Carole Baskin Of Big Cat Rescue On How Tiger King Both Helped & Hindered Her Quest To Help Ban The Private Possession Of Big Cats

I had the distinct pleasure of talking to Carole Baskin. Carole is Founder and CEO of Big Cat Rescue, one of the largest sanctuaries devoted exclusively to big cats that is accredited by the Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries. In addition to rescuing and providing outstanding care for big cats, the sanctuary is devoted to ending the suffering these animals are subjected to in captivity. Under Carole’s guidance the sanctuary was a leading force behind the passage of the federal Big Cat Public Safety Act 12/20/2022, has conducted litigation against big cat exploiters, and is a pioneer in developing virtual reality big cat experiences that will disrupt the industry by making exhibiting big cats in cages obsolete. More about the ideas we discussed for saving wildcats in the wild is at https://bigcatrescue.org/earth/

Carole, thanks so much for taking the time to talk with us. Our readers would love to get to know a bit about your background and your childhood backstory. Can you share with us the story of how you grew up?

When I was probably eight or nine years old, I discovered that domestic cats and kittens were being killed in animal shelters due to overpopulation. I made it my life’s mission that I would have to fix that. I remember back then it was something like 4.5 million cats, and kittens were being killed in the U.S. Every year. So I thought, man, I have got to be rich if I’m going to fix that. And so I was out there selling popcorn and gathered all the neighborhood kids to wash cars. We lived in mobile home parks, and we would wash their trailers and mow the grass and anything to raise money because I knew I wanted to help cats.

It wasn’t until I was 17 that I got involved with rescuing bobcats that had been hit by a car or shot by a hunter. These are cats that were born in the wild. I could fix them and send them back to the wild, and I loved doing that. I still love doing that.

But in my 30s, after I had built up a substantial real estate business and had the money to make a difference in the world, I learned about how these captive-born Bobcats and Lynx were being raised on farms for their fur. So we rescued a bobcat from an auction that was going to be killed by a taxidermist there. That led us to the fur farms the following year, and we rescued 56 lynxes off of one farm the first year, 28 the next, And 22 the following year. That got all of the cats out of the fur farms in the United States, but people started to call me and say, Hey, would you take my lion? Would you take my tiger? And I thought, what on Earth are people doing with lions and tigers? This is crazy. So I decided to end the fur trade by emptying the fur farms. We finally did end the fur trade in 2016, but it took a lot longer than just buying the cats out. The same thing with the big cats. I said I could fix this. Nobody should have lions or tigers in their backyards. And so we started working in the 90s on legislation to ban big cats’ private ownership, which finally passed this year in December. So I’m excited about that. That’s my whole life in a nutshell.

It’s a great story, and you told it so well. You probably have a lot of fascinating anecdotes and stories from over the years. Part of it has become well known through Tiger King. Can you share with us some of the most exciting stories that have happened since you began these initiatives?

Wow. Yeah, there are so many, and they’re so varied.

Most of the complicated things I have been involved in as far as physically stressful have been the rehab and release of animals. When a bobcat is injured, it will still fight to the death. There’s nothing on this planet as challenging as a bobcat. They do not want anything to do with people if they’re injured. There have been times when I’ve chased them through the woods and creeks and into alligator-filled ponds. My daughter has done the same thing with me since she was 12 years old. She’s the tracker and the rehabber here at the sanctuary. So those kinds of things just come with that level of danger involved.

The people are the most dangerous in the captive-bred big cat world. You may have seen those are some crazy people who have no respect for the lives of animals or people. There have been many people who know about Joe Exotic’s threats against me from Tiger King. But people have been threatening to kill me for decades; Joe has been threatening to kill me for decades. People only knew about the most recent stuff. Everywhere I go, I have to always be with my head on a swivel to make sure that I’m in as safe an environment as I possibly can be. You never know when they’re going to do something crazy to your vehicle or to people that you love.

