Ron Merkord ’81 nuzzles playfully with Buddha, a 450-pound black bear, one of the large animals living at the Wolves-N-Wildlife ranch, the Merkords' 120-acre spread north of Ventura, California.

WILD THINGS

By Rhonda Hillbery

Buddha drops his bowling ball and lumbers over to greet his guests. Towering just an arm’s length away on the other side of a chain-link fence, the eight-foot-tall black bear obligingly inhales a handful of juicy apple chunks from a visitor’s hand.

This late-morning snack is a mere morsel measured against Buddha’s daily food intake. Before the day is out, this 450-pound behemoth will have eaten two pounds of dog food, a pound of special zoo-mix meat, and 15-to-30 pounds of fresh fruit and vegetables. He especially loves grapes and avocados. “Buddha is so good about taking food from people,” says his owner, Ron Merkord ’81. He would know. Buddha’s food alone costs some $300 a month, including his share of the 60-pound blocks of meat that are stored in six large freezers.

With his wife, Lisa, this laser businessman operates an animal sanctuary and education center called Wolves-N-Wildlife, near Ventura, California. As the center’s name suggests, Buddha isn’t the only wild animal under the couple’s care. The bear shares this 120-acre spread, a former cattle ranch, with five gray wolves and a 700-pound Siberian tiger.

Raja, a magnificent Siberian tiger, shows his stripes.

A short distance away, a few cows look up languidly before getting back to the business of grazing. They, too, are part of the brood, which includes several Black Angus steers, 10 horses and a miniature mule, three dogs, three cats, a parrot, and four chickens. All of these animals arrived as orphans, so the fact that their caregivers have made lifelong commitments to each reveals what hopeless animal lovers they are.

You could say the sanctuary’s star attractions, the wild ones, cover their room and board simply by helping the Merkords teach others, especially children, about wildlife. As Ron puts it, “We think of them as species representatives. They have to be used responsibly.”

Ron’s wife, Lisa, shares a quiet moment with Bo, one of five gray wolves living at the animal sanctuary.

“As long as they have to be in captivity, their lives should serve some purpose,” adds Lisa, who spent 20 years as a carnivore keeper and sea-lion trainer, 12 of them at the Chaffee Zoological Gardens in Fresno, California. The Wolves-N-Wildlife message is conservation through informing the public about several often-misunderstood animal species.

Those misconceptions include a long-standing cultural fear and hatred of wolves, which were nearly driven to extinction in the lower 48 states by farmers and ranchers who considered them a menace to livestock, and by federal policies that reinforced those attitudes.

For school-age children, not to mention adults, whose exposure to wild animals tends to be at a distance in zoos, seeing one eye to eye can be startling. That’s deliberate. “The main thing we want to do is make an impact on the visitors,” says Ron. “Everybody gets to stand two feet away from a 700-pound tiger. It makes such an impression on them that they never forget it.”

Most of the year, as many as three groups a week, made up mostly of elementary-school children in the Ventura area, trek to Wolves-N-Wildlife, paying $5 a head for an up-close tour of the animals, which live in large hillside enclosures with views of the mountain-ringed Santa Clara River Valley. The field trips and special events are scheduled for schools and organizations by request.

Ron and Lisa Merkord conduct educational tours for visiting school children, who get a close look at the animals as they stretch out in their cages, including Buddha the bear and Raja, the Siberian tiger.

These visits usually start with an orientation, followed by a walk through native chaparral, where Ron and Lisa discuss a little fire ecology (see sidebar, page 8) and native vegetation as they traverse the grounds. But, of course, the visitors usually can’t wait to see
the animals.

Ron and Lisa tailor their message to the age of their audience. “With the younger kids our message is more about conveying to them an appreciation of wildlife,” Ron explains as Buddha methodically drops his bowling ball off his “den box,” a wooden enclosure he enjoys. Then Buddha climbs down, retrieves the ball and starts the process again. “Actually letting them experience a wild animal up close is so powerful that when environmental issues come up in the future, this exposure can affect their attitudes about protecting natural habitats.”

