2025 Annual Report
33 Years of Saving Big Cats Thanks to YOU!
2025 has been a year of getting to know our conservation partners better
Despite a dramatic drop in donations since 2023 and having to cut back on expenses this year we still donated $359,809 to these conservationist protecting wild cats, globally. We have committed to donate 1 million dollars to these conservation partners in 2026 and will be hosting an International conference to bring many of the working group leaders together to exchange ideas and successes.
Scroll through the posts below with the arrows at the top right of the grey box
The work we do to protect wild cats in the wild is too vast to detail here, so you can see all of it at https://bigcatrescue.org/insitu/
Community Outreach & Events
Our conservation partners do outreach regularly, but now that our staff is four people and one volunteer, we have limited capacity to do public appearances. Despite that, Deb Quimby led the Great American Teach In this year reaching 20 classes of 824 students at 6-7 Grade K-12 schools in November 2025 via 3 volunteers, both in person and via zoom. It was much more but only 3 of the schools reported numbers back to us, despite multiple requests. More at https://bigcatrescue.org/gati/
In 2025 we began using Suno.com to create music and OpenArt.ai and HeyGen.ai to create images and videos like the one above. See more of our music HERE
Wins for Exotic Cats
12/30/2025 Italy to ban fur farming and shut down all mink farms within six months.
12/10/2025 Hearst Magazines Bans Fur From Its Publications. Following the lead of Condé Nast’s fur ban in October, the Harper’s Bazaar publisher will now prohibit the use of animal fur in its editorial and advertising content in its magazine portfolio that also includes: includes Elle (which officially became fur-free in 2021), Esquire, Seventeen and Cosmopolitan.
Following the publicisation of Condé Nast’s fur ban in October, the Harper’s Bazaar publisher will now prohibit the use of animal fur in its editorial and advertising content.
12/4/2025 Poland’s president signs fur farming ban into law. The World’s second largest fur farming nation becomes 18th European Union country to end the cruel practice of farming animals for their fur.
12/3/2025 The Council of Fashion Designers of America just announced that it will no longer promote fur at any Official New York Fashion Week Schedule events nor on its social media channels and website. The policy will start with New York Fashion Week in September 2026.
7/8/2025 Kevin “Doc” Antle, of T.I.G.E.R.S. in Myrtle Beach, SC was sentenced to a Year and a Day in the Federal Pen.
7/ 1/2025 GENEVA: Switzerland will become the first country in Europe and likely the world to ban the import and sale of fur taken from animals by means defined as “cruel production methods.”
5/10/2025 Washington State banned the use of wild animals in circus acts and traveling shows.
1/4/2025 Canada: Bill S-15: An important step in addressing captive wildlife problems in Canada. Canada's new proposed legislation to protect elephants and great apes underscores that their captivity is only acceptable for legitimate conservation reasons or when it is in the individual animal's best interest.
10/31/2024 Romania bans fur farms.
6/13/2024 HANOI, Vietnam–102 human rabies deaths in 29 administrative jurisdictions during 2023 have reportedly moved the city government in Hanoi, the national capital of Vietnam, to ban the dog and cat meat trade–coincidentally, almost on the eve of the annual dog-eating festival held toward the end of each June since 2009 in Yulin, China, about 500 miles northeast.
Finances
2025 IRS form 990 and 2023 audited financial statements coming soon. See all years here: https://bigcatrescue.org/finances/
Social Media
Compare Our YouTube stats in 2024 to 2025
YouTube: 2025 we had 1,346,414 subscribers and 662,427,443 views VS 2024 1,344,809 subscribers and 649,011,123 views
Facebook: 2025 we had 4,230,551 followers VS 2024 4,271,7096 followers
X: 2025 we had 275,600 followers VS 2024 X 305,900 followers
Pinterest: 2025 we had 4,800 followers VS 2023 4,600 followers
Linked In: 2025 we had 6,219 followers VS 2024 5,986 follower
Instagram: 2025 we had 166,000 followers VS 2024 171,000 followers
TikTok: 2025 we had 414,600 followers and 3.2 million likes VS 2024 417,800 followers and 3.2M likes
The BigCatRescue.org website
The internal tracking of viewers reports 657,000 page views in 2025 VS 2.8 million views in 2023. Much of the drop is that we have determined that so few people visit from our posts on social media that we have quit asking them to click through and learn more. The social media sites penalize pages that send people away from their platform, so we have tried to include more substance to our social posts, but with mixed results. Our AI chatbot has been trained on more than 13 million characters and answered 1,998 questions from visitors in 2025 and referred people to a real person (Thanks Deb!) when it could not.
