Fish and Game reveals locations of dozens of animals seized from Chilkat Valley wildlife facility
- Chilkat Valley News
- Jul 18
- 7 min read
Fish and Game commissioner says animals are evidence in a potential criminal case against owner Steve Kroschel, and as such may have to be returned to him
By Rashah McChesney
Chilkat Valley News
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game has released a list of locations of animals seized from Steve Kroschel’s Chilkat Valley wildlife facility in late June.
According to the department, 36 animals are currently being housed at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center in Portage, the Alaska Zoo in Anchorage and Bird TLC in Anchorage.
These are not the permanent locations for the seized animals. Fish and Game staff denied a records request from the Chilkat Valley News seeking that information, but noted potential placements for some of them at facilities in seven states and Canada according to a Monday media release.
The department’s denial of the information request cited the deliberative process exemption, essentially calling it a “work in progress” as staff have not found permanent homes for all of the seized animals. Wildlife conservation division director Ryan Scott called the situation “dynamic.”
“We’ve had some changes from folks who had agreed to take animals before,” Scott said. “We’ve had new people come forward, we’ve had other existing facilities say ‘yeah, you know we can probably do that.”
Scott said the department’s priority is to put the animals in a place where they’ll be well cared for.
“There’s an application process and review process and many of the facilities that will receive these animals are ones that we’ve worked with over several years,” he said.
Missing animals
Some animals are still missing after Alaska State Troopers and Fish and Game raided the facility on June 26. In a warrant left behind after the raid, Alaska State Troopers reported taking 37 animals. Fish and Game reported having taken 39 animals, but in a media release noted that one wolf had died before it was transported and that a snowy owl was euthanized once it arrived in Anchorage due to “pre-existing health conditions.”
Kroschel asserted that the 59 animals he counted in his Jan. 18 annual report to the state is the most accurate tally. Five reindeer in Skagway and three snowy owls were not included in his report to the state. The reindeer do not require a state permit and he contends that the snowy owls are privately owned by a man who lives in Southcentral Alaska. Efforts by the Chilkat Valley News to reach the owl’s owner have been unsuccessful.
Kroschel and employee Patrick McMullen question what happened to the remaining animals, though in the days after the raid Kroschel said they found a snowy owl, a few foxes and two pine martens that were left behind.
Scott said Fish and Game had about a dozen people on site during the raid, including the department’s entire veterinary staff and contract veterinarians. But even with that volume of people, Scott said they went in knowing there was a good chance they would not be able to retrieve all of the animals.
“There were differing accounts on how many of each species we thought were there. There were some discrepancies. And, not only did we anticipate that we would not get them all, the environment was very difficult,” he said.
Scott said the logistical issues Fish and Game faced were unique to Kroschel’s facility and that other state-permitted facilities are not as challenging to navigate.
One issue is that there are tunnels running throughout the facility, some underground and other suspended. Kroschel said he has more than a quarter of a mile of passages where animals can run, tunnel, and escape the summer heat.
“The foxes had also, in multiple locations, burrowed underground. Some of them we couldn’t see,” Scott said.
He said after a mid-morning arrival at Kroschel’s facility, Fish and Game staff worked through the night to secure the animals.
“Turns out there were some animals in places we didn’t know were there. It’s certainly not optimum, we recognize that,” he said.
Kroschel, McMullen, and Scott estimated about 20 animals were left behind.
According to the media release, Fish and Game is exploring options for retrieving them but Scott stopped short of discussing those plans in detail.
On Wednesday morning Kroschel sent an email to Vincent-Lang, Scott and three reporters demanding that Fish and Game return to the Mosquito Lake facility and retrieve the remaining animals. He compared state staff to enraged children who threw toys all over a room and left.
“You must go back to your ‘crime scene’ and get the remaining animals – immediately,” he wrote. “I have stepped out of your way.”
Vincent-Lang initially responded saying the tone of the email was “unnecessarily offensive and demeaning.”
