Natural Bridge Zoo has done steady business dealing baby giraffes. Now 2 are missing, and AG’s office contends they belong to the state.

In late September 2023, one of the giraffes at the Natural Bridge Zoo gave birth.

In the wild, baby giraffes stay with their mothers for more than a year. The males typically leave at 15 months, but the females usually stay and become part of a matriarchal herd, according to the Giraffe Conservation Foundation. 

However, the Natural Bridge Zoo shipped that infant giraffe to a roadside zoo in North Carolina when it was 2 weeks old, according to records from the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. 

By November, the mother giraffe was pregnant again, according to court records. 

A second giraffe at the Natural Bridge Zoo gave birth in late October 2023, according to those same court records. State records show the zoo sent that baby giraffe in early December to a roadside zoo in Ohio. By Dec. 3, the mother giraffe was pregnant again, court records say.

Five days after that second baby giraffe was shipped out and three days after the mother giraffe was deemed pregnant again, police raided the zoo at the behest of the state attorney general’s office that was conducting an investigation into allegations of animal abuse. When the state seized the zoo’s animals that day, it unwittingly seized two — and possibly three — giraffes that were pregnant. 

Now more than a year and a half later, the status of those baby giraffes is spawning a legal saga all its own. Namely, who owns them? 

This is more than just a legal question. It’s a financial one for the Natural Bridge Zoo; court records say that adult giraffes are worth as much as $250,000 apiece, and state records show that over the years, the zoo has done a steady business breeding and presumably selling giraffes. In the 10 years prior to the state’s raid, state records show that the Natural Bridge Zoo shipped out 14 baby giraffes — some as young as 2 weeks old, none older than 2 months.

The most recent General Assembly session passed a bill that would have made it illegal to separate zoo animals from their mothers at such a young age. Gov. Glenn Youngkin vetoed the measure. 

The legal question of ownership, though, is complicated by curious complication: The baby giraffes are missing. The state doesn’t know where they are and the zoo owners aren’t saying. 

Attorney general’s office ordered zoo to notify it when giraffes gave birth. It did not.

When the state seized the Natural Bridge Zoo’s animals over the course of two days in December 2023, it seized the four giraffes in name only. They were deemed too big to move then, and so stayed at the zoo — even after a Rockbridge County jury ruled in March 2024 that the state was right to seize most of the animals but had to return others to the zoo’s owners, the Mogensen family. 

Not until Oct. 2, 2024, nearly a year after the raid, did the court grant the state authorization to move the giraffes. The male, known as Jeffrey, was moved the next day to an animal park in Georgia, but by then it was deemed too dangerous to move the two pregnant females, Little Girl and Valentine. Court records show that a veterinarian determined that a third female, Wrinkles, had been pregnant but had miscarried. 

Rockbridge County Circuit Court Judge Christopher Russell had ordered the zoo to allow the state to conduct periodic, unannounced inspections of the giraffes. 

On Nov. 26, 2024, the head of the state’s animal law unit — Special Assistant Attorney General Michelle Welch — wrote to the Mogensen family to outline what she called 11 requirements the zoo had to follow until the giraffes could be moved. (Gretchen Mogensen posted the letter on her Facebook page.) Some of those requirements dealt with the condition of the animals’ living quarters — “continuous access to a heated barn kept at 65 degrees F or higher when outside temperatures are below 50 degrees F.”

Most of them, though, dealt with how to handle the arrival of the baby giraffes. Among them:

“Caretakers shall notify the Virginia Office of the Attorney General immediately upon discovering that any of the giraffes have given birth.”

“Caretakers shall not separate the calf from its mother unless the immediate safety of the mother or calf is at risk.”

“No one shall sell or trade any calf giraffe nor offer the calf giraffes for sale or trade.”

It’s unclear how often the state made inspection visits. Those aren’t documented in the voluminous court file in the Rockbridge County Courthouse, and the attorney general’s office hasn’t responded to a Cardinal News inquiry. However, those court records do spell out what happened when a three-person team that included a veterinarian, an investigator for the attorney general’s office and a state police officer showed up on the afternoon of April 7. They were told to come back the next morning. 