In the News
These are just the mentions in 2025 that we know of: 191 media mentions, despite Carole Baskin declining all interviews beginning in January 2023. Some of our past national press has included shows on CNN, MSNBC, National Geographic, Animal Planet, Discovery and the History Channel in addition to such publications as USA Today, National Geographic and the New York Post and major media coverage in several other countries as well.
Who We Are
Mail List. Our mailing list was cut to just our 5,500 most recent donors or those who signed up this year for news. We had to cut our mailing list to just those who are contributing to help save wild cats, whether in donations or actions, in order to reserve our funds for conservation work.
The Big Cat Board
The Board met 3 times in 2025. Board members are: Carole Baskin – Founder, CEO, Director | Howard Baskin – Secretary | Keith Lawless – Director | Lynda Licht – Director | Kim Mahoney – Vice President, Director | Jamie Veronica Murdock – President, Director
A Recap of Big Cat Rescue’s History 1992-2025
The following isn’t complete, but it’s a start on the most important accomplishments by Big Cat Rescue and its team of cool cats.
1992 The rescue of Windsong Bobcat.
1993 Trying to find her a friend she couldn’t kill and coming home with 56 bobcats, Canada lynx and Siberian lynx from the MN fur farm.
1993 No Name Storm flooding caused us to increase efforts to move from “the Island” to Easy Street.
1994 Learning that people didn’t know how to care for their wild pets and writing Exotic Cats as Housepets, a 90 page, self published book.
1994 Volunteer program begins.
1995 Turning that book into a video called Big Cat Companions because people won’t read.
1995 non profit Wildlife on Easy Street approved by IRS 59-3330495.
1995 Volunteer Doug Edwards leads first tours of sanctuary.
1996 June 18 a media frenzy ensued when the World Society for the Protection of Animals reported that we had 8 Bengal tigers in an 80 x 16 cage. It was 8 Bengal cats and that was only their outside play yard, but people glommed onto the false report and before long it seemed every media outlet in the world was talking about what a horrible travesty this was. We only had 2 tigers back then and they were on several acres. PETA jumped in, and I invited them to see for themselves. This started our excellent relationship with PETA.
1997 February 1, Animal Finders Guide ad: IF YOU ARE WILD ABOUT CATS check out Wildlife On Easy Street at their new address: http://www.wildlife-easyst.com. Meet our 100+ wildcats, join our membership or volunteer program and learn about exotic cats and more. To help fund this much needed Sanctuary we offer the video "Big Cat Companions" $28.00, the book "Exotic Cats As Housepets" $35.00, Bed & Breakfast at the refuge in Tampa, FL $75.00 per night.
1997 stopped breeding and selling cats once Don Lewis left.
1998 Tippi Hedren thru U.S. Rep. "Buck" McKeon introduced a bill called The Shambala Act but it failed year after year despite us both promoting it widely.
2001 Read “Losing Paradise” by Paul G. Irwin and became a full time vegetarian even though I’d been mostly so since 1998 or so.
2002 November 1 Carole Met Howard Baskin.
2002 November over 2 ½ million Floridians voted to prohibit the cruel confinement of pregnant pigs in factory farms. It was the first time that a farming practice had been banned because of its inherent cruelty in the United States. This was my first attempt at changing the laws and I’d gathered thousands of signatures at the behest of PETA.
2002 December we were $800 in the black for the first time ever.
2002 HSUS gets involved with the Shambala Act, renamed and redesigned to be the Captive Wildlife Safety Act. I’m so impressed with their website’s ability to connect the public to easy to send letters to Congress that I reverse engineer it on our own site because I can’t afford the services that do this.
2002 December I’m part of No More Homeless Pets and am helping deliver supplies for Spay Days which means driving at 4AM to distant locations where vets volunteer for a day, spaying about 100 cats each time.
2003 The Captive Wildlife Safety Act, passed unanimously and was signed into law by President Bush on December 19, 2003. Tippi’s bill had been picked up by HSUS in 2002 and revised to be this bill.