Buddha is a solitary animal who amuses himself for hours with games in his cage, which is the size of a large garage. Among his favorites are “peeling” or cracking open donated bowling balls, ravaging 55-gallon plastic drums, and sticking his head inside a tire swing and propelling himself around. Ideally, the Merkords would like to see Buddha living in a zoo, but it’s not easy to find a home for a bear like him, despite his singular talents, which include three years of helping the U.S. Forest Service test camping equipment for bear resistance.

A short distance away lives Raja, resplendently stretched out in his enclosure. When this tiger rears up nearly nine feet tall on his hind legs, it’s easy to see why they call the Siberian tiger the largest cat in the world.

In its natural habitat, the shrub-covered mountain forests of Siberia and Manchuria, the Siberian tiger is in such peril that wildlife experts believe no more than 250 remain. “There’s a good chance that by the time today’s kids graduate from high school, there won’t be any living in the wild,” says Ron. Unfortunately for the future of the great tiger roaming free, survival of the species largely rests with breeding programs in zoos.

Raja started his life as a tiny cub who appeared in a television commercial for Exxon. Once the commercial wrapped, his acting services were no longer required, and he was sent to a rescue center. At the wildlife sanctuary, the magnificent presence of full-grown Raja, now seven, allows the Merkords to convey to older children and adults a more complex message than simple species appreciation. “We try to work in how bad an idea it is to think of keeping these animals as pets,” Ron says. These cases are not uncommon, and include the recent incident of the self-described animal lover who was found to be keeping a 400-pound Bengal tiger in his Harlem public-housing complex.

As Lisa talks to Raja, he responds with a distinctive exhalation. She
explains that what we hear is a chuff, the sounds big cats make when expressing pleasure or contentment, not unlike the purring of a housecat. Like all cats, big and small, Raja spends 18 to 20 hours a day sleeping. The rest of the time, he eats and plays with toys that include a tire swing, which he good-naturedly swipes with his massive paw, plastic barrels, and other large-cat-friendly toys.

Lisa and Ron work hard to temper the romantic notion that because infant wild animals are cute and adorable, they can be raised successfully as family pets. “We try to counter that attitude with the cold, hard facts—keeping one of these animals is not something you want to do. It’s a lot of work, it’s very difficult, and they’re very dangerous.” They also tell the story of how they ended up with their own wild brood and how caring for it will tie them down for years, maybe decades, to come. Buddha, now seven, could live to be 25. Raja could reach 20.

“It’s a huge commitment,” admits Ron, standing outside the modest clapboard cottage that is serving as the Merkords’ home until a new modular-construction house on a nearby hillside is completed.

Ron first met the wolves that now live on his ranch 10 years ago when he started doing volunteer work with exotic animals on a Canyon Country ranch. The wolves were being used in movie and television work, but as their handlers learned, they are not easy to handle. Because Ron had been playing with them, feeding them, and walking them since they were just five months old, the wolves came to consider him a member of their pack. “If you don’t really get in with them before one year of age, they probably won’t ever get used to you.”

The naturally shy wolves weren’t bitten by the acting bug, and their owner ended up giving them to Ron. The prospect of living with wolves might alarm most of us; Ron was
excited. “They were something I was really eager to take on because I really enjoyed working with them.”

He bought his spread in 1996 “as a retirement home” for the wolves. “I saw this as being a very unique piece of property, very secluded, with mountains on three sides enclosing it. I thought to myself, this is the only chance I’ll have to have a piece of property like this.”

For a time, he leased the ranch to an animal education group that conducted programs for schools. When they eventually went their separate ways, the group left the tiger and the bear as a parting “gift,” and Ron moved to the ranch to live.

