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Southwest Wildlife Conservation Center fighting lawsuit from neighbor

The Southwest Wildlife Conservation Center in Scottsdale takes injured or orphaned animals and rehabs them with the goal of returning them to the wild. They also work with Arizona Game and Fish to reintroduce the Mexican Gray Wolf to its habitat.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. - The Southwest Wildlife Conservation Center in Scottsdale is where the wild are rescued.

“We're the Red Cross for wildlife in Arizona,” said founder Linda Searles.

The center takes injured or orphaned animals and rehabs them with the goal of returning them to the wild. They also work with Arizona Game and Fish to reintroduce the Mexican Gray Wolf to its habitat.

When Searles opened the sanctuary 22 years ago she had one neighbor, now it’s about a dozen. She says she always had a good relationship with her neighbors.

“We love our neighbors and they love us. They come over all the time,” she said.

All but one, that is. The neighbor who lives across the dirt road from the sanctuary filed a lawsuit against Searles and the center complaining of the noise from the wolves and coyotes.

“There really is no way to keep the wolves and coyotes from howling, that’s their form of communication -- that's how they communicate,” Searles said. “At one point, he wanted bark collars on them -- electric shock collars -- but I said I can’t do that.”

The complaint also includes dust generated from the center. However, the roads in and around the neighborhood are all dirt. Linda says the traffic in and out of the center is small. They do offer tours but the center is not open to the public. It's done by reservation only.

As for the howling, one neighbor who didn't want to be identified said it can get loud but it comes with the territory. Other neighbors say it's not a big deal.

“When we first moved in, you could hear it. We hardly hear it anymore,” said another neighbor who didn’t want to be identified. “She’s a nice lady. She does well. We have no problems and we’re the closest neighbors to the facility.”

We reached out to the neighbor with the complaints but he was not home at the time.

Right now the Wildlife Conservation Center is forced to operate on a temporary special use permit which has forced it to scale down the amount of tours they can offer. They were open five days a week but can only be open 30 days in a six-month period with the temporary permit.

“We get a lot of donations from the tours and that's cost our revenue 70%, so it's making it hard to make ends meet,” Searles said.

If the sanctuary has to scale back even further, it could be devastating.

“It would mean we would not be able to help some of the animals and they would fall through the cracks,” said Searles.

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