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Baskin said the law addresses her biggest concerns about the welfare of tigers, panthers, lions and leopards: The proliferation of so-called roadside zoos that bred big cats specifically for profit, inviting tourists to pose with the big cats, pet cubs and even swim with the animals.

These zoos, said Baskins, had minimal government oversight, and owners would breed big cats over and over, removing the cubs from their mothers before they were weaned so customers could pay to pet and pose with them.

“In 2011, when we and our partner organizations began working on the Big Cat Public Safety Act, we counted 56 roadside zoos offering cub petting,” Baskin said. “Of those, about 10 were major breeders. Each of the major breeders had 50 or more tigers typically living in small cages in breeding pairs. It was estimated that collectively they were pumping out over 200 cubs per year for their own use and to sell to the smaller zoos.”

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Additionally, these “zoos,” purporting to be nonprofit, would employ people who had no experience caring for big cats and failed to provide adequate veterinary care.

“The primary source of mistreatment of big cats for decades has been the cub-petting industry,” Baskin said. “The cubs are torn from their mothers at birth, physically punished to diminish their natural behaviors, deprived of sleep and often deprived of food. They can only be used for a few months before they are too dangerous to exploit in this way. If they survive, when discarded, they often end up in back yards or basements in substandard, and sometimes horrible, conditions.”

Under the new law, any contact with the public at roadside zoos is prohibited, eliminating the financial incentive for roadside zookeepers to keep their zoos open, Baskin said.

“This will immediately stop the hundreds of big cats born into lives of deprivation and confinement each year for cub handling,” Baskin said. “For me, this fight for the big cats was never personal. This was always about developing a national policy to shut down the trade in these animals as props in commercial cub-handling operations and as pets in people’s backyards and basements.”

‘Tiger King’ Fame

Baskin’s battle to close down roadside zoos became the subject of the sensational Netflix series, “Tiger King – Murder, Mayhem and Madness,” which aired March 20, 2020.

The series highlighted Baskin’s long-running feud with the flamboyant zookeeper Joe Exotic, whose real name is Joe Maldonado-Passage. Joe Exotic is now serving 22 years in prison in Oklahoma after being convicted of attempting to hire a hit man to kill Carole Baskin and for shooting five tigers at his zoo to make room for tigers shipped to him from Dade City’s Wild Things animal rescue, located just north of Tampa.

The court issued an order to allow PETA to inspect Dade City’s Wild Things, which PETA accused of overbreeding and abusing its animals. Before the inspection, a judge ordered Dade City’s Wild Things not to remove any tigers from the property.

A day after the judge issued that order, however, Wild Things sedated and loaded 19 tigers into a cattle trailer and drove them 1,200 miles to Joe Exotic’s zoo in Oklahoma. A pregnant female tiger gave birth in the trailer and all three of her cubs died.

After being ordered to pay PETA $400,000, Dade City’s Wild Things went out of business in 2020.

Baskin was ultimately awarded ownership of Joe Exotic’s zoo in Oklahoma, Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park, which closed, as well.

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Private Ownership Of Big Cats Raises Issues

Equally disturbing for animal advocates was the number of big cats that were being sold privately around the United States, purchased by people who had no clue how to care for them.

Their owners would leave them confined to basements or tied up in back yards, said Marty Irby, executive director at Animal Wellness Action.

The Big Cat Public Safety Act addressed these concerns, as well.

Private owners have 180 days to register their big cats with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to provide federal oversight. And while private owners are allowed to keep the big cats they already own, the law prohibits further sales of big cats to private citizens.

“Since most private owners already give up their cats to sanctuaries when they reach adulthood, by the age of 5, that means that within five years there will be very few cats languishing in back yards and basements,” Baskin said.

“These private owners are forbidden by the law from breeding or acquiring more cats. The penalties in the law are severe, including up to five years in prison for each violation,” she said. “What this means is that over the next decade almost all of this privately held population of cats will pass away. Within a few years after that, there will be no more cats living in miserable conditions in back yards.”

Targeting Roadside Zoos

Baskin said the new federal law won’t wipe out all roadside zoos.

“There will still be some roadside zoos and circuses which, despite regulation by the USDA, will have cats in conditions we view as inhumane,” she said. “But we believe that the Big Cat Public Safety Act ending the cub petting and phasing out private ownership will eliminate 90 percent of the mistreatment experienced by big cats in captivity. Hopefully the growing public awareness of the plight of big cats will, over time, take away the market for these remaining activities and end them that way. The closing of the Ringling circus is a strong indication that this will happen.”

Already, she said the big cat sanctuaries around the country, like Big Cat Rescue, that were once at capacity, have seen declining populations.

“A few decades ago, we had 200 big cats. And as recently as 2011 when we started working on the BCPSA, we had 119 big cats. Of those, 89 were over 15 years old,” she said. “Now our population has declined to just 41 cats.”

How To Help Big Cat Rescues Animals At New Home

Turpentine Creek sits on 450 acres — compared to the 67 acres Big Cat Rescue has — in an area where expansion is possible and has infrastructure to house its existing 80 big cats.

Big Cat Rescue is helping the refuge to raise the money to build enclosures for Big Cat Rescue’s animals. The total cost of building the enclosures for Big Cat Rescue’s animals at Turpentine Creek is estimated at $1.8 million.

Until the enclosures are completed, possibly by July, Howard Baskin said Big Cat Rescue’s animals will remain in Tampa.

“This consolidation is going to be an enormous financial undertaking by both organizations due to the need to build enclosures,” he said. “The plan is to build out a 13-acre area at Turpentine Creek that will include 22 enclosures for small cats like bobcats and servals. These enclosures will average over 2,000 square feet each. Two enclosures for medium-size cats like leopards and jaguars are planned, and there will be 15 enclosures for big cats like tigers that will average over 20,000 square feet each.”

Although they will no longer be rescuing big cats, Carole, 62, and Howard, who is turning 73 this year, said their mission to save tigers won’t end.

“This is the first step toward saving tigers in the wild from extinction,” Howard said. “Because none of the cats bred for cub petting serve any conservation purpose, when the U.S. asks China and other range states to end tiger farming, they have been able to discredit us by saying that we don’t even know where our countries’ tigers are. That ends now.”

Once all their big cats have been moved to Turpentine Creek, the Baskins said they will sell the Tampa sanctuary property and use the proceeds to fund species-saving projects in the wild.

To donate toward construction of the enclosures at Turpentine Creek, click here.

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