Florida wildlife agency probes mass sloth deaths at defunct warehouse ahead of Sloth World opening

In late 2024 and early 2025, a warehouse in the Orlando area that was to serve as a temporary holding facility for a forthcoming tourist venture called Sloth World became the site of a preventable tragedy in which thirty‑one sloths, sourced from the rainforests of Peru and Guyana, perished while confined in a structure that lacked both power and running water, a circumstance that the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) now attributes to a phenomenon it describes as “cold stun.”

The FWC’s incident report, released in April 2026, details that the sloths were delivered to the warehouse sometime in December 2024, remained there through February 2025, and died without any recorded intervention, suggesting that the owners of the attraction either neglected to provide basic environmental controls or failed to recognize the specific physiological vulnerabilities of the animals, an omission that exposes a stark disconnect between the promotional ambition of a novelty attraction and the rudimentary standards of animal husbandry.

While the commission’s investigation confirms that the facility was not equipped with heating, ventilation, or water supplies, it also reveals that no permits for temporary exotic‑animal housing appear to have been secured, and that routine inspections were either not requested or not performed, thereby highlighting a procedural gap that allowed an illegal or at best unregulated storage arrangement to persist for months unchecked by any competent supervisory authority.

The episode, occurring more than a year before the planned public opening of Sloth World, underscores a broader systemic issue in which the allure of distinctive tourism experiences can outpace, and in practice override, the enforcement mechanisms designed to safeguard wildlife, suggesting that without substantive reforms to permit oversight, inspection scheduling, and mandatory welfare certifications, similar neglectful scenarios are likely to reappear under the guise of novel entertainment ventures.

Published: April 24, 2026