Did You Watch Inside Edition Tonight?

If you did, you may be wondering what you can do to end the abuse of cubs at malls.

Here are a few steps you can take so that no more cubs end up suffering at the hands of exploiters who breed them to make money off them as photo and petting props.

1. Send a letter to lawmakers asking for a law against using wild animals this way at CatLaws.com

2. Send a letter to USDA and ask that the revoke the license of Joe Schreibvogel who runs G.W. Exotic Animals and ask them to fine him for the deaths of 23 cubs.

The Honorable Tom Vilsack

Secretary of Agriculture

U.S. Department of Agriculture
1400 Independence Ave., S.W.
Washington, DC 20250

FAX: 202-720-2166

AgSec@usda.gov

3. If you see or hear about cubs being used in these pay to play schemes email us right away at Info@BigCatRescue.org

The following is from the Inside Edition site:

One attraction holiday shoppers might notice at the mall this year is not a photo op with Santa, but instead, with tiger cubs.

An employee told us he got scratched up by one of the older tigers just the day before.

“There was blood everywhere,” he said. “It was just a total, total mess.”

INSIDE EDITION showed our video to Adam Roberts from the animal rights group Born Free.

“There is no excuse for bringing tiger cubs to malls,” Roberts said.

He says these traveling tiger shows exploit the tigers and endanger the public.

“Anybody that is putting them in close contact with the public is creating a recipe for disaster,” Roberts said.

Roberts said he is particularly disturbed by where these cubs often end up when they’re too old for pictures—caged and kept as pets in backyards.

There are actually more tigers living in Americans’ backyards than there are left in the wild, according to the World Wildlife Fund, a non-profit animal welfare group.

So where do these cubs come from? They’re part of a traveling exotic animal exhibit that hails from a roadside zoo in Oklahoma.

Joe Schreibvogel is president of the G.W. Exotic Animal Foundation, the non-profit that operates the traveling tiger exhibit in the mall we visited. Many of the cubs used in the exhibit were born in captivity at his park in Oklahoma, a roadside zoo that is home to over 200 tigers.

But Schreibvogel’s park has had problems in the past. He denied any wrongdoing but paid $25,000 for repeated animal welfare violations in 2006 and is currently under investigation by the USDA for the unexplained deaths of 23 tiger cubs at his park.

In an interview with Guerrero he again denied any wrongdoing.

“How did 23 of your tigers die?” Guerrero asked.

“Bad formula,” Schreibvogel said.

“You had to pay $25,000 in fines. You’ve had 23 tigers die. Are you a responsible owner of tigers?” asked Guerrero.

“I say I’m damn responsible,” replied Schreibvogel.

Schreibvogel says he takes good care of his tigers and displays them for educational purposes.

The piece ended with the news anchor refuting Joe’s claims that it was bad formula that killed his cubs by reporting that both the manufacturer and the FDA said that the formula was not to blame.

It’s Cy-Purr Monday at Big Cat Rescue

Cy-Purr Monday 10% Discount – Receive 10% off your entire online gift shop purchase. On Cy-Purr Monday only.

Enter the Code: cypurr upon check out. Must be a registered customer, sign up is quick and easy at http://www.bigcatrescue.biz/
Start Date: 11/28/11 End Date: 11/29/11

Help Stop Abuse of Cats at the University of VA

We need your help to stop the abuse of cats by the University of Virginia. Today, PCRM filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, explaining that the school is violating the federal Animal Welfare Act by using live cats in its pediatrics residency program. Please help this effort by asking the school to end the use of animals today.

To take action on this issue, click on the link below:
http://support.pcrm.org/site/Advocacy?s_oo=UStzyhejvQ_CT1EKE2QPbg&id=463

If the text above does not appear as a link or it wraps across multiple lines, then copy and paste it into the address area of your browser.

Listen to a grisly first hand account of how a woman lost her finger to her pet leopard and the idiotic justification Tim Stark had for trying to adopt a baboon as his “daughter.”

Howard Baskin reviewing plans of future expansion of Big Cat Rescue

Contact Honey in the Gift Shop to get your tickets 813.920.4130

Stop tigers being killed for their parts in NJ

(NJ Residents Only Please)

Tigers are worth far more dead than alive because of demand in Asia and in some communities in the U.S. for tiger bone wine and alleged medicinal and aphrodisiacs made from their parts. The rapidly declining wild tiger population is now estimated to be only about 3000 tigers, with the greatest threat coming from poaching of tigers for their parts.

There are more tigers in captivity in the U.S. than in the wild. Cubs are bred constantly to exploit by charging for petting and photo opportunities. But, there is no system in the U.S. to effectively track whether, once they are too big to use for petting and photos, they are being killed for their parts.

Senator Ray Lesniak, Chairman of the Senate Economic Growth Committee, has introduced a landmark bill to require registration and detailed tracking of all tigers in New Jersey to prevent them from being slaughtered for the trade in their parts. We hope this bill will become a model for other states and possibly a federal law.

The bill goes before the Committee on Thursday. Please click here to send an email to the Committee members urging them to support this bill. If you take a minute to customize the suggested language in the form, your email will have more impact. Thanks for helping stop the slaughter of tigers for