Carole Baskin Founder of Big Cat Rescue

Carole Baskin  Tampa, FL  MakeADifference@bigcatrescue.org

Carole Baskin is the founder and CEO of Big Cat Rescue, the world’s largest accredited rescue facility for exotic cats. She and her family volunteer for Big Cat Rescue as unpaid staff and have 100+ volunteers and a dozen interns from around the world. She has run this Tampa based non profit since 1992 and you may have seen Big Cat Rescue on CNN, Animal Planet, Discovery, People Magazine, The Today Show, Sports Illustrated, all of the local media outlets and many more national and international programs. She has been asked to provide lectures in Costa Rica, Mexico, Panama, Brazil, and Australia, as well as countless cities across the U.S. She has lectured on cage construction, legislative affairs, and sanctuary standards in Universities, Law Colleges, and in numerous animal association conferences.

She has successfully rehabbed and released a number of bobcats and other native animals. Big Cat Rescue is accredited by The Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries, and Carole Baskin served as a past President of, The Association of Sanctuaries (a national accrediting body that later folded into GFAS and is to sanctuaries what the American Zoological Association is to zoos.

She serves on the board of the Humane USA PAC and has been the legal liaison to the Captive Wild Animal Protection Coalition, and responsible for representing The Association of Sanctuaries at their meetings. She supplies CWAPC with all of the current data on exotic cat issues, including the numbers being displaced, the maulings, escapes and killings of both the public and the cats involved. She scans the media daily for news regarding exotic cats and reports to some 300 people of three different groups with the daily headlines.

In 2005 she was appointed by Hillsborough County Commissioner Brian Blair as a member of the Animal Advisory Committee to assist Animal Services in their service to the Hillsborough County Board of County Commissioners and was unanimously elected as Chairperson the following year. Big Cat Rescue is a member of the International Tiger Coalition, Florida Association of the Restoration of Ethics, a member of the Tampa Chamber of Commerce, the Upper Tampa Bay Chamber of Commerce, The Tampabay Visitors and Convention Bureau, and many other animal welfare groups.

Big Cat Rescue assists other accredited sanctuaries by helping them build cages, train their volunteers and they lend their people and resources to help them recover from natural and man made disasters. Big Cat Rescue is licensed by and in good standing with FWC, USFWS, USDA and is registered with the state of Florida as a charity.

Big Cat Rescue’s founder, Carole Baskin, is elected to serve on Humane USA’s board of directors.

The Chief Executive Officer of the Humane Society of the United States, Wayne Pacelle and the President of The Fund for Animals, Mike Markarian, who are founding members of the Humane USA Political Action Campaign, nominated Carole Baskin to the board of directors and she was unanimously elected on August 9, 2005.

Formed in late 1999, Humane USA is the nation’s first major political action committee devoted to the task of electing humane-minded candidates to public office at the federal and state levels.

Humane USA has been formed by leaders of major animal protection organizations, including The Humane Society of the United States , The Fund for Animals, Farm Sanctuary, ASPCA, Doris Day Animal League, Animal Welfare Institute, The Ark Trust, Animal Rights Foundation of Florida, and others. Its board of directors, advisory board, and advisors are top grassroots and national animal protection leaders.

Strong animal protection laws are produced by humane-minded elected officials, and the best way to secure a large crop of animal friendly legislators is to support them during their election campaigns. Humane USA distributes hundreds of thousands of dollars each year to ensure the success of humane-minded politicians.

Because of their charitable status with the Internal Revenue Service, other animal protection groups – such as Big Cat Rescue – are legally barred from endorsing candidates. Humane USA is the only national animal protection group that is allowed to participate in candidate election campaigns.

Since 1999 – after Humane USA launched its operations – the Congress passed many new laws to protect animals, including laws to prevent the sale of big cats across state lines as pets, to protect great apes, to establish chimpanzee sanctuaries, to ban the sale of dog and cat fur, to ban cock- fighting, to validate non-animal tests, and to halt barbaric practices such as “animal crush” videos and shark finning.

Humane USA will be involved in hundreds of races at the state and federal level during the primary and general elections. Legislation is now pending before Congress to combat puppy mills and dog fighting, ban canned hunts and steel-jawed leghold traps, protect horses from slaughter, and enact other enormously important reforms. Humane USA can be the decisive factor in pushing these bills and amendments toward passage.

Now the Tampabay area has a voice. Visit Humane USA at HumaneUSA.org

For background on Humane USA: http://www.humaneusa.org/humaneusaabout.htm

For background on the members of the board of directors: http://www.humaneusa.org/humaneusaboard.htm