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See how people have imagined life on Mars through history. See More. In the U. While Tiger King explores the world of privately owned tigers in the U. In Canada, there are a patchwork of laws that make it difficult to monitor big cat ownership or know with certainty just how many captive tigers there are in our country. However, once inside the country, there is no one agency or level of government that tracks these tigers and their cubs.
Almost all provinces and cities have laws about who can own an exotic pet or outright bans; however, more systematic oversight is needed. Public encounters with tiger cubs are popular, incredibly lucrative and provide a strong incentive to breed captive tigers to maintain a continuous supply of cubs for entertainment.
After years of enduring unhealthy human contact, confined spaces, poor diets or health issues from inbreeding, these tigers cannot be released into the wild to support population growth.
Captive breeding programs managed by accredited zoos can positively benefit species if they are part of a conservation management plan. Dead tigers have been stuffed or sold off in parts: skins, teeth, claws, and skeletons.
Tentacles of this U. As part of his plea, he admitted to shipping 68 packages of wildlife parts falsely labeled as ceramics and toys to Thailand. Court papers listed items seized from his home, including tiger skulls, teeth, and claws, as well as elephant tusks.
Captive-bred cats in Asia have fed a deadly commerce in tiger products for decades, stimulating demand that drives poaching, says Debbie Banks, a tiger trafficking expert with the U. China is the largest consumer.
Its market in tiger parts for luxury items and for use in traditional medicine drives this deadly trade. We wanted to see tigers in other situations, so we headed to Pennsylvania to meet Brunon Blaszak. We watched him put his five tigers through traditional circus tricks in a rustic, portable enclosure at the Fayette County Fair. It was July, and brutally hot. During our two-plus days at the fair, the cats spent much of their time in five-by-eight-foot travel cages.
We also met people who kept tigers as pets; some seemed to truly love them. One, Oklahoma exotic animal owner Lori Ensign-Scroggins, seemed oblivious to the potential danger of keeping such a large predator.
She walked Langley, her nearly pound ti-liger a cross between a tiger and a lion-tiger mix , on a leash and sometimes took him into her home. Langley had vision problems and walked with a rolling limp, problems most likely caused by hybridization.
In our travels we saw cats kept under conditions that ran the gamut. We saw cats pacing the perimeters of dirty, prison-like cages as well as calm cats in large, lush habitats. Some were beautiful and well cared for. Others bore scars, were skinny or fat, were listless or covered in open sores. Some displayed symptoms of inbreeding or poor nutrition and were crippled, cross-eyed, or deformed. None seemed to be the confident, wide-ranging predator that Panthera tigris evolved to be.
Highly regarded zoos, aquariums, and animal parks— facilities—are accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums AZA , which does not allow public contact with tigers. The AZA—whose members include facilities owned by The Walt Disney Company, the parent company of National Geographic Partners—also allows only purebred tigers to be bred, and only for conservation purposes.
Wildlife specialists say that such policies reflect some of the improvements in the care of exotic animals that have unfolded over the past three decades, as saving species and showing animals in more natural habitats have become priorities. Attractions that breed tigers for commercial purposes, allow cub petting, or both—including some of the roadside zoos and parks we visited—often are not accredited by any organization that sets specific guidelines for exotic animals.
These standards, she says, include no breeding, buying, or selling of animals; prohibiting the public from hands-on contact with them; and providing proper nutrition, care, and a lifetime home. From to , new investigations into captive-animal welfare and safety issues dropped by 92 percent, from to just The department also wrote far fewer citations, issuing 1, in , compared with 4, two years before—a 65 percent drop, according to AWI.
In June the U. Congress told the USDA to reinstate information that had been scrubbed from its website in , which had made it impossible to monitor problem facilities for neglect, abuse, or safety issues that endanger animals and the public.
The department later restored some information, but the reports are heavily redacted. I asked the USDA about this and other issues: Problems counting and tracking tigers; the welfare of cubs that are handled by the public; why venues with decades of serious violations are still licensed; and more. After repeated requests for an interview and a series of email exchanges, the USDA provided a written reply that broadly quoted regulations and offered web links, but gave few specifics.
The department refused my request for an interview and declined to make someone available to address questions. The next time I saw James Garretson, he was on the witness stand in a federal court in Oklahoma City. Garretson had known him for decades and bought cats from him. Exotic Animal Park, which opened in At one time, he claimed to own tigers. Joe Exotic is a showman who loves to talk and craves the spotlight.
At 56, he sports a signature horseshoe mustache and dyed-blond mullet. He once ran cub-petting photo sessions in shopping malls, parking lots, and county fairs across the West and Midwest. He ran for president in , garnering votes, and for Oklahoma governor in , when he got Back home, Joe Exotic was a prolific tiger breeder and dealer. Prosecutors said he falsified tiger birth records that he showed to USDA inspectors to hide the birth and sale of cubs. The living room was sometimes crammed with six or seven playpens for litters of cubs.
He bred white tigers, which often are inbred. They were among the most popular, drawing huge crowds to the zoo. His troubles began soon after the zoo opened two decades ago. The USDA cited him repeatedly for violations of Animal Welfare Act standards: Inspectors documented sick, injured, mistreated animals and unclean, unsafe enclosures contaminated by vermin. Major problems continued: an escaped tiger, a mauled employee, at least 22 cubs that died over an eight- to month period.
Then in came protests over his mall shows, sparked by Carole Baskin, founder of Big Cat Rescue sanctuary in Florida. Mall chains stopped hiring Joe Exotic. Baskin then sued over intellectual property rights and won a million dollars in settlements in It financially devastated Joe Exotic, who took on a business partner to help pay the bills. Garretson decided that was enough. Fish and Wildlife Service, and he signed on as a government informant.
When Glover disappeared with the money, Joe Exotic tried again. This time, the would-be hit man was an undercover FBI agent. Joe Exotic was arrested on two counts of murder for hire in September Glover was never charged.
In April the jury convicted Joe Exotic on 17 wildlife charges two were dropped and the murder-for-hire counts, both felonies. He faces up to 69 years in prison. Under the Endangered Species Act, killing tigers is a misdemeanor.
Joe Exotic insisted that the law was written to apply to wild animals, not those born in a zoo. Environmental crimes prosecutor John Webb characterized it differently. In Illinois corrections officer William Kapp was convicted for his role in shooting 18 tigers and leopards in their cages and brokering the sale of their meat and skins to buyers. The same year, California Department of Fish and Wildlife investigators found some dead animals —mostly tigers, including 58 cubs—in a freezer when they raided the home of John Weinhart, owner of Tiger Rescue, a facility in Colton, California, that billed itself as a sanctuary for animals that had worked in the entertainment industry.
In emails from jail, Joe Exotic questioned why other breeders have not been charged, alleging that they have sold, illegally transported, or killed big cats—and continue to. In the U. But the U. One U. Crowds flocked to see exotic animals from far-flung lands in traveling menageries. By animal trainer Isaac van Amburgh was using tigers in his act, climbing into their cages dressed as a gladiator. He was criticized for his brutality; he was said to have beaten his tigers with a crowbar.
Such dominance training helped embed a notion in the American psyche, Nyhus says, that these dangerous beasts must be subdued by macho trainers.
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