For wildlife defenders, it has been an uphill battle to rehabilitate the gray wolf, which only recently was successfully reintroduced in Yellowstone National Park. These highly social animals live in two packs at Wolves-N-Wildlife. Despite the name, gray wolves vary in color, ranging from white and gray to black and buff, and several who live on the ranch sport frosty highlights.

The Merkords built their enclosures so that the wolves could build dens, as they would in the wild. “You could fit six grown-ups in there,” says Lisa, as Sarah, an alpha female who has been allowed outside on a chain leash, greets her caretaker with such playful exuberance that she knocks her down. The wolf diet includes organ meat, bones, whole thawed frozen chickens, and a feed mix with added vitamins and minerals. The wolves also play with toys, including tree branches, and spend much of their time roaming the perimeters of their large cages. In the wild, their range would cover many miles.

These two packs are partly habituated to humans, stemming from their upbringing at the commercial ranch. Because of their background, and the fact that they lack papers documenting their genetic lineage, they are considered unplaceable in zoos.

Ron and Lisa take this opportunity to talk about the dangerous and growing problem of wolf-dog hybrids, of which there are believed to be more than one million in the United States. People romanticize the wolf, not realizing that, unlike a dog, it can’t really be domesticated.

“Most of the shelters or rescues that will take on animals like this are always full,” Ron says. “Even finding a rescue to take a wolf hybrid in is nearly impossible. We get calls from people literally every week who say they have a wolf hybrid they can’t control and can they place it with us.”

The Merkords always have to say no. Many of these animals end up abandoned or euthanized.
Ron met Lisa through mutual friends four years ago. It’s not surprising they hit it off, given their shared interested in working with exotic animals. Lisa was only nine years old when she started working at a wildlife refuge, and she later worked with animals at Magic Mountain, before joining the Chaffee Zoo and one in Little Rock, Arkansas.

“I think the odds against meeting someone like that with the same interests as you and who you want as your life partner are almost astronomical, but miraculous stuff like that happens,” says Ron, waxing philosophical. In addition to their wild dependents they now have a baby, Jacob. Ron rises early most days to tend the animals before heading off to work, while Lisa runs the ranch and looks after Jacob, who will likely receive a remarkable education on the family ranch.

The Merkords have structured Wolves-N-Wildlife as a business, one that happens to lose money. “We’re considered a badly run business,” jokes Ron, who adds that so far he and Lisa have decided against pursuing nonprofit status because of the associated paperwork.

They are grateful for a handful of loyal supporters, two of whom serve on the board of directors, who help feed, care for, and play with the animals. Field-trip contributions don’t even cover the cost of liability insurance.

The bulk of the sanctuary’s expenses are paid through Laser Innovations, a company that Ron started with a friend back in 1989. Located in nearby Santa Paula, the firm rebuilds ion lasers for colleges and universities, industrial clients such as Boeing aircraft and Amgen, and entertainment conglomerates like Six Flags theme park. Ron, who started tinkering with computers as a boy, and allows that he probably loves technology even more than animals, worked at ARCO Solar after graduating from Caltech in applied physics.

“The biggest danger to wildlife like this is when it just fades out of existence,” he says. By combining his talent and interest in high-tech with his lifelong love of animals, Ron figures he and Lisa can continue to help ensure that doesn’t happen. In a time of vanishing habitats, stretched zoo budgets, animal-rights activism, and people’s sometimes misplaced intentions, the Merkords steer clear of major-league animal politics. They content themselves with getting their message out the best way they know how, to handfuls of school children who head their way in search of a wild tiger, or bear, or wolf.

The Wolves-N-Wildlife website is www.wolvesnwildlife.com.

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Still More...

Trial By Fire
“It was a very long, 48-hour day,” sighs Ron Merkord as he describes the terrifying Piru and Simi fires that ripped through the Santa Clara Valley and his 120-acre ranch during Southern California’s catastrophic late-October fires.