NIARADA – The animals are gone.
Now everything else is going.
The embattled Montana Large Animal Sanctuary and everything left
there is officially up for sale.
The 400-acre ranch, with its large main home, guest house, farm
house, cabin plus indoor pool and sauna, is listed at $889,000 and
being marketed as a private retreat.
Everything else goes up for bid Saturday, when Rivers West
Auction of Evaro handles the liquidation of, as auctioneer Jason
Clinkenbeard describes it, “everything that’s not bolted down or
growing out of the ground.”
There are tractors and squeeze chutes, manure spreaders and
all-terrain vehicles, pickups and lawnmowers.
“It’s a pretty big farm sale,” Clinkenbeard says. “Everything
you’d expect to find on a working farm and ranch.”
And some things you might not – for instance, a fire truck (once
owned by the city of Hot Springs), a fifth-wheel travel trailer (32
feet long) and bird cages.
The auction begins on the property at 11 a.m. Saturday, and
Clinkenbeard says two auction rings will be operating for much of
the day in order to move everything by 6 p.m.
It’s one of the last chapters in the sanctuary’s saga, which
took a serious turn for the worse several days before
Christmas.
***
That’s when the sanctuary’s operators, who also
held two of the three seats on its board of directors, contacted
the Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries and said they were out
of money and almost out of food for the animals.
That launched what has been described as the largest rescue at
an animal sanctuary in history.
More than 800 animals – camels, cows, horses, burros, ostriches,
pot-bellied pigs and more, but the majority of them llamas – were
rescued, in an operation that took 42 days.
AniMeals of Missoula staffed the sanctuary and cared for the
animals for the six weeks, while it and other groups sought new
homes for all the critters. Animals were shipped far and wide, from
New York to California.
Rescue groups decried the condition of many of the animals. The
divorced couple who operated the sanctuary, Brian and Kathryn
Warrington, denied the animals had not been properly cared for, and
blamed Kathryn’s deteriorating health – she has multiple sclerosis
– for things getting out of hand at the end.
***
The primary benefactor of the sanctuary was
Susan Rawlings, a health insurance executive in California when she
and the Warringtons founded the nonprofit venture.
Rawlings, now CEO of a small medical technology and service
company in Texas, is the only remaining member of the board of
directors and is overseeing the liquidation of the property and
real estate.
Her change in jobs, she told the Missoulian in December,
included a pay cut that made it impossible for her to continue to
fund the sanctuary, which Brian Warrington estimated in 2008 cost
$400,000 a year to run.
After the sanctuary’s creditors are paid off, any remaining
proceeds from the auction and real estate sale must, by law, be
given to similar nonprofit organizations. Most people involved
expect Rawlings to designate the many groups that helped with the
rescue to receive the money.
The ranch is being marketed by Jimmie Sue Reneau of Keller
Williams Realty Northwest, which has offices in Kalispell and
Polson.
The property, which Rawlings told the Missoulian in December she
thought was worth $1.2 million to $1.3 million, is being listed
well below the replacement cost, Reneau said, “so we can get it
done in a timely fashion in a bad market.”
Her website lists the property as a “private retreat,” and goes
on to say, “Almost 400 level to sloped partial treed acres in a
very PRIVATE location only 30 minutes from Flathead Lake. Main
house, guest house, farm house and cabin, indoor pool, sauna, high
quality fencing suited to horses, many outbuildings and a generator
to power up the property if there is a power outage.”
Interested parties require an appointment and proof of funds to
view the property, but all are welcome at Saturday’s auction of
everything else.
Reporter Vince Devlin can be reached at (406) 319-2117 or at
vdevlin@missoulian.com.