One incident that comes to mind was when my daughter was taking our interns over to Disney world for a day out. Somebody had cut the valve stems on the van we were transporting them in. So that once the van got up to high speeds on the interstate, all the tires would blow. Two of them did blow out, and it was just miraculous that she could keep the thing right side up with all of our people in it.

They did the same thing to our rescue trailer tires. They’ve done a lot of vandalism. We have signs around town. They spray paint the signs with vulgar statements on them.

After Tiger King and Covid, we shut down to the public because I was so concerned that somebody would come onto the property and try to harm the animals or the people there.

We still haven’t opened back up, and it’s costing us over a million dollars a year in lost revenue by not being able to be open to the public. We only ever had about 27,000 visitors a year compared to our local zoo, which has over a million visitors a year. There were so many people after Tiger King who wanted to come out and see the place. But because of my fear of just one wrong person getting on the property, we couldn’t do that.

Then, later, we discovered that Covid could kill cats. And so we couldn’t let people on for that reason as well.

There are so many different causes and so many endangered animals. Can you help our readers understand why you made cats your calling?

They called me. I didn’t set out to do this. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. When it came to rescuing that first cat from the taxidermist and then ending up with that fur farm and finding out they were going to kill all the cats there. I didn’t know I was going to a fur farm when that happened.

Also, I think I owe an awful lot of this to my naivete that I think I can fix anything. I was not prepared for the fact that it would take 30 years to fix it.

But even if I had done this strategically, I would have chosen cats to help save the planet because I don’t think people will ever save the wild places we need for clean air and clean water and all of nature to be able to survive. They’re not going to do that based on trees or plant life. So it’s got to be some charismatic creature in the woods that we want to protect so badly that we will sacrifice our way of life and our wants and needs. Cats are the best representatives for being able to do that. People may not care about saving the oceans to save the salmon, but they’ll do it for the whales because they’re charismatic and big. So we must keep the plight of these big cats in the eye of the public so that they do make the connection between a healthy planet and having these animals in the wild where they belong.

It has been said that our mistakes can sometimes be our greatest teachers. Do you have a story of a mistake you made when you first started and the lesson you learned from it?

I’ll tell you what my people always remind me of as one of my biggest mistakes.

I once asked our vet why it is that the cats so frequently die from cancer. She said it because they’re obligate carnivores. People could choose whether they eat vegetables or eat animals. And the people who eat more animals die more frequently from cancer. In the case of cats, they don’t have any choice. Dogs can eat vegetables, but cats can’t, so they have to eat the meat-causing cancer.

It’s not that the meat itself causes cancer; it’s how we farm them with factory farming. The hormones, antibiotics that are injected into the animals, and all of the horrible ways these animals are overcrowded and kept; all of those things lead to cats dying from cancer from eating them.

So I decided I was going to raise free-range chickens. I was going to let them have big open fields, and they would have this wonderful life up until the end when we would slaughter them and feed them to the cats. And there were going to be no antibiotics because they weren’t going to be overcrowded, and there were going to be no hormones because they were going to grow the way they should, not the way these farms do it.

I got these chickens from the egg industry. So all of the little male chicks that are born, they just run those live chickens through grinders to get rid of them. I found that we could pick them up alive and we could take all those little male chickens and we could raise them out in the field.

They had these beautiful areas where they could run, play, and be chickens.

But I discovered that when you’re not pumping them all full of hormones, they are nothing like the chickens you see on farms. They’re not these short fat little balls of meat. They are tall, lean, beautifully feathered, and have fabulous feathers. They’re primarily feathers because they’re birds, and they fly, and that’s what birds are supposed to be.

But when you feed those to the cat, they’re just getting a lot of feathers and no meat. And so I found that there was no way I could raise enough chickens to feed those cats, and I had to give up on the project.

And so everybody, and every time I come up with some wild idea, they’re all like, “remember the chickens!”

Beautiful. Can you share with our readers three things that the community, society, or our government can do to address the root of the problem you’re trying to solve?

