenable, leading to its drastic changes in its operation a few years later.
Though the park long denied plans to close, it re-opened for its 2024 season with a bare-bones lineup without the orca shows, aquariums, or restaurants of years past. Then, in February 2025, it filed an application with the city of Niagara Falls to divide up its property, and announced they would be selling the park to new owners, after removing all of the marine mammals—including 31 belugas, the last remaining captive whales in Canada, according to reporting by CBC News—“expeditiously.”
Former animal trainer Phil Demers started working at Marineland in the early 2000s, and remembers public opinion at the time treating animal parks as “a celebrated industry.”
“Having said that, on my first day, I remember being a bit shocked at the conditions,” he said.
Within a few years, Demers made headlines for his heartwarming bond with a walrus named Smooshi, which ultimately pushed him to become a vocal activist against Marineland’s treatment of animals. According to Demers, the final straw for him, after many years of frustration and incidents, was a months-long breakdown in a disinfection unit for the water system in 2012 that he says resulted in permanent eye issues for dolphins and other animals. The damage he says he saw the animals endure over that time was too much for him to stomach. Marineland did not respond to The Local’s requests for comment, but had in 2012 denied allegations of abuse or that the water quality had harmed the facility’s marine mammals.
“Frankly, you don’t compromise animals to such a degree and then expect them to go over on the stage and wave to people with a perceived smile on their face. It proved too much of a challenge for me, ethically, and so I quit,” Demers said. Smooshi, Demers’ beloved walrus, was soon sold to a wildlife park in the United Arab Emirates.
Now, Marineland plans to remove the remaining marine animals from the property quickly to yet-unknown places, causing concern for wildlife advocates who worry the animals will go to entertainment facilities in countries with even more lax regulations. The Whale Sanctuary Project has publicly said they would like to provide a safe home for the rehomed whales in their 100 acres of ocean space off the coast of Nova Scotia.
As changing consumer ethics on wildlife tourism increase pressure in Ontario, parks and roadside attractions are forced to adapt or close. In this industry, public opinion matters. In 2016, the Bowmanville Zoo was forced to close due to a dramatic drop in visitors after a leaked video appeared to show the zoo’s owner whipping a tiger. “What they said is not true, but it doesn’t matter—the damage is done,” a zoo spokesperson told the CBC at the time.
Advocates say this public change of heart is a good thing. Back in 1995, there were an estimated 70 zoos and wildlife parks in Ontario; three decades later, World Animal Protection reports there are only about 30.
“There’s a far greater level of seriousness attributed to these issues than there was even 10 years ago,” said Rob Laidlaw, biologist and founder of Zoocheck Canada, an organization advocating for animals in captivity since 1984. “There are far more people concerned about all aspects of animal welfare.”
Laidlaw said his organization has had a role in closing more than 50 zoos across Canada, adding that, even in the absence of Ontario regulations, there are fewer dangerous roadside zoos than there used to be. This is partly due to increased social pressure, like when terrified TikTokers documented what they allege was an escaped lion last summer, and began to question conditions at Jungle Cat World. This wasn’t a first; in 2011, a wolf escaped the facility, and was fatally shot.“We’re seeing a lot more people questioning all of this, and because they have phone cameras now, anything that they see is instantly on the internet,” Laidlaw said, explaining people can then quickly raise awareness in their social networks.
Jungle Cat World told The Local that in the 2023 incident, the lion was inside its habitat, and there had been no escape: “Because this person was closer to the animal than guests sometimes experience elsewhere, the video went viral, and some commenters falsely speculated that the lion had escaped.”
Regarding the 2012 wolf escape, described by Jungle Cat World as “a tragedy and a facet of our history that we do not remember lightly,” the zoo said that the enclosure had been “compromised via an intentional criminal act,” and that electric fencing has now been installed in some enclosures to prevent escapes.
It would be possible to sustainably see animals if zoos focused more on animal well-being than human entertainment, advocates say.
Alternatives are starting to crop up: in Niagara a region that has relied on Marineland tourists for decades, a new hologram zoo is opening this month. The holograms, developed by Australian company Axiom Holographics, display animals and environments made of holographic laser light, allowing curious visitors to see a wide range of species without worrying they are kept in unnatural or unsafe enclosures.
But if you want to see real animals, Laidlaw says, zoos have to “slow people down and move away from the quantity of experiences to the quality of experiences for a fewer number of people.”
In their statement to The Local, Jungle Cat World said that the zoo is in fact moving toward a sanctuary model, due to a change in ownership. “Since this change in direction, we have adopted a variety of unwanted and rehabilitated non-releasable wildlife, such as rabbits, Canadian geese, a raven and a goat.”
Story Book Farm Primate Sanctuary in Sunderland, Ont., another roadside spot two hours north of Toronto, is home to 22 primates, all rescued from roadside zoos, laboratories, and unhealthy pet situations. It’s accessible to the public on just seven open days a year, to help prevent the animals from getting overwhelmed.
Many of their animals have complicated, traumatic pasts coming from now defunct, infamous zoos. Others are famous: Darwin the Japanese macaque found in a North York IKEA parking lot in 2012, wearing a fancy coat and a diaper, a victim of the Ontario exotic pets trade; or Pockets Warhol, a white-capped capuchin who showed one volunteer his penchant for painting, and now creates artworks weekly, which help fundraise for the sanctuary and other animal welfare causes.
The team at Story Book are still trying to obtain Boogie from Bervie Zoo in Kincardine. Just a few years ago, they welcomed another Bervie resident, an olive baboon named Bruno who Animal Justice says was rescued from poor living conditions at the zoo by Provincial Animal Welfare Services. Bervie Zoo told The Local that Bruno was voluntarily moved by his owner, and that most of the other animals seized by the province in 2022 have been returned.
Now, Bruno and his companions eat massive plates of artfully-arranged fresh fruits and veggies for dinner. They have indoor and outdoor spaces they can move through freely, filled with donated or thrifted kids toys for enrichment. Doors are left open in the winter, in case they want to play in the snow.
At Story Book’s first open day of 2025, a sunny spring Sunday, Executive Director and self-described “monkey poop cleaner” Daina Liepa guided a handful of visitors on a tour.
“It’s all about choice…They have the choice to come out if they want to or not,” she said, standing before a large caged enclosure. Inside, a tiny squirrel monkey named Stevie, who became an orphan after his mother died in childbirth at another zoo, had ample space to shyly hide from prying eyes.
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