2003 February I introduce Howie to staff and volunteers.
2004 Volunteer Committee has been formed by Jamie Veronica Murdock and manages our 80-110 volunteers.
2004 Received Google Ad Grant for hundreds of thousands of dollars in ads to keep us on page 1 of Google for all of our key words.
2005 Bought three more acres for alternate access and parking and cleared the land of dog fennel so that we can keep it mowed. Took on debt for the first time in our history with the purchase of this land. Began negotiations with Outback and the County on building a multi use Education and Conference Center called the Big Cat Lodge. Unveiled the new conceptual drawings of this improvement created by Collman and Karsky with help from Genesis at the Fur Ball. Applied for a Planned Development for this additional 3 acres to give us cross access, parking and 6 more residences for interns and volunteers.
2008 qualified for google Adsense ads to run on YouTube. We ended the year as the 6th most viewed Non Profit of all time and the 8th most subscribed Non Profit.
2011 Howard and Carole Baskin of Big Cat Rescue met with ALDF, Born Free, Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries, Humane Society of the United States, International Fund for Animal Welfare, Ian Somerhalder Foundation, Massachusetts School of Law, World Council for Animal Rights, Wild Cat Conservation Legal Aid Society, World Wildlife Fund. Combined we represented more than 18 million supporters in 2011. We stayed in the room until we agreed on a three prong strategy to 1. end the big cat crisis by persuading the USFWS to rescind the generic tiger loophole, that had eliminated endangered species protections for generic tigers, 2. persuade USDA to actually endorse the Animal Welfare Act by ending cub petting, and 3. pass a federal law to ban private ownership of big cats and ban contact with them and their cubs.
2012 Feb. 29 Rep. McKeon and Rep. Loretta Sanchez introduced the Big Cats and Public Safety Protection Act in the House (HR 4122) and Sen. Kerry commits to introducing into the Senate, which he did just prior to the elections. We continued to work with our coalition partners every two years as we refined the bill, reintroduced it, and built momentum until it passed in 2022.
2013 bought 9 acres NW of main property from a former guest’s husband.
2020 Due to COVID-19 being a threat to the cats we stopped offering tours of the sanctuary and went entirely digital in our education efforts. We had to let go half of our staff of 22 to save money because we didn’t know how long the pandemic would last and wanted to preserve funds for our animals’ care.
2022 The Big Cat Public Safety Act (which we have been working on in one form or another since 1998) finally became a federal law to ban private ownership of big cats and to end public contact with big cats and their cubs.
2023 Contracted with Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge to take our last 33 cats. We spent close to two million dollars to build out their Freedom Field for our last 33 wild cats and we will fund their food and vet care for the rest of their natural lives. Moved Big Cat Rescue’s headquarters of operation from 12802 Easy Street to 17342 Gunn Hwy Odessa, FL 33556.
2024 Sold the 67 acre sanctuary grounds for approximately 20 million dollars. Invested wisely this will allow us to triple our donations to conservation efforts for wild cats around the globe, and perhaps even 10X those donations for at least the next 40 years and maybe indefinitely if we can do so without touching the principal.
2025 We have invested the sales proceeds into a diversified portfolio managed by three different professional firms. The income from these investments and our dedicated donors is allowing us to be the second largest donor to small cat wild conservation projects worldwide. The first largest is a good friend of ours who values his privacy.
You may have thought we were done. We are not.
Past Issues of our Annual Report
https://bigcatrescue.org/conservation-news/2024-annual-report
https://bigcatrescue.org/2023-annual-report/
https://bigcatrescue.org/2022-annual-report/
https://bigcatrescue.org/2021-annual-report/
https://bigcatrescue.org/2020-annual-report/
https://bigcatrescue.org/2019-annual-report/
https://bigcatrescue.org/2018-annual-report/
https://bigcatrescue.org/2017-annual-report/
https://bigcatrescue.org/2016-annual-report/
https://bigcatrescue.org/2015-annual-report/
https://bigcatrescue.org/2014-annual-report/
https://bigcatrescue.org/2013-annual-report/
https://bigcatrescue.org/2012-annual-report/
https://bigcatrescue.org/2011-annual-report/
https://bigcatrescue.org/2010-annual-report/
https://bigcatrescue.org/2009-annual-report/
https://bigcatrescue.org/2008-annual-report/
https://bigcatrescue.org/2007-annual-report/
https://bigcatrescue.org/2006-annual-report/
https://bigcatrescue.org/2005-annual-report/
