Moving Cats Today

Today we will be shifting cats on and off vacation sites and moving them from one part of their cages to others so we can mow. That means no time for complete updates today, but watch the cameras at explore.org/bigcatrescue so you don’t miss anything. No kittens in the Kitten Cabana till Saturday. I will Facebook LIVE if I can.

Stopping Animal Abuse in its Tracks!

Dana Lynn said, “Proof that working together makes change! At 5:30pm today BIG Cat Rescue asked for help, a church in Florida was planning on displaying a big cat for entertainment at their festival. Within 6 hours of the original post the display was cancelled thanks to everyone emailing and posting on the chuch’s page asking them to reconsider! NOW to get these cats to a safe home! Donate at BIgCatRescue.org to help out. They do amazing work! Big Cat Rescue Thank you for all that you do!”

CITES Update from Jamie

I thought I was better but then at the close of meetings today the food poisoning funk came back. I nearly puked on the CITES US rep’s shoes. But thankfully I held back and barely made it back to my room.

We sat in on committee sessions all day. We watched as several species were up listed including all pangolins (8 species), Barbary maquacs, and hoof stock. The Florida Panther lost. Although the US surprised everyone by rejecting their own proposal they collaborated with Canada on. They recused themselves from voting on the issue. Several surrounding countries including Costa Rica and Brazil did not want the Florida panther delisted.

However it seems that CITES really wants to keep all of the sub-species listed at the same appendix level no matter what their population status may be. Which is really confusing considering that there is a proposal to uplist some lion sub-species. That issue is a very hot topic and was sent to a working group to hammer out language for the proposal. 20 countries and 13 NGOs are in that group and they will have to come to a consensus on language for the proposal and then it will go back to the committee to be heard.

We get asked at the booth a lot about the US tiger problem so we are working on a document that we can hand out at the booth as well as send via email to the delegates prior to their consideration of the Asian big cats proposal. We had the head of CITES US look at it for suggestions and will get those edits back by morning.

The Asian big cats proposal should come into Committee tomorrow as well as some other proposals dealing with captive bred wildlife. Hopefully everything will go through as it is currently written and suggested, and there will be no working groups.

We went to a talk about the up listing of lions today and representatives from different countries throughout Africa voiced concerns of lions being the new cat to be used for bone remedies. Panthera brought up an interesting point in that solely up listing the lion will not give it the protections it needs there needs to be an amendment to the listing that prohibits the commercial trade of captive bred lions.

Fishing Cat Project BCR Helped Fund

Letter from Ashan Thudugala

Dear All,

I’m here with attaching the final report of fishing cat enclosure and rehab center project in Sri Lanka.Thank you very much for supporting me and my team to save the lives of small wild cats in Sri Lanka and continue our work in Small cat conservation. See attached Fishing Cat Project.