7 Tigers Get a 3rd Chance

Today I’d like to tell you about seven tigers who are getting a third chance at life thanks to you.  In 1996 a couple was lured into a tiger breeding facility where the owner had convinced herself and those who visited that she was breeding tigers for the purpose of saving them from extinction.  There are no legitimate breeding programs sending tigers back to the wild and no reason to breed tigers in captivity as they breed very easily and their populations bounce right back as soon as they have protected forests with plentiful food.  This couple took several photos of themselves with the cubs back in 1996 but I don’t know if they had any ongoing contact with the facility.

 

By 2003 the breeder was in way over her head and had somewhere between 24 and 50 tigers living in filthy, over crowded conditions.  No one cared or did anything about it until a tiger was shot roaming the neighborhood.  Wild Animal Orphanage agreed to take the tigers and the International Fund for Animal Welfare agreed to help fund the transportation.  24 tigers went to WAO in 2003.  I don’t know why news reports listed 50 tigers, what happened to them, or if they just didn’t know how many were there.  The problem is that no one tracks tigers.

 

Fast forward to 2010 and the Wild Animal Orphanage’s board, led by the daughter of the husband and wife founders (Carol Asvestas),  decided to throw her parents off the property and off the payroll.  There were allegations of fraud, and the Attorney General was involved, but I don’t know the details.  By the fall of 2010 the board decided they were not going to be able to keep the facility going and they contacted the Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries to help them place 400 animals, mostly tigers and primates.  We agreed to take all of the bobcats, lynx and cougars, but they had already sent the bobcats and lynx elsewhere and only had 4 cougars.

 

Jamie and Justin drove to San Antonio to see about picking up the cougars and were turned away by the staff who said that they didn’t want to get involved in “politics.”  Whatever that meant.  The number of cats there varied wildly.  Staff originally told us there were 200 tigers, then they said there were 75 tigers then 50 something.  The facility went into bankruptcy and WAO dissolved and there have been many lawsuits and counter suits and now there are two or three women and a man who are taking care of 200 primates and the remaining 28 tigers.

 

Meanwhile, the couple who had taken photos of the cubs back in 1996 had set out on a quest to find the tigers they had known so many years ago.  They knew the tigers had gone to WAO and knew WAO was in trouble.  They wanted to make sure that these tigers didn’t end up being bounced around from failing facility to failing facility...or worse.  In their research they discovered that Big Cat Rescue and the International Exotic Feline Sanctuary in TX were the only accredited sanctuaries that house tigers.  The husband, who wishes to remain anonymous, came to Big Cat Rescue last month to check us out.

 

I gave him a tour and found him to be very knowledgeable about the the plight of captive cats.  He told me that they were trying to find the cats they knew, but were having trouble getting anyone to return their calls.  

 

(This paragraph is from the future ((7/10/2021)) because it was pretty funny, but probably not recorded anywhere)  The man had scheduled a $700 Founder Tour, but I had been called away and my husband offered to take the tour.  The man insisted it had to be Carole Baskin.  That made people nervous because animal abusers had made many threats against my life and this guy was acting pretty sketchy.  I managed to rearrange my schedule to meet with him and the volunteers sequestered him in the backyard tour waiting area, so I could get a look at him to see if he was a known threat.  He looked to be about 80 years old, tall, thin and frail, so I decided that if he was an assas