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

Currently we are not having any visitors at the sanctuary. At some point we will resume doing small private tours, but we don’t know when and we plan to be very conservative in making that decision. We don’t know if we will ever resume doing general public tours again. Even after the virus concerns subside, the betrayal by the liars who produced Tiger King, and the lies viewers were told in the series, creates a concern about having visitors we do not know.

Fortunately people who already knew the sanctuary quickly recognized the lies in Tiger King and have been wonderfully supportive, both emotionally with your messages and with your donations. There is really no way to convey how much we have appreciated both of these kinds of support.

Cancelling all tours means we have lost 1/3 of our income. As a result, we have had to let go 10 of our 20 staff and contractors.  Howard and Carole Baskin have stopped taking a paycheck as well, despite the fact that all of us are having to do twice the work to keep the sanctuary running.  With more than 50 hungry wildcats to feed, we have to work harder than ever to insure their safety and comfort.  If you want us to email you if we resume offering tours please fill out this form. Notify Me. Thanks very much for your understanding and support at this difficult time!

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, Clubhouse 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

Our volunteers are the ones who provide all of the cat care, and they are scanned for temperatures before getting out of their cars upon arrival.  Everyone is required to wear masks while in common spaces, and when in close proximity, like on golf carts or working together.  New interns are quarantined for 14 days before allowed on site. Some of our staff are working from home.  Our weekly staff meetings are being held via Zoom.  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.

Our Cats During Coronavirus

We have filled our freezers, which can hold about 20,000 pounds of food, in case the production plants or transportation companies shut down.  We’ve stocked up on fuel for our generators in our 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.

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.

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 most influential 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  and pseudo-sanctuaries 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, 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.

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/netflix/  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.  If you didn’t watch Tiger King 2, then you missed Attorney Joe Fritz presenting an official report from Homeland Security saying that Don Lewis was alive and well in Costa Rica at least five years after he left Carole Baskin in Tampa.