Where the Sand Cats Came From

 

Photo is Jamie with me at WildNet Conference.  These Bird of Paradise flowers were out front of a cafe along the street)

 

Dear Lynn,  During Desert Storm the Saudi government sent some Sand Cats to my friend, Pat Quillen at S.O.S. Care in CA.  Pat travels the world, working with in situ programs and governments in places where no white woman would have the courage to go.  She has been shot at by poachers, exposed to all sorts of challenges, and has done wonderful things to get people in power to see the financial prospects of protecting their wildlife, rather than allowing people to kill the small cats for food or sport.  Up until 9/11 I was supporting her breeding facility so that she could afford to travel the world and set up these important alliances.  She introduced me to contacts in Mexico, Brazil, Costa Rica, Panama and to Dr. Jim Sanderson with the hopes that I could take over for her when she is gone.  She is aged and ailing.  I rely on tourism to support Big Cat Rescue and after 9/11 things have not been the same.  I had to stop providing all of her income and she felt abandoned.  She is civil to me, but I have lost the closeness with her that I once enjoyed.

 

The Saudi government had sent the cats to her because of her great reputation and asked that she protect them until after the war.  The soldiers were using them for target practice and they had been wiped out of every other country in the region, except for Saudi Arabia.  After the war she offered to send them and all of their offspring back.  The Saudi government said they had never been able to breed these cats in captivity and requested that she keep them here, build their numbers, put them into the Species Survival Plan (SSP) that is the only real conservation breeding plan and is administered only in AZA zoos.  They did this in case they are ever fully wiped out in the wild, so that they can once again populate areas once they are safer.

 

Almost all of the Sand Cats in U.S. zoos are from this group that Pat brought in.  She sent five of them to us in case anything ever happened to her place.  Last year wildfires burned her facility to the ground.  Fortunately she was able to get all of the cats to safety and last I heard from her she had rebuilt all of her cages and was looking for a RV to live in next to them.  She only breeds small cats and she only breeds cats that are recommended by the Felid Taxon Advisory Group.  (Felid TAG).

 

The Felid TAG looks at the pedigree of the cat to see if it can be traced back to the wild.  They look at how many specimens are available in the U.S. or participating zoos around the world to see if there are a viable number to be able to successfully breed the cat in captivity without causing too much inbreeding.  I worked with the Felid TAG to help them determine just how many of each cat specie there are in captivity that is viable for breeding and how much cage space is available in the accredited zoos and sanctuaries to allow for the optimum breeding.

 

Horseshoe Creek claims to have bred 72 Asian leopards for conservation purposes, but the Felid TAG only recommends the breeding of Amur Leopards that can be traced back to the wild by their pedigrees.  There is no Asian Leopard conservation breeding program and no SSP for Asian or African Leopards.  Leopards are bred and sold for only five reasons:  Pets, Circus Acts, Roadside Zoos, Photo Ops/Parties as cubs and Canned Hunts.  The bottom line is that they are bred into a miserable life in captivity because people will pay money for them.  We had to turn away 49 leopards last year and that number doubles every year.

 

Tabby Tigers and Ligers are not pure bred cats, and in the case of the Tabbies are highly inbred.  It is because the zoos caved into pressure by the public to see white tigers that they were ever bred or displayed in zoos and the result was that there is not one pure bred Bengal tiger in the U.S. left for real co