Thirty-one sloths that had been acquired by a planned animal attraction in Orlando featuring the peculiar creatures died soon after they were imported into the United States, many of them from a lack of heat at a warehouse that was not authorized to keep wildlife, state and county officials said.
The deaths occurred between December 2024 and February 2025, but only recently came to light in a newly released report by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, which found several violations when it inspected the warehouse in August.
The report was obtained earlier by Inside Climate News, an environmental journalism nonprofit.
The findings have drawn intense criticism to the not-yet-open attraction in Orlando, which is called Sloth World and describes itself on its website as “rainforest-inspired indoor habitat where more than 40 sloths live on their terms” and the “the world’s only ‘Slotharium.’”
Sloth World’s president, Benjamin Agresta, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Mr. Agresta, told Fox 35 Orlando on Friday that Sloth World had abandoned its plans to open and would file for bankruptcy. All of its remaining sloths were under the “full control” of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, he said.
Also on Friday, the Central Florida Zoo & Botanical Gardens in Sanford, Fla., said it had recently accepted a donation of 13 two-toed sloths that were being quarantined for at least 30 days.
The zoo said it was working with the Association of Zoos and Aquariums on the long-term placement of the sloths with various accredited organizations.
“Many of these animals will require lifelong assistance from humans to be given the opportunity to thrive, all of them having been in human care since arriving in the country,” the zoo said.
Sloth World was to be part of a growing and loosely regulated commercial tourism enterprise centered around sloths, the slow-moving, cuddly-looking mammals native to Central and South America.
Of the six species of sloths, one is considered critically endangered and another is vulnerable, according to the International Fund for Animal Welfare.
The sloths that died had been imported from Guyana and Peru, two countries that experts said still allow sloths, which cannot regulate their body temperature and usually feed on tropical leaves, to be captured in the wild to be sold elsewhere.
When the first 21 sloths arrived at a warehouse a half-mile from Sloth World in December 2024, the building did not have electricity or water, one of the operators of the warehouse told a state wildlife officer.
The warehouse, which was registered with the state under the name Sanctuary World Imports, served as a receiving center for Sloth World.
“It was not ready to receive the sloths but it was too late to cancel the shipment,” the operator, who was identified in the report as Peter Bandre, was quoted as telling the officer.
Several space heaters that had been purchased to keep the warehouse warm stopped working after they tripped the circuit breaker in a nearby building where some extension cords had been plugged in, the report said.
“The 21 sloths died due to, what Mr. Bandre called, a ‘Cold Stun,’” R.K. Brown, the officer, wrote in the report.
By the time an additional 10 sloths from Peru arrived at the warehouse in February 2025, two of them had not survived the journey, and the rest appeared emaciated and died from what the report described as “poor health issues.”
Building inspection officials with Orange County issued a stop-work order on Thursday for the warehouse, which they said was never authorized for animal storage.
A spokeswoman for the county said in an email on Friday that building inspectors had been unable to gain access to the building, which was last approved for storing vehicles in 2021.
State permits are required to own a sloth as a pet and separately for displaying them commercially.
Sloth World, which listed Mr. Bandre as its vice president on its website, and Sanctuary World Imports did not immediately respond to several requests for comment.
Mr. Bandre did not respond to requests for comment. Mr. Agresta was identified in the officer’s report as Mr. Bandre’s business partner.
Earlier on Friday, the website for Sloth World said it would open in about 25 days, with tickets advertised as starting at $49 per person.
Representative Maxwell Alejandro Frost, a Democrat of Florida, whose district includes Orlando, said on social media on Thursday that he was “appalled” to hear about the sloths’ deaths.
“These sloths — naturally solitary animals — were put in the worst conditions possible,” Mr. Frost wrote on X. “They were taken from their natural habitats to a packed warehouse that wasn’t properly heated and allowed for the spread of deadly viruses, leading to a stress-induced death.”
Dr. Rebecca Cliffe, the founder and executive director of the Sloth Conservation Foundation, a nonprofit conservation organization based in Costa Rica, said she began contacting the operators of Sloth World earlier this year after receiving reports from current and former employees that more than two dozen sloths had died in its care.
“That’s when the alarm bells really began ringing,” Dr. Cliffe said in an interview on Thursday.
Dr. Cliffe said that the operators of Sloth World did not answer questions about the conditions of dozens of other sloths that it had acquired for the exhibit.
When she asked which conservation groups Sloth World was donating some of its proceeds to, as it pledged to do on its website, Dr. Cliffe said the operators did not say.
Florida is one of several states that allow sloths to be owned as pets or displayed for commercial purposes.
The state wildlife commission did not immediately answer questions on Friday about the status of Sloth World or say if it was investigating the sloths’ deaths.
Many countries have restrictions on the exportation of sloths, including Costa Rica, but not Guyana and Peru, said Dr. Cliffe, who noted that sloths can live at least 50 years in the wild. Buying one as a pet can cost as much as $10,000, she said.
“The trauma of the capture and the transport is actually really significant because sloths are really sensitive to stress,” she said. “They don’t have a fight-or-flight response. They can’t run away or defend themselves.”
Remy Tumin contributed reporting.
