The owner of an exotic animal park near Brainerd has been fined because a bear cub got loose while in transit and encountered people outside a restaurant, authorities said.
Kevin Vogel, who operates Safari North Wildlife Park with his wife, was fined $1,357 by the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), a division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
In disclosing the fine Monday, APHIS said Vogel was transporting a Syrian bear from his business' headquarters in the southwestern Minnesota city of Sanborn on Oct. 27, 2014, to the wildlife park south of Brainerd, when it "escaped from a kennel-type enclosure with a faulty latch" at a restaurant in Clearwater.
The animal "encountered people in the parking lot of the restaurant" before its capture, the agency statement continued.
The bear was then taken to an animal hospital and rehabilitation facility, APHIS added.
Vogel he was in the restaurant eating when the bear got loose. He said no people were hurt. Vogel said he rounded up the bear and saw that the animal also was unscathed.
"It was a mechanical failure," Vogel said of the latch on the enclosure.
Vogel said he has paid the fine and added that his business has "a great relationship with APHIS."
