Children look at ring-tailed lemurs at the Houston Interactive Aquarium & Animal Preserve, on March 26, 2024. The facility along Beltway 8 racked up 17 violations during two inspections by the USDA earlier this year.
Sharon Steinmann/Houston Chronicle
Children pet Patagonian cavies at the Houston Interactive Aquarium & Animal Preserve, on March 26, 2024. The facility along Beltway 8 racked up 17 violations during two inspections by the USDA earlier this year.
Sharon Steinmann/Houston Chronicle
More than a dozen animal welfare violations at a Houston aquarium and shelter, where a cavy was euthanized earlier this year, have prompted animal rights activists to call for the facility to close.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture issued 17 citations this spring to the Houston Interactive Aquarium & Animal Preserve, where the cavy’s death followed separate incidents involving an armadillo’s near drowning and an ostrich’s injuries that were not promptly reported to a veterinarian. Animal rights nonprofit People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals urged the USDA on Thursday to terminate the facility’s federal license, while the facility defended its record.
“We accept most of these findings without qualification,” the aquarium and preserve’s Chief Operating Officer Carrie Covino wrote in an email to the Houston Chronicle. “A few of them describe failures of daily discipline on our part, and we are not going to characterize them as anything else.”
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The facility acknowledged failures in exhibit conditions, daily operations and recordkeeping but disputed one of the USDA findings, which states that otters and kinkajous were not up to date on their vaccinations. The USDA said the animals were required to receive distemper and rabies vaccines annually, while the aquarium and preserve said its veterinary protocol requires the animals to be vaccinated only when they are 1 year old.
The USDA did not immediately return a request for comment.
The dispute over the conditions in Houston casts new attention on how federal regulators respond when animal exhibitors repeatedly fall short of welfare standards. Federal inspection reports show the facility has accumulated 45 federal citations in the last five years, and more than a third of those came in 2026 alone.
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The Houston Interactive Aquarium said it works with seven veterinarians to address its animals’ needs while operating seven days a week, and the corrections to its violations shows that the regulatory process works. PETA has since asked the USDA to revoke the facility’s exhibitor license, which allows it to exhibit regulated animals under the Animal Welfare Act — the law setting federal standards for their care, handling and treatment.
“The USDA has the power and the responsibility to revoke this roadside zoo’s license, and PETA is urging the agency to end Houston Interactive Aquarium’s reign of terror on animals,” PETA Director of Captive Wildlife Advocacy Klayton Rutherford said in an interview with the Chronicle.
Covino said the facility has corrected nearly all of the problems inspectors found this year. She said demands for revoked licenses are a “standard tactic” at PETA regardless of a facility’s record, and added that no action by the federal government has followed.
PETA has scrutinized the leadership of the Houston aquarium and preserve since before it opened in 2021. The group raised concerns about the facility’s ties to Ammon Covino, who pleaded guilty in 2013 to a conspiracy involving illegally harvested and transported spotted eagle rays and lemon sharks, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida.
PETA urged the USDA in 2021 to investigate Ammon Covino’s ties to the facility, but Ammon Covino’s name does not appear in the USDA’s publicly available database of Animal Welfare Act licenses. The license is registered to Houston Interactive Aquarium and Animal Preserve and is valid until Dec. 27, 2027.
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The facility houses marine life, mammals, reptiles and birds on a property near Beltway 8 and George Bush Intercontinental Airport in north Houston, according to its website. The USDA conducted two inspections at the site this year, tallying 15 violations in April and two more in June.
The violations found during the April inspection ranged from the armadillo’s near drowning and the ostrich’s delayed veterinary care to unsafe public encounters involving sloths and a fruit fly infestation in a food preparation area. The facility has corrected each issue since the inspection except for the disagreement over the otter and kinkajou vaccinations, according to Covino.
The USDA learned about the cavy’s euthanasia in June and issued two more citations involving veterinary care and animal separation. Covino stressed that none of the 15 April violations was cited again when the USDA returned two months later.
She said the cavy sustained bite wounds from other members of its herd, and the USDA’s inspection report states that a wound infested with larvae extended to its deepest tissue. The animal was an infant, and staff failed to realize it was sick for several days, according to the agency.
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An attending veterinarian euthanized the animal in early June because it was “very lethargic and wasn’t doing well,” the report states. Federal officials said the “inter herd aggression” came after feeding changes by the facility, and Covino expressed her grief over the incident.
“That is not an outcome I can be at peace with,” Covino said. “I hold this facility to a high standard of animal welfare, and an animal suffering before we noticed falls short of that standard. We do not tolerate neglect, and we are treating this with the seriousness it deserves.”