Tifton Forced a Wildlife Rescue Out, Then the Fence Failed

Tifton gave Jessica Pisciotta 30 days in February 2025 to shut Steadfast Wildlife Rescue Rehab, her 20-year home operation. She moved the animals off the residential lot. On Jan. 26, 2026, two dogs got into the new pens and killed nine animals, and Georgia’s Department of Natural Resources charged her with a misdemeanor for an insecure fence.

The city’s letter was a zoning case. The state’s file, a year later, was a security case at the site that letter forced her to build.

The City Gave Her 30 Days to Leave

Pisciotta received the letter on Friday, Feb. 14, 2025. It was dated Feb. 10. The city’s attorney wrote that using the property for wildlife rehab “is prohibited in a residential zoning district under the city of Tifton’s code of ordinances and the city’s land development code.”

She had run Steadfast out of her house for 20 years, taking in deer, raccoons, owls, and vultures and sending them back to the wild. “It’s contained. It’s hidden. The animals are here temporarily. They are not housed here, they aren’t kenneled here, they don’t live here. The animals are here until they are well enough to go back to the wild,” she said.

City Attorney Rob Wilmot did not dispute the work. He disputed the address. The February 2025 shutdown order landed after code enforcement had already been on the property.

I don’t think anybody doubts that Miss Pisciotta with her passion and compassion for these injured animals, you can’t dispute, it’s a great thing she does. I think everyone admires her for that. It’s just being done in a location where that is not allowed.

Rob Wilmot, Tifton City Attorney

Pisciotta said she was in shock because the same officials named on the letter, or their families, had called her for wildlife emergencies. A month earlier, she said, city code enforcement came to check building permits, knew the rescue was there, and thanked her. Wilmot said the city acted after complaints, including claims that animals from the rescue had attacked local children. She answered that a real attack would have left a police report or hospital paper, and none had been shown.

An Extra Two Weeks, Then a County Lot

The first deadline was March 12, 2025, 30 days from the letter’s date. On March 3 she asked the council for 90 more days. Melissa Brown, a Steadfast committee member, told the city no one should have to move wildlife from the city into the county on that clock. Neighbors used the same meeting to call the animals a nuisance. One resident said buzzards landed on a deck rail and sat on a roof.

By then Pisciotta said she had raised over $9,000 and secured a plot in Tift County. The site still needed basic work before it could hold patients.

WHAT THE NEW LOT STILL NEEDED

• Pens: New enclosures had to be built from scratch after 20 years of gear on the home lot.
• Water: She said the county site needed a well dug before animals could live there.
• Power: Incubators and heat for newborns required a Georgia Power hookup she did not yet have.
• Time: As a nonprofit, she said, she could not even touch raised funds for about 45 days.

Without more time, she said, some animals would go to one of the state’s other rescues and some would have to be euthanized. She held three baby squirrels while she said it. Mayor Julie Smith said she admired the work and still had to enforce zoning, and she sent Pisciotta to sit down with Wilmot and City Manager Larry Lawrence.

On March 17 the council voted unanimously, on a motion from Councilman Michael Franks, to give her until the end of the business day on March 31. Photos shown that night covered the outside of the house. Smith still wanted the extra days in case animals remained inside.

By Aug. 6, 2025, Steadfast was taking animals at a new Tifton-area site and still rebuilding. “Everything that we had built for over 20 years and then just starting new and completely building up… It’s definitely taken a toll on us, but we are doing it,” Pisciotta said. The center said it held about 100 animals at a time, including a NICU for injured newborns. She had been served with a court date of Aug. 27 over the relocation.

THE RELOCATION CLOCK IN TIFTON

1. February 10, 2025: City attorney dates a letter giving 30 days to bring the home property into zoning compliance.
2. February 14, 2025: Pisciotta receives the letter; a public petition to halt enforcement starts three days later.
3. March 3, 2025: She asks the council for 90 days; neighbors complain about buzzards; she reports a Tift County lot and more than $9,000 raised.
4. March 17, 2025: Council extends the move-out to the end of business on March 31.
5. August 6, 2025: The rescue is running at the new site with about 100 animals and three regular volunteers, and a court date of Aug. 27 is pending.
6. January 26, 2026: Two dogs get into enclosures around 4 a.m.; nine animals are found dead.
7. February 19, 2026: DNR closes the investigation and charges Pisciotta with one misdemeanor count.

The August court date was on the calendar. Public accounts after that date did not record a verdict, and the rescue kept taking patients through the winter.

Who Else Can Take a Rabies-Vector Animal?

Pisciotta said she held state, federal, and rabies-vector licenses, that only four people in Georgia held all three, and that she was the only one of those four in South Georgia. Volunteer Renee Bryant put it in plainer terms at the house in February 2025, standing with an animal that had been hit by a car three days earlier: if Pisciotta had not been there, Bryant said, there were no other rehabbers in that part of the state.

Georgia does license other people. The state’s own path is narrow, and it is not a job with a paycheck from Atlanta. DNR says a candidate who is not a veterinarian must score at least 80 on a 100-question exam, then pass a facility inspection. Those permits are valid for five years and come due again by March 31 of the fifth year.

THE THREE LICENSES SHE SAID SHE STACKED

Georgia’s rabies-vector species permit rules are stricter because those animals can carry rabies. A non-veterinarian needs at least two years as a licensed rehabber, at least 20 animals already taken in, a score of 85 percent on a rabies exam, and a current antibody level from pre-exposure vaccine. The same rule lets DNR decide whether a new permit is even needed in that part of the state.

