Tiger King’s Carole Baskin Has Been Stopped By The Federal Government
Tiger King's Carole Baskin is shutting down her Big Cat Rescue Sanctuary.
If Netflix’s Tiger King has inspired you to go out and take in as many big cats as you can or moving in next door to Carole Baskin for some free pets, you may be too late. The star of the series that took over the quarantined world in 2020 has now announced they are shutting down Big Cat Rescue Sanctuary in Tampa, Florida, and moving to a cheaper and more manageable property in Arkansas, according to Deadline. The reality star and passionate big cat savior also revealed that the government passing the Big Cat Public Safety Act may have ended their need to continue doing what they do.
According to the report, Big Cat Rescue has entered into an agreement with Turpentine Creek Wildlife in Arkansas, an accredited sanctuary, where they will move their animals to care for them for the rest of their lives. Her husband, Howard Baskin, also revealed that they would be selling the former location of Big Cat Rescue in Tampa once all the animals are moved and will be using the proceeds to provide additional care for the animals. He also went on to say that the move to Turpentine Creek Wildlife will offer them the opportunity to not only provide more extended enclosures at a lower price but will also free up resources they can then use to donate to other projects that will work to prevent the extinction of big cats.
Tiger King‘s Carole Baskin and her husband continued in the statement that the passage of the Big Cat Public Safety Act leads them to believe that the need for their work to rescue big cats will decline over the next decade. The BCPSA puts an end to the abusive use of tiger cubs and other big cat cubs for petting and photo ops and phases out private ownership of big cats by unlicensed owners who keep them as pets in what are typically miserable conditions in backyards or worse. The statement goes on to say that had the bill not passed and they still saw the need for their work to continue in the long term, they would be making a different decision.
Before the release of Tiger King on Netflix, Carole Baskin bred show cats herself before realizing the danger and the damage caused to the animals, that realization led to her and her husband, Joe Lewis, to found Wildlife on Easy Street in 1992. The disappearance of Lewis in 1997 led to her renaming the sanctuary, Big Cat Rescue, and her social media channels, The Cat Chat, to promote activism against private zoos.
Her activism put her in direct conflict with Joe Exotic, owner of Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park in Wynnewood, Oklahoma, which ended up being the primary focus of the series on Netflix. While Tiger King may have made Carole Baskin a household name (and even the subject of a TikTok craze), the better outcome revolves around the focus it gave to her goal of rescuing big cats. Now we can get moving forward on that rumored Nic Cage appearance as Joe Exotic.