When they returned on April 8, there were still delays in gaining admittance. At one point, according to court records, Gretchen Mogensen told the inspection team by phone that the court orders didn’t apply to her. (The zoo was originally owned by her father and stepmother, Karl and Debbie Mogensen. They sold it to their children, and Gretchen Mogensen appears to contend that since the court orders were issued before she became part of the ownership group, they don’t apply. The state says the orders apply to all caretakers at the zoo.) Eventually, the inspection team was admitted. That’s when they discovered that the two pregnant giraffes were no longer pregnant, but “what appeared to be afterbirth that had dried” was on one giraffe’s tail. The two baby giraffes were nowhere to be found.

State asserts ownership of the baby giraffes. At previous hearing, zoo attorneys suggested otherwise.

The attorney general’s office wants the Mogensens — father Karl, stepmother Debbie, daughter Gretchen — held in contempt of court. A hearing is set for July 2. In the meantime, neither the Mogensens nor their attorneys have responded to Cardinal News inquiries about the case or where the baby giraffes are. Nor has any paperwork been filed with state officials, which is routinely required if exotic animals are transferred out of state.

However, the question of just who owns those giraffes has been lingering in the background of this case from the beginning. The initial search warrant — which was sworn out in Powhatan County, apparently to avoid tipping off the Mogensens — authorized a search for “all alive, dead and unborn animals.” That raid turned up records that indicated the giraffes were pregnant. 

However, the subject of the unborn giraffes doesn’t appear to have come up during the court proceedings in early 2024 that awarded custody to the state. On Oct. 2, when there was a hearing to authorize moving the animals, there was discussion in court about who owned those unborn giraffes, then more than halfway through a 15-month gestation period.

“The babies are now inside of those giraffes and when we seize them, Judge, I would say they belong to [the state],” said Welch, from the attorney general’s office. 

The lawyer representing Karl and Debbie Mogensen at that hearing appeared to disagree. “Your Honor, the [state] is assuming that they actually have seized properly the baby giraffes that are yet to be born. And I take issue with that, Your Honor, because that is not true.” The Mogensens’ lawyer attempted to talk about the Mogensens’ “commercial interest” in giraffe breeding, implying that they might own the unborn giraffes. The judge appeared to wave off discussion of who owned the unborn giraffes. “We’re not here to discuss lofty issues or like when life begins or anything like that,” the judge said. Instead, he said, “the only purpose of this hearing is” about the transport of the giraffes.

Welch cited an 1889 U.S. Supreme Court case that ruled calves born to runaway cattle that were claimed by another farmer belonged to the farmer from whose care they had escaped. The Mogensens’ attorney contended “there’s not a lot of case law out about this.” But the transcript of the court hearing doesn’t show any actual determination as to the ownership of those then-unborn giraffes.

Now they’ve been born and the state — which insists that the calves belong to Virginia — doesn’t know where they are. In court filings, the state contends that the Mogensens have a history of separating young animals from their mothers, and separate documents seem to bear that out. State records show that in the 10 years before the raid, the zoo shipped 53 baby animals: the 14 giraffes mentioned earlier, a 4-week-old zebra, a week-old tiger, two llamas ages 1 week and 2 weeks, plus an assortment of other animals. The youngest were a 3-day-old capuchin (a type of monkey) and a 5-day-old porcupine. The oldest was a 6-month-old nyala (a type of African antelope), the second oldest a 4-month-old lemur.