They’re all related. The only way that we will save the wild is if that is the only way to see a big cat; in the wild. Then those become the theaters where these animals can live and breed and do their part in nature. When you take a group of tourists into the forest to follow a tiger through the woods. It’s fascinating for the people that do it. But for the tiger, it’s a huge hassle being surrounded by people in jeeps. They can’t do what they need to do, and they can’t sneak up on anything because they have a whole trail of people following them.

So I think the way that we need to handle that is to install 360-degree cameras in the places where we know these fantastic, charismatic cats live and frequent their den sites, The places where they go down to the watering hole, their favorite hunting fields and have those all streaming into headsets all around the world under a subscription fee just like you pay for Netflix or Hulu. You come home at night, put on your headset, look at a heat map of where there’s been activity, and say, okay, camera 27 over there, there’s something going on there. Let me go. And because there are 360-degree cameras as you are looking around, you’re seeing the entire theater of what’s going on there, The hunting and the breeding and the raising of the cubs and all of that. That is so much more educational than seeing an animal languishing in a cage.

Also, we get there by the public not going to places that keep cats in cages, demanding more of these opportunities from their zoos. Imagine the zoos not only having the headset but they immerse you in that entire environment. Once you put the headset on, they’re blowing cold air on you if you’re in the Himalayan mountains looking at snow leopards. Or it’s swelteringly humid if you’re in the Indian forest, and you get that full sensory feeling of being there. I think zoos can remake themselves in that way, but it won’t be until the public demands that.

The government fits into that by protecting more natural areas for the animals, keeping people out of the forest where these animals live, and having much stiffer penalties for poaching and the things that are wiping them out.

That’s a brilliant idea. Have you been in touch with anyone from a VR or AR company to create this idea?

Actually, right before Covid came, we opened the world’s 1st and 2nd augmented reality zoos. We showed people the prototypes for this, and everybody was excited about it. And then Covid came, and you couldn’t be putting headsets on people and putting it on the next person because of the germ transfer. So we weren’t able to do that, but we continue to have around 40 live webcams here at the sanctuary that people can watch.

They’re not 360 cameras; those are super expensive right now. But those do exist. And just like everything, the prices will decrease for those if it is more in demand. So it’s doable.

There’s a company called explore.org. They have cameras in the wild, like an eagle nest with the eagle hatching their eggs, underwater with sharks, or out in the streams where bears hunt for fish so people can watch the animals in the wild. It’s hugely popular. They do it for free. But it could be monetized where that money goes straight into conservation via cryptocurrency.

You bypass corrupt governments with cryptocurrency. Can you imagine the money from those subscriptions going directly into the pockets of the people who live around these areas? That way, they have the lifestyle they need to support their family without going and cutting down the trees in the forest to burn them for heat. They can go out there and take care of the cameras, making sure they’re clean. Because the cats pee on them, lick them and do all kinds of things that mess up your view. So you need somebody going out there and ensuring those things stay clean. And there are always jobs to be made and jobs to be had when dealing with the internet because it breaks down and has issues. And so this protects the forest and the people around those natural places, some of the poorest people on the planet.

Okay, wonderful. If it’s okay, can I ask a question about Tiger King? I know you weren’t crazy about its production, but why do you think it was so popular? Why do you think it captured everyone’s imagination? It became like this phenomenon, like a cultural monument.

There were a couple of things involved. One was Tiger King came out five days after the Covid lockdown. And so everybody panicked. It was our first time locked in our homes because of a pandemic. And we were all looking for some way to escape. And it was about the most escapist film you could imagine. It didn’t have much truth. So it gave people something so wild that they could disappear into that.

I’ve often wondered why Joe Exotic became such a cultural icon that people wanted to support him and wanted to get him out of jail. He was killing tigers; he was trying to kill me. So why would people rally behind this guy?

And it’s because he was saying whatever came into his head. I think all of us sometimes wish, maybe all the time, that we could say whatever is on our minds. But we have to be polite because we’re in a culture where we have to fit in and deal with each other, whereas he didn’t have any filters. And so I think that that made him very appealing to everybody’s inner three-year-old who wants to throw a tantrum and say or do whatever they want to.

