Animal sanctuary gradually reopening after outbreak

Noah’s Ark, the Henry County animal sanctuary that has been closed to most visitors since a bird flu outbreak 14 months go, will open to the general public for the first time today.

Operators of the attraction, encompassing some 250 acres in Locust Grove, are inviting guests in a one-day-only soft opening to test the sanctuary’s readiness for daily operations in the future. The opening also will gauge the interest of visitors in the facility after such a long time off the destination grid.

‘This isn’t a grand reopening,” Audrey Hill, director of development for the sanctuary, said in describing why the opening is limited.

Noah’s Ark closed its doors to the general public after an outbreak of bird flu that began in August 2022 when multiple black vultures were found dead at the facility. Noah’s Ark said in a statement at the time that initial tests showed the H5N1 strain of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) was the cause of the vultures deaths.

Instead of grassy fields and habitats inhabited by the 1,500 or so animals that made up the facility’s population before the outbreak, visitors will find fewer horses, sheep, goats, pigs and llamas. Those animals, which roamed free for years in an 80-acre pasture on the property, were relocated to other sanctuaries and animal rescue groups.

“Our future is exotics,” Michelle “Shelly” Lakly, the sanctuary’s president, told The Atlanta Journal-constitution in June. “Many places can take care of horses, goats and pigs. But not many places can take care of a tiger or a lion or a bear.”

Hill said that depending on how Friday’s opening goes, Noah’s Ark could reopen on Fridays and possibly Saturdays before returning to full-time operations.