A Georgia Wildlife Network page of rehabilitators listed by species is not a full state roster, and the network says so. It still shows how thin the map is south of Atlanta. AWARE in Stonecrest takes rabies-vector mammals. Camp Critter in Crawford takes fawns and rabies-vector species. Bells Ferry Veterinary Hospital in Acworth takes rabies-vector animals, small mammals, raptors, and waterfowl. Closer to Tifton, the same list names Philema Animal Hospital in Leesburg for small mammals, fawns, songbirds, raptors, and rabies-vector species. Most of the named RVS sites sit hours north of Tift County. Bryant’s point about the local gap was the one the city was pressing on when it started the 30-day clock.

Nine Animals Died After Dogs Got In

Around 4 a.m. on Monday, Jan. 26, 2026, animals were found dead at the new site. Pisciotta told officers someone had broken through a fence to get at patients that were still in rehab. “These animals were here to be helped, not harmed,” she said. “They were defenseless. What happened here is nothing but evil.”

Early talk on the scene treated the wounds as gunshots. DNR sent three animals for necropsy and brought a search dog. Volunteer Dennis Brady pointed to metal brackets that had held fence to a tree. A first public account of a human raid with guns spread faster than the lab work.

ANIMALS KILLED ON JAN. 26, 2026

That is nine bodies. DNR later said all of them died after domestic dogs got into the pens, not after gunshots. Lt. Bubba Stanford of Georgia DNR Law Enforcement said the wounds people took for bullets were puncture wounds, with hemorrhaging and trauma from the attack. “Nothing in our investigation has determined that these animals were shot,” he said.

Stanford said Steadfast workers shot the two dogs after the attack, once the dogs came back onto the property and workers had to defend themselves. Tift County Animal Control and the sheriff’s office found no chips that named an owner.

DNR Charged Her for an Insecure Fence

On Feb. 19, 2026, DNR Law Enforcement issued its closeout. Game wardens had answered the call on Jan. 26, taken evidence, done necropsies, and interviewed Pisciotta. The finding was that captive wildlife and domestic animals died after domestic dogs gained access to their enclosures. She was charged with one misdemeanor count of violation of a wildlife rehabilitation permit, citing failure to provide secure facilities and enclosures needed to protect wildlife and the public, under O.C.G.A. 27-1-3.

Stanford, who also appears in DNR materials as program manager for the DNR Special Permit Unit in Social Circle, said the facility had not failed DNR inspections before this incident. He also said the security problems this time were real.

There was definitely issues with the security there of which we, you know, we dealt with. I have full confidence that she’s going to do her very best to secure the facility better than it was.

Lt. Bubba Stanford, Georgia DNR Law Enforcement

Pisciotta said she accepted the state’s finding and still objected to how the first investigators on scene talked about gunshots. “They are my superiors. So I completely agree with what they say,” she said. “But what I don’t agree with is the initial investigators that were here that told the people on scene that they were shot. Because that is where it originally started.”

The rescue posted its own account the same day. Clamps and bolts had been taken off the chain link, it said, so dogs could enter while the locks stayed in place. It described six large metal clamps and 12 bolts that were not found on the property, a dark four-door truck that left dogs there on two visits, and cameras that later caught a vehicle during the last attack. After the first wave, Pisciotta said, she and volunteers took shifts on site; a volunteer with a gun stopped a dog a few feet short of another person.

WHAT WE KNOW

• Cause of death: DNR said necropsies showed the nine animals were killed by dogs, not by gunshots.
• The charge: One misdemeanor count for failing to keep enclosures secure, issued Feb. 19, 2026.
• The dogs: Two unchipped dogs were shot by Steadfast workers after they returned to the property.
• Prior inspections: Stanford said the facility had not failed DNR inspections before this incident.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• Sabotage: DNR did not adopt the claim that a person removed six clamps and 12 bolts.
• The truck: No owner was tied in the closeout to the four-door truck described by the rescue.
• The criminal file: The Feb. 19 charge is on the record; a later plea or verdict was not in the public closeout.

Those two accounts can sit in the same week without being the same story. DNR’s charge is about whether the pens met the permit. Her post is about whether a person opened them. The deaths are not in dispute.

Work Days, Live Cameras, and a Misdemeanor File

The new site was already short-handed before the dogs came. In August 2025 Pisciotta had three consistent volunteers, which she counted as six hands. “24 hours, 7 days a week, no vacations,” she said. “It’s something you have to have passion to do, or there is no way you can continue to do it.” Sherry Sabatino had been driving from Pennsylvania, on her sixth visit after finding the rescue on TikTok, to help feed and clean. A late-2025 raccoon case, an animal named Freedom that had been caged and hurt for six days, was still moving through pre-release at the same operation months after the zoning fight and weeks before the January attack.

After the charge, the rescue said it had added live cameras on the corners of the property and was running weekend work days to harden the pens against predators and against people with tools. Mark McKinnon, DNR Law Enforcement’s public affairs officer, wrote that the division would keep watching Pisciotta’s rehab work in the coming months for compliance. Stanford said he hoped the changes would be enough for the center to keep running.

WHAT THE STATE LEFT IN PLACE

• The permit: She was charged, not stripped, in the Feb. 19 closeout, and DNR described continued operations under watch.
• The fence: Stanford said security had failed this time and that he expected her to tighten it.
• The gap: South Georgia still had few people holding the full state, federal, and rabies-vector set she described in 2025.

Tifton’s zoning letter did not empty the NICU in March 2025. It moved the pens onto land that still needed a well, power, and new walls, and it left a 20-year operation rebuilding in public. The nine animals died on that new ground, and the state’s last written word on the deaths was a misdemeanor for the fence.