Do Your Part to Help Us End the #1 Cause of Big Cat Abuse

Click here to learn the real truth and what you can do to support our new campaign and help save innocent tiger cubs from a life of misery.  Go to CubPet.com and then Join the Fight to Save our Cats!

Netflix’s Tiger King; Murder, Mayhem and Madness

Before you post hateful comments on our page or call to scream about us having big cats in cages,  please take a minute to learn about the lies you were told here:  https://bigcatrescue.org/refuting-netflix-tiger-king/  If you really hate the idea of big cats being caged, then you will love what Carole Baskin and Big Cat Rescue are doing to end the abuse.

Big Cat Rescue’s Mission

Our Mission is to provide the best home we can for the cats in our care, end abuse of big cats in captivity, and prevent extinction of big cats in the wild.

Our Goal is for our donors to find their gifts to us to be among the most satisfying they make by accomplishing our mission in the most financially responsible manner possible. We consistently receive Charity Navigator’s highest 4 star rating and are in the 1% of nonprofits who have received Charity Navigator’s perfect numerical score of 100.Can we count on your help?

 

Battling Coronavirus COVID-19 at Big Cat Rescue

Big Cat Rescue is working to reduce the spread of the Coronavirus in many ways.

The Public and COVID-19 Concerns

Like many other public venues, out of concern for the safety of our staff, volunteers, guests and cats we will be closed to the public until further notice. We are processing refunds for everyone who has purchased tickets and are doing them as quickly as possible.  We appreciate your understanding and hope to see you after the crisis is over.  If you want us to email you when we make tickets available, please fill out this form.  Notify Me

Meanwhile check out our online options, such as our LIVE webcams where you can chat with people who love big cats at https://bigcatrescue.org/cams/ and see our virtual options at BigCatRescue.org/VR 

We are ramping up all the ways to connect with you on our social sites too at Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and TikTok.  We have a lot of volunteers who can’t go to work or school right now, so they are getting fresh air and sunshine while helping out our cats.  This means more keeper videos to share with you, while you are on lockdown.

Our Staff and Volunteers During the Pandemic

Some of our staff are working from home.  Our weekly staff meetings are being held via WorkPlace video conferencing.  The staff and volunteers who are high risk for infection are helping out with our online presence during this crisis as a way to stay sane and help our supporters remain connected despite many being in mandatory self quarantine.  We have advanced stipends to our interns so they can stock up on food to carry them through the likely increase in Coronavirus cases, but already the grocery store shelves are barren.

Our Cats During Coronavirus

We have placed orders to fill our freezers, which can hold about 20,000 pounds of food, in case the production plants or transportation companies shut down.  We’ve ordered fuel for our generators and onsite storage tanks.  In 2003, the first year Big Cat Rescue was able to break even financially, we began tucking away a little bit into an endowment fund.  It’s money we can’t touch outside of an emergency and its purpose was to provide a pension fund for all of our exotic cats.  We did it right after seeing tourism and donations come to a screeching halt in the aftermath of 9/11 and knowing what it was like to look at the faces of hungry cats and tell them there would be no food for them short of a miracle.  (fortunately for us that miracle happened and no cats went hungry, but that’s a story for another day)

Thanks to our amazing donors the sanctuary’s cats have a fully funded pension that will provide food and vet care for them to the end of their days.  We would have to shut everything down, end all of our work to save wild cats from abuse and extinction, and let all of our staff go, but there is money in the Community Foundation endowment fund to be sure the cats don’t starve.  Even though we made the tough choices to ensure our cats’ futures, we face an immediate crisis now.  In order to keep doing the important work we do, without depleting our savings, we count on your donations more than ever.  Just the tour revenue we are losing right now is running about $160,000 a month and that doesn’t count all of the gift shop revenue and the added cost of keeping our staff employed and our volunteers housed and fed.

The Big Cat Public Safety Act and the Coronavirus Scare

Even though Congress is not congregating or thinking about anything outside of the current epidemic, we still need you to make the Call of the Wild, asking them to co sponsor the Big Cat Public Safety Act.  We have more momentum toward ending the abusive cub petting industry and phasing out private ownership of big cats than ever before.  We just can not stop now!  If your Senator and House members know you care about this issue, even under the looming threat of global disease and financial ruin, they will see how important it is to pass the bill before the last tigers go extinct from the inaction of previous Congresses.  It may actually help to point out that COVID-19 is a zoonotic disease from close contact with wild animals and our bill prevents wildcat cub handling.

 

Big Cat Rescue is Caring for Big Cats and Ending the Trade

Join us in the freedom fight for exotic cats!  They were designed to live free; not in cages.  The number one cause of abuse is the practice of posing with big cats and their cubs because it creates a flood of discarded cats that serve no conservation value and end up dead or in conditions that are often even worse.  You will find us to be completely transparent in our values, care of our 50+ wild cats, and finances.

Did you know every time you make a purchase on Amazon you could be donating to Big Cat Rescue at no cost to you??

You can automatically help feed our cats at NO COST TO YOU when you select Big Cat Rescue as your charity on Amazon Smile and shop Amazon Smile instead of Amazon.com.

 

U.S. Residents Only

The Most Important Action You Can Take for Big Cats and their Cubs

Stop Big Cat Abuse (US ONLY)

Call, Tweet, or Email your U.S. legislators and ask them to champion the Big Cat Public Safety Act:

See what is happening today, or this week at Big Cat Rescue.
Get the most recent copy of the Big Cat Times, a quarterly print newsletter.

 

Watch Our Cats LIVE on explore.org!

Big Cat Rescue, one of the world’s largest accredited sanctuaries for exotic cats, is a leading advocate for ending the abuse of captive big cats and saving wild cats from extinction.  We are the most hated, feared and lied about by circuses, backyard breeders, roadside zoos, cub petting pimps apseudo-sanctuariesies because we are the most effective at ending the abuse of big cats.  We wear that as a badge of honor.

We are home to lions, tigers, bobcats, cougars, servals, caracals, jaguar and other species most of whom have been abandoned, abused, orphaned, saved from being turned into fur coats, or retired from performing acts.

• The sanctuary began rescuing exotic cats in Nov. 4, 1992.
• The non profit 501 c 3 sanctuary is home to many exotic big cats
• The cats at Big Cat Rescue are here for a variety of reasons, including:
  • Abandoned by owners who wrongly thought they would make good pets
  • Abused by owners in order to force them to perform
  • Retired from performing acts
  • Saved from being slaughtered to make fur coats
  • Rescued as babies after hunters killed their mothers.  See our Bobcat Rehab and Release work
• The non-profit organization is:
  • Accredited by the Global Federation of Sanctuaries
  • Certified by Independent Charities of America as a “Best in America Charity”
  • Member of the Species Survival Network
  • Rated 4 Stars by Charity Navigator (their highest rating) and has one of the highest scores of any animal based charity
  • Part of a global coalition including HSUS, IFAW, WWF, GFAS, Born Free and other animal protection groups who are working together to end big cat abuse.
• The sanctuary is situated on 67 acres in the Citrus Park area of north Tampa.