ANIMAL ADVOCATE ALISON EASTWOOD AND ANIMAL EXPERT DONALD SCHULTZ CONFRONT OVERWHELMED AND OUT-OF-TOUCH WILDLIFE OWNERS IN NEED OF AN ANIMAL INTERVENTION
Emotions Run High at Roadside Zoos, Private Ranches and Midwest Magic Shows
Where Exotics Are Kept in Cramped, Neglectful or Dangerous Environments
and Owners Are Reluctant to Change
New Series Animal Intervention Premieres Tuesday, October 2, at 9PM on Nat Geo WILD
(WASHINGTON, D.C. — September 5, 2012) Owning a wild animal is no small task. Full-grown tigers, lions and monkeys are powerful, unpredictable and extremely dangerous. They need a lot of food, a lot of space and a lot of attention in order to live comfortably and safely in captivity. It takes more than a love of animals to make a good owner. And when owners are unwilling or incapable of acting in the best interest of their animals, it takes an Animal Intervention.
Enter animal advocate Alison Eastwood and animal expert Donald Schultz, who confront overwhelmed and out-of-touch wildlife owners who house exotic animals in confined and potentially hazardous environments. Some of the owners breed their animals, further crowding their facilities and increasing the overall population of exotics living in captivity. Alison and Donald approach owners at private ranches, roadside zoos and even magic shows to assess the conditions in which they keep their animals. Emotions run high when Alison and Donald recommend changes, sometimes as drastic as relocating full-grown wild animals to safe and clean animal sanctuaries. Their work is chronicled in the new series Animal Intervention, premiering Tuesday, October 2, at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT on Nat Geo WILD.
Alison and Donald receive tips from concerned organizations and individuals about potentially problematic animal enclosures, and set out to investigate. They catch up with a Louisiana couple harboring four capuchin monkeys in their RV. The monkeys live in cramped cages and take turns sleeping with the couple in bed at night. Then duo tours a makeshift zoo in upstate New York run by an owner who is physically and financially strained battling multiple health problems. His family must consider the heartbreaking decision to find sanctuaries for the bobcats, macaques and mountain lion they have loved liked family. And they visit central Ohio and meet an animal lover who created a rescue for unwanted big cats in her home, only to struggle both financially and emotionally to keep up with the massive responsibility. She and her husband continue building cages both inside and outside of their home to take in new animals, while at the same time pawning all of their valuables in a desperate attempt to keep the cats fed and cared for. Donald is a wildlife expert, extreme adventurer, writer and photographer. He started working w
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Show Comments (4)
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Erin Walsh
wild animals belong in the wild. The AZA monitors breeding programs. A white tiger is a genetic misfit! There are no breeding programs to breed these animals and return to the wild!
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Erin Walsh
many organizations in the US, AND the world, say they are sanctuaries. THEY ARE NOT! True big cat sanctuaries will have the cats spayed or neutered, no continue breeding and selling. What kind of sanctuary is that? I suggest everyone watch these upcoming shows on Nat Geo. Privately captive animals DON'T HELP the return of them into the wild!!!!!!!!!!
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Rita K. Patton
Why isn't Karl Mitchell in jail?
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Carole Baskin
USDA is understaffed and can only handle 1,000 cases per year, so they choose the worst and as bad as he is, I guess he didn't make their top 1000 list. In late 2011 USDA said they had a backlog of 2,000 cases and that they were going to just give 1000 of them a warning letter so that they could scale back to 1000 cases to deal with. The problem is that it meant no more cases would rise to the top in 2012 because they were already at their max. That is why the bad guys love to say that they are USDA inspected. It means almost nothing and they know USDA can't afford to stop them.
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