Carole Baskin of ‘Tiger King’ to close, sell Big Cat Rescue sanctuary – National | 24CA News
Tiger King star Carole Baskin is saying goodbye to her beloved Big Cat Rescue sanctuary.
Big Cat Rescue introduced its closure in a assertion written by Baskin’s husband, Howard Baskin, final week.
The sanctuary, which has housed injured or orphaned native wild cats for 30 years, stated it is going to transfer most of its wildlife inhabitants from Tampa, Fla., to the Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge in Arkansas.
Howard wrote that Big Cat Rescue will proceed to fund the care of their animals at Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge till the tip of their lives.
Once the sanctuary’s wild cat inhabitants is transported to Arkansas, Howard claimed they are going to promote the Big Cat Rescue property and use the funds to help “species-saving projects.”
Alongside a need to direct funds and a focus to saving large cats within the wild, the assertion famous it had change into too expensive to care for his or her “increasingly geriatric” inhabitants of 41 cats. Even with a smaller “skeleton staff” working Big Cat Rescue because the COVID-19 pandemic, the overhead value to function the sanctuary runs apparently US$1.5 million per yr.
“These are expenses like grounds maintenance, building maintenance, electricity for all the buildings and wells and tiger pool pumps, phones, insurances, technology updates, and equipment maintenance, to name a few,” the assertion reads.
Read extra:
Jeremy Renner shares haunting 911 name of snowplow accident in emotional 1st TV interview
When Big Cat Rescue had 100 cats, the annual overhead value equated to about $15,000 per animal. Now with solely 41 cats, it reportedly prices the business $36,000 per cat every year.
The assertion claimed the passage of final yr’s federal Big Cat Public Safety Act within the U.S. — which Big Cat Rescue staunchly supported — will cut back the necessity for wild cat rescues. The act made it unlawful to privately personal large cat breeds together with lions, tigers, leopards, cheetahs, jaguars, cougars or any hybrid of such species. The act additionally prohibited cub petting, which sees companies breed child animals for use as picture props by paying clients.
Howard wrote within the assertion that the purpose of Big Cat Rescue has at all times been “to ‘put ourselves out of business,’ meaning that there would be no big cats in need of rescue and no need for the sanctuary to exist.”
The sanctuary couldn’t in good conscience, nonetheless, keep in operation till its inhabitants dwindled to zero, because the Baskins really feel their funds and assets could possibly be higher allotted to saving wild populations from extinction.
“The win-win solution both for our captive cats and the cats in the wild is for us to merge our cat population with the population at another existing accredited sanctuary and devote the remaining resources of our sanctuary to the ‘in situ’ projects being conducted around the world to avoid extinction,” the assertion reads.
Howard wrote {that a} present growth challenge at Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge is anticipated to be accomplished in six months and can present satisfactory area to deal with Big Cat Rescue’s animals.
Baskin and Big Cat Rescue catapulted into the general public eye three years in the past as a part of Netflix’s Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness.
The documentary adopted Joseph Maldonado-Passage, often known as “Joe Exotic,” a former Oklahoma zookeeper. He was convicted of attempting to rent somebody to kill Baskin, who had tried to close him down, accusing the Oklahoma zoo of abusing animals and promoting large cat cubs.
In retaliation, Maldonado-Passage raised questions concerning the disappearance of Baskin’s husband Don Lewis, who vanished mysteriously greater than twenty years in the past. The documentary extensively lined Maldonado-Passage’s repeated accusations that Baskin killed her husband and presumably fed him to her tigers. Baskin, who based Big Cat Rescue, has by no means been charged with any crime and launched a press release refuting the accusations made within the sequence.
Maldonado-Passage was resentenced in 2022 to serve 21 years in jail after he begged the court docket for leniency as he started therapy for prostate most cancers.
— With recordsdata from The Associated Press
© 2023 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
