For-profit zoos are trying to make money showing animals to the public. GFAS-accredited sanctuaries such as Big Cat Rescue and for-profit zoos have fundamentally different missions. True sanctuaries like Big Cat Rescue exist to put themselves out of business Sanctuaries like Big Cat Rescue exist because of people like Joe Exotic, according to MacCormack. Lis Gallant, a volcanologist at the University of South Florida who went on a tour of Big Cat Rescue in 2014, said that Carol Baskin spoke candidly at the time about her early exotic-cat-breeding efforts and how the sanctuary moved away from breeding once they learned more about the problems it creates. Baskin says she made "horrible mistakes" early on. Big Cat Rescue has an extensive history page devoted to how Baskin and Lewis used to buy, sell, and breed exotic cats, and how the sanctuary allowed visitors to pet animals up until 2003. Baskin even made a home video about how to care for exotic cats as pets.īut this is hardly a secret. It may be an award-winning sanctuary today, but as the third episode of "Tiger King" shows, Baskin and her late husband, Don Lewis, were exotic-cat collectors in the '90s. The show makes one other criticism of Big Cat Rescue: its history. "There are people out there who would love to be involved in the efforts of assisting at ethical big cat sanctuaries but are incapable of doing so because they have fiscal burdens and responsibilities," Williams said in an email.īaskin used to breed and sell exotic cats - and says she made 'horrible mistakes' Tyus Williams, a carnivore ecologist, said that while volunteering is laudable, relying exclusively on volunteers excludes those with less financial freedom from participating. Animals deserve expert care, not free care." "Most of us in the animal care field have a four-year degree and years of practical experience. "Volunteers are vital to nonprofits, but I do have issues with the way Carole uses them exclusively," Jake Belair, an animal keeper at the Nashville Zoo, told Insider in an email. While it's not uncommon for a nonprofit to use volunteers - which doesn't necessarily imply exploitation, as Exotic suggests in "Tiger King" when he says Baskin "brainwashed" people into working at her sanctuary without pay - some sources who spoke with Insider said they were still uncomfortable with it. The largest is over two acres, far exceeding the GFAS's minimum requirements.Īccording to Baskin, the sanctuary has more than 100 volunteers who help take care of the animals. ![]() (Baskin declined to be interviewed for this story.) Taylor says these enclosures are for small cats, such as bobcats and servals.įor bigger cats, like tigers, enclosures at Big Cat Rescue can be much larger, said Taylor, whose organization last year conducted an audit of Baskin's sanctuary. In reality, Big Cat Rescue's smallest enclosures are 1,200 square feet, according to a post Baskin published on the sanctuary's website. Valerie Taylor, the executive director of GFAS, said that, to her, it looked as if all of the animal filming at Big Cat Rescue was done "in front of temporary or feeding enclosures" that jut out around the edges of habitats. One of the most misleading things about the portrayal of Big Cat Rescue in "Tiger King" is its presentation of those cages, which look appallingly small in the few glimpses we get, including a memorable shot of a cat eating in a tiny part of a much larger enclosure that Joe Exotic claims is the entire enclosure. ![]() "They were both, you know, taking advantage of exotic animals to make money."īut while Baskin bought, bred, and sold exotic cats decades ago, conservationists and animal-welfare advocates say there is a world of difference between how animals live at Big Cat Rescue, a nonprofit animal sanctuary accredited by the Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries (GFAS), and how they were treated at the Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park, the zoo Joe Exotic ran before he was sent to prison after being convicted in a murder-for-hire plot to kill Baskin. ![]() "In my opinion, Carole Baskin was just as bad as Joe," Kirkham, a recurring figure in the series, says in the opening episode. It's a viewpoint articulated early on by reality-TV producer Rick Kirkham and reinforced by Baskin's portrayal throughout the seven-part series. If you've watched " Tiger King," Netflix's docuseries about the lives of America's most infamous tiger breeders, you might come away thinking the big-cat sanctuary run by Joe Exotic's archnemesis, Carole Baskin, isn't all that different from Exotic's zoo, where, as depicted in the series, tigers are crammed together into small cages, fed expired Walmart meat, and routinely manhandled by the zoo's staff and hordes of visitors. Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders.
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