Later, he followed up, saying it would be helpful if the state could get an accurate log of the remaining animals in Kroschel’s possession. Kroschel did not respond with a firm number, but said he feared at least one arctic fox had escaped and that multiple weasel habitats had been left open, but fewer had been seized than what he had in his possession.
In an earlier interview, Kroschel said he would have gladly helped staff track down all of the animals if they had let him on the grounds during their operation.
“It’s an intimate, beautiful example of the kind of relationship I have with those animals. I could have called those weasels together like Ace Ventura,” he said.
Kroschel contends that in the immediate aftermath of the raid no one knew to go care for the remaining animals because no one from the state let him or anyone else know that they’d left animals behind.
Scott said there was a successful effort to notify facility staff, but deferred questions about the specifics to wildlife troopers. Trooper spokesperson Austin McDaniel said alaska wildlife troopers attempted to notify someone on staff by phone, but that person did not answer their call – so they left a voicemail.
When asked if that message included notification that there were animals remaining at the facility after the raid, he replied: “Troopers notified that we released the property after the conclusion of our search warrant. Troopers did not relocate any animals from the facility.”
In limbo
Three weeks ago during the raid, trooper spokesperson Tess Williams said her agency was expecting to file charges against Kroschel shortly. As of press time, no charges have been filed.
But according to the warrant, troopers were looking for evidence of cruelty to animals, which can result in charges ranging in seriousness from class A misdemeanors to class C felonies. Each animal that is subject to that crime is considered a separate offense, according to the statute.
If convicted, Kroschel has to forfeit animals to the state, could be prohibited from possessing them for up to a decade, and could be required to reimburse the state or other custodian of the animals for the costs of providing shelter, veterinary attention or medical treatment, according to the statute.
Vincent-Lang said he interprets the status of the animals as dependent on what happens with a potential legal case against Kroschel.
“They are theoretically evidence in this case. At some point, depending on what happens in the court proceedings they could be returned,” he said.
But Vincent-Lang also said that wild animals are the property of the state, meaning Kroschel would have to get a permit to legally possess them.
Vincent-Lang characterized the years of back and forth between Fish and Game and Kroschel as a process of working to get his facility in a condition where it could be treated like the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center or Alaska Zoo.
“But once the court acted, we kind of stopped anything on our end re-issuing [the permit],” Vincent-Lang said. “We’re just kind of on hold right now.”
Kroschel said things have gotten somewhat desperate for him with the loss of income from his park.
“I can’t make any money, I can’t do anything,” he said. “How am I supposed to make a living?”
More recently, he was working to set up reindeer tours in Skagway, but that effort is currently stalled. Public media station KHNS reported that planning commissioners postponed discussing a permit for Kroschel’s operation until its next meeting in mid-August, asking for documentation that the reindeer are domesticated, proof of their origin and insurance, as well as plans for a shelter and veterinary care for the herd.
“I thought, ‘Ok, screw that,’ I’m just going to go back to get my reindeer from Skagway,” he said.
But, a number of would-be tourists who prepaid for tours of his Chilkat Valley park this year have requested their money back. Kroschel said thousands of dollars was refunded from his bank account, and he doesn’t have enough money between his working credit cards to fly home; he said he was calling from Yekaterinburg, Russia.
“What happens now? The freezers get turned off? The phone gets turned off? How am I supposed to sustain that park, there’s nothing there,” he said. “It’s completely destroyed.”
Kroschel said he sees an irony in how well he’s treated in Russia, versus what is happening to him in the United States.
“I’m over here in Russia seeing my family, my girlfriend,” he said. “[My host] has this place and these two little grizzly cubs that were orphaned this spring. I’ve been working with those two cubs. [Now] we’ve got four orphaned moose. It’s a complete difference. In America, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game is a Stalin-esque situation. Over here, it’s what it used to be when I was a kid.”
But when asked if he plans to stay in Russia and open a wildlife park there, he balked.
“Do I stay here? That would make a nice story,” he said. “I’m not like that. I don’t run away from things.”
• This article originally appeared in the Chilkat Valley News.
