“Since 1990, there have been more than 600 attacks by big cats on the public in the United States. There are an estimated 20,000 big cats being kept in captivity in backyards and in basements across the United States. It’s a huge public safety issue, and an issue that really touches a lot of people .”
Captive tigers in the US now outnumber those in the wild. It’s a problem.
A two-year investigation by veteran conservation journalist Sharon Guynup and wildlife photographer Steve Winter anchors the December edition of National Geographic — the story is already online on NatGeo’s main website — and it makes for sobering reading.
The investigation found rampant criminal behaviour, wildlife trafficking and — no surprise here — a casual and almost purposeful lack of animal-welfare standards by the USDA under the present US administration.
A bill, the self-explanatory Big Cat Safety Act, has been introduced into both houses of the US Congress where, if recent form holds, the Democrat majority in Congress will pass it, after which it will die a quick death in the Republican dominated Senate or, and this seems more likely, be left unattended, ignored and unsigned, where it will die a slow and deliberate death from neglect.
Death from neglect is common in the captive tiger trade. Some are in roadside zoos. Some are pets. Many are abused. The lack of regulation surrounding big cats is putting both the animals and humans at risk.
Guynup’s story features any number of harrowing first-person tales, along with the occasional success story — “Donner,” for example, one of the lucky few, rescued from a breeding and cub petting facility in Colorado who’s now thriving at a big cat sanctuary in Eureka Springs, Ark. Guynup’s exposé reveals the ugly truth behind so-called “roadside attractions,” where tiger cubs are proferred for bottle feeding, petting and photo ops — and then discarded or put down when they get too big to handle. More than a few of these roadside attractions are nonprofts that masquerade as rescue sanctuaries. (Genuine sanctuaries are easy enough to find; they’re listed by the Big Cat Sanctuary Alliance at https://bigcatalliance.org.)
Roadside attractions have nothing to do with conservation, no matter how slickly they present themselves: Not one captive-bred tiger has been successfully released back into the wild, Winter and Guynup note. Ever. Anywhere.
The reason is obvious, though easy enough to ignore for anyone with profits on their mind: Predators in the wild learn the life skills needed to survive from their mothers; it’s not something that can be taught later in life, or picked up “by instinct.”
“The Endangered Species Act does prohibit import of a number of species, obviously,”
Cornell animal policy expert and advisor to the US cable channel Animal Planet told reporters at a recent conference in Los Angeles. “Unfortunately, in the States, we have weak regulation. There's no federal law. It's governed by the states. And across the states, there are nine states that have no regulations at all. There are 12 states where it only requires a nominal permit or license, which is very easy to get. And in those 21 states, it's literally easier to get a tiger than it is to get a driver's licence.”
Many private owners of exotic pets mean well, Martel added, but it’s not enough.
“I'd like to say, from my own experience and research, I've seen that people love these animals. Whether it's healthy or not, they do love them. But they make the mistake of thinking that the animals love them the same way in return when in fact this is a need that people have of animals and obviously not that the animals have.”
Gainsville, Florida herpetologist Winston Card, an advisor to the Animal Planet program Fatal Attractions, about people who keep exotic animals as pets, says the subculture, as he calls it, is growing.
“It’s growing exponentially, here in the United States and in other countries around the world, because the world is such a small place now,” Card told the conference. “So while this used to be, 20 years ago, a very small group of people, there are now an enormous number of people who are keeping venomous snakes in their home, chimpanzees, big cats, and the public is not really aware of how big a problem, at least in my opinion, this has become.
“There’s a certain psychological profile of those people who continue to keep these animals. Some people base-jump off of bridges, some people surf extreme waves and some people keep dangerous, exotic animals. It's first about your ego. You need to satisfy that component of your ego.
“The problem is, when you jump off a bridge with a parachute on your back, and the parachute doesn't open, you're the only one that suffers the consequences. If something happens with one of these animals, the effects reverberate and touch a lot of people.”
Tiger, tiger, burning bright, in the forests of the night — where they should be, not in somebody’s back yard.
©Dean Moriarty-Pixabay