Animal Rescue Wants Answers After 250 Animals ‘Disappeared’

A California humane society is seeking answers after they say hundreds of animals went missing. 

San Diego Humane Society officials told KSAZ-TV that it gave more than 300 small animals – including rats, guinea pigs, hamsters, and rabbits – to the Humane Society of Southern Arizona after the Arizona society offered to help the California rescue since it was over capacity.

There are murky records of where those animals went and now the Arizona humane society hired a third-party organization to investigate the situation and suspended CEO Steve Farley and Chief Operating Officer Christian Gonzalez, according to a statement by the organization.

The San Diego shelter sent the 318 animals to Tucson. Those animals are missing after the Arizona humane society gave them to a private group in Maricopa County, the television station reported. 

"250 pets are still unaccounted for," Nina Thompson with the San Diego Humane Society told KSAZ. 

Thompson said that the Humane Society of Southern Arizona said it would work with multiple rescue groups. Instead, Thompson told the television station the animals “disappeared” after being placed in a “small, private family-run” rescue. She alleged the Arizona humane society wouldn’t tell the San Diego group the name of the rescue that took their animals. 

“We've been essentially told to take them at their word that the animals were placed into homes,” she said. 

The Humane Society of Southern Arizona issued a statement following the concerns and said the organization was working to learn the status of the animals and their conditions.

“Soon after learning about this transfer and the concerns raised, the HSSA board of directors started monitoring the situation and began its work on gathering information and conducting initial research into the events,” the organization said. “This included securing details on how and why HSSA became involved with this transfer, how and why these animals ended up with the private group, HSSA’s placement vetting and adoption processes, and – most importantly – the status of the animals’ safety.” 

The Arizona humane society said it was told that 254 animals were adopted but that the rescue doesn’t maintain records in the same manner as a larger organization. 

“The plausibility of one single rescue placing so many animals in such a short period of time, it seems too good to be true,” Thompson told the Arizona Daily Star. “We’re a huge organization, San Diego Humane Society, we can’t place that many animals in such a short period of time.”

The private rescue turned over 63 animals that hadn’t yet been adopted to the Arizona humane society. They were healthy and arrived in clean habitats, the humane society said.