The Southwest Virginia Wildlife Center and Stan Seymour, a Virginia-based owner of 14 Bojangles fried-chicken restaurants, have burned through nearly $700,000 in legal fees. The fight is not about the birds. It’s about a shared private road, traffic noise, and a 1930s easement that has turned a rural dispute into a high-stakes legal quagmire. According to The Washington Post, Seymour has spent roughly $450,000, while the nonprofit center has poured in $230,000.
At the heart of the conflict is a simple engineering problem: the center’s current 50-foot flight pen is too short for bald eagles to regain their strength after injury. Executive Director Chester Leonard argues that recovering birds of prey need at least 100 feet of airspace to rebuild stamina and flight mechanics before release. Without this space, the center claims it cannot safely return large raptors to the wild. The proposed raptor building would solve this, but it requires access along Coleman Road, a narrow, partly unpaved path that crosses neighboring properties.
Seymour and his wife, Jane, live near the road. They argue the expansion will bring unwanted traffic and noise to their neighborhood, leading them to challenge the Roanoke County Board of Supervisors’ 2018 special-use permit. The dispute widened from zoning issues to allegations of road obstruction, harassment, and defamation. While the Virginia Supreme Court allowed the neighbors to pursue their standing challenge in June 2022, it did not rule on the merits of the center’s operations.
The financial strain hits the center hardest. As a donation-dependent nonprofit, every dollar spent on lawyers is a dollar not spent on animal care. In 2022, the center warned that legal expenses had already exceeded $140,000, threatening its operational capacity. The human cost is visible in the birds themselves; in September 2025, an injured eagle highlighted the urgent need for adequate flight space, a need currently stalled by courtroom delays.
With two major cases still pending, the future of the 100-foot aviary hangs in the balance. The next court hearing will determine whether the center can finally build the enclosure it says is necessary for eagle rehabilitation, or whether Seymour’s objections to the neighborhood impact will halt the project entirely.