Do you feel that ultimately, when all is said and done, Tiger King had a net positive effect on bringing more awareness to the plight of big cats?

Yeah, it was a double-edged sword. People ask me, did Tiger King help you pass the bill?

I’ve been working on this bill since 1998. And so after Tiger King came out and everybody in the world thought I had killed my husband, how will that help me go into Congress and ask them to press this bill? I didn’t think I could even get an audience with them because of the things being said about me. So, it harmed us the first year after it came out. We were so close to passing it in 2020. We passed the House in December and just needed to get it through the Senate, but we only had three weeks left in the Senate, and the people who were opposed to it in the Senate decided to call it “The Tiger King Bill,” which nobody wanted to be associated with. And so it died, and we had to start all over again in 2021.

But then Tiger King 2 came out saying that my husband Don Lewis is not dead and that I didn’t kill him. He’s down in Costa Rica, and he’s running a brothel down there with underage children. When that came out, people realized I wasn’t the murderer I had been portrayed as. Then I had that celebrity status from having just been in the film. So when I called on members of Congress, I could get an audience with them, which was not something I could do before. I could get an audience with my Senator, my Representative. But if I wanted to talk to somebody from California, Wisconsin, or any other state, they’d say, “you’re not a voter here; we don’t wanna hear what you have to say.” But because of Tiger King, I’d be going in and saying, “hey, you want to do selfies with your staff?” And they’d be like, “yeah .”I’d say, “you want to hear about big cats while I’m in there?” Sure, whatever you want to talk about. So they allowed me to talk about it. Before Tiger King, I wouldn’t have been able to talk to them one-on-one. So I think it did help in that respect.

That’s beautiful. This is our final question. So, Carole, because of the platform you’ve created and all the great work you’re doing, you’re a person of significant influence. If you could inspire a movement that will bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can inspire.

People should not frequent places that exhibit wild animals, mainly because of what that does to our children. For 200 years, people have taken their kids to zoos, and they’ve called it conservation, and they’ve called it education. But if you think about it, what you’ve taught your children over these past 200 years is that it’s okay to take away the freedom of others on this planet just because they’re different from you. Caging and depriving another creature is okay because it suits you for some reason. And that’s about the worst message we can teach a child. It’s no wonder that, as adults, we mistreat each other because we were all raised thinking it’s okay to do that to animals.

Wow. So, would you feel the same way about pets like domestic cats and domestic dogs?

I don’t know anything about dogs, but I don’t feel that way about cats. I’m kind of conflicted about that because your house cat would prefer that you let them come and go from the house as they please. But that’s not a good idea if you live anywhere near traffic. My cats have to live in the house, and they would much rather be able to come and go. But to be safe and healthy, they must live in my house. So I’m still okay with cats and presumably dogs. It’s because about 10,000 years of domestication have gone into them. But that has not happened with the large cats.

That’s great. How can our readers continue to support your work and follow your work online or any other way on every social channel?

All you have to look for is Big Cat Rescue, and you will find us.

So what can we do to help?

I think being the voice for the animals is the most important thing. One of the things that makes me so angry is that every time I tell somebody that I work at Big Cat Rescue, the first thing they do is flip out their pictures or their phone full of these pictures of them petting cubs and petting tigers and thinking that somehow that shows that they loved these animals. But that was what was causing all of this abuse. And that’s what’s causing their extinction.

So when people are on social media posing with a baby wild animal, it’s never a good thing. It’s always because they rip that baby away from the mother. They use it for whatever time they can before it can tear a finger off the person doing the posing, and then they dump the animals because they can only use babies. So when you see those kinds of photos or videos or these people act like they have some relationship with these animals, they’re always just juveniles. Once they reach five years old, they will kill you. So that’s when they get rid of them and get a new baby to show off. So if you see people doing that kind of stuff, call them out for it and don’t share those things, don’t like them. Don’t promote that kind of abuse because it is always abuse.

Thank you so much for your time. It’s been a very inspirational, enlightening, and educational talk. I learned a tremendous amount, and I wish you continued success and blessings in your work.