The most frequent animals shipped were 17 capuchins, followed by the giraffes. Of those 13 giraffes, seven went to other roadside or petting zoos, four went to a Texas company listed as “auction,” one went to a “dealer” in Texas, another to “transporter” in North Carolina and yet another to a “TV/film trainer” in California. That company, which features a giraffe among the animals on its website, lists film credits that include “ET The Extra Terrestrial,” “Jurassic Park 1 & 2” and “Planet of the Apes,” along with music videos for Aerosmith, Nine Inch Nails and Soundgarden. The firm obtained a 2-week-old giraffe from the Natural Bridge Zoo in 2018. It’s unclear what shows, if any, that giraffe has been in. An inquiry to Bob Dunn’s Humane Training Animal Services was not answered.

In an application for a federal license in 2012, the Mogensens said that the zoo operated “3 separate breeding farms” in Rockbridge County. “As Natural Bridge Zoo raises quite [a] few giraffe calves every year, I bottle raise all of the calves and acclimate them to being handled and trailered,” Debbie Mogensen said in a document submitted with the application. “We have shipped giraffe calves all over the United States and out of the country and have found that these bottled calves have no weaning or handling stress.”

Karl Mogensen submitted a document which listed 38 types of animals and birds the zoo had bred over the years, with some dating from 1963. He said his family had bred “nine-plus” generations of sitatungas (a type of African antelope), “seven-plus” generations of zebras and camels, and three generations of giraffes, the latter starting in 1995.

He wrote: “We have always considered ourselves as breeders for zoological parks.”

Youngkin vetoed bill that would have banned separating baby giraffes so young

The Natural Bridge Zoo has now inspired one new law in Virginia and another bill that didn’t become law.

In 2024, Del. Kathy Tran, D-Fairfax County, introduced a bill to ban the use of “bullhooks,” a type of sharp prod used on elephants. She said she was motivated by their use at the Natural Bridge Zoo, which used to have an elephant — which was sent out of state to a Florida facility shortly before the state’s raid. Youngkin signed that bill into law.

This year, state Sen. Jennifer Boysko, D-Fairfax County, introduced a bill that would have made it illegal to “prematurely separate any mammalian wildlife offspring born in captivity from the mother prior to the natural time of weaning that is appropriate for such species.” She said the bill was aimed specifically at the Natural Bridge Zoo because of its history of separating young animals from their mothers. The bill was endorsed by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, the Virginia Veterinary Medicine Association and multiple animal-related groups.

The latter group wrote to legislators to tell them: “Mammals are easily exploited because they are dependent on parental care for survival. They need maternal milk. For the pet trade, they are ‘pulled’ off of their mothers in the neonatal period and ‘bottle raised.’ The purpose of this is to ‘tame’ them and make them attractive as pets. This process does not domesticate them . . . Most veterinarians find this animal ownership unethical and do not wish to contribute to an unethical industry . . . This bill is well-written, encompasses many stakeholders, and most importantly is a method to discourage some ‘bad actors.'”

The Boysko bill passed the legislature on mostly party-line votes and then was vetoed by the governor. In his veto message, Youngkin wrote: “While I appreciate the intent behind this legislation, I do not believe it is appropriate to establish precedent-setting policy to address the actions of a single bad actor. This bill raises broader concerns about the potential for future legislative overreach in wildlife management.”

Boysko is a frequent sponsor of animal-related legislation. She said she’s never been to the Natural Bridge Zoo but has been following the case and was aware last fall that the giraffes were pregnant when she started working on the bill. “All of the accredited zoos frown upon this,” Boysko said. “It’s not healthy or safe for these animals” to separate them so early.

While Boysko’s bill wouldn’t have been in force when the giraffes were born (new laws typically take effect July 1), she believes it would have prevented the current situation where the giraffe calves are now missing. “What happened in April was the unfortunate result of us not carrying through on the bill,” she said. “I believe if the governor had signed it, they’d have been on watch and they wouldn’t have separated the giraffes.”

Youngkin vetoed the bill March 24, two weeks before the inspection visit that discovered the baby giraffes were missing. “If the governor had signed the bill, those giraffes would be safe, and it’s really sad,” Boysko said.

She said she intends to bring the bill back next year, when we’ll have a new governor. By then, those giraffes, wherever they are, will still be younger than the time when they would be weaned in the wild.

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