News/opinion article: The news is that Joe Exotic (real name: Joseph Maldonado-Passage) has been sentenced to 22 years in jail for abusing big cats and trying to hire a hit man to kill Carole Baskin the CEO and founder of Big Cat Rescue (BCR) – conspiracy to murder.
He was planning to kill her about two and half years ago because she does a lot of good for the welfare of captive big and small wild cats in America where there are many private zoos and commercial enterprises which exploit these animals. Carole rescues the cats from exploitative businesses.
The big cat abusers want to stop animal advocates like Carole Baskin because they get in the way of their abuses and profits. Despite Joe Exotic’s imprisonment, she is concerned that these people are still out there trying to stop her. She is still looking over her shoulder and she can’t let her guard down.
Baskin believes that there are dangerous and smart individuals in the US who want her removed as she is a powerful animal advocate.
We are told in a Fox13 video of an interview with Carole Baskin and her husband that big cat abuses by Joe Exotic included shooting five healthy tigers in the head to make room for five more and the selling of big cat cubs all over the country for commercial reasons. They are unspecified in the news report but they probably include roadside tiger cub photo studios where the public can be photographed with a cub torn from their mother.
I can recall some of the stories of tiger rescues by BCR. These are often tigers from private zoos in America where the cat has been severely neglected because the owner fancied a tiger but had no idea of the enormous cost and effort needed to maintain one. BCR picks up the pieces.
When I last checked several years ago it was reported that there were over 5,000 tigers in private zoos in America. This is far more than the total number of remaining tigers in the wild on the planet. Humans have degraded themselves and the tigers to the point where there are more captive tigers in one country than wild ones. The regulations regarding private zoos – which are little more than self-indulgent hobbies by obsessed American men who want a tiger as a pet – must be very lax. They appear to be nearly unregulated.
Joe Exotic kept 176 tigers at one stage and 1,200 more animals including primates. Now that he is banged up his menagerie is being managed by another abuser as far as I know.
It is as if Carole Baskin is fighting all the big cat abusers of America but the state is doing very little about it.
I am just pleased that Carole feels more secure with Joe Exotic out of the way but he was the dumb one. There are smarter men on the loose who hate her.
They have criticised her for running a scam organisation. She does not. They just want to undermine her and in Joe’s case remove her permanently from the rescue of large wild cats.
SOME MORE ON CAROLE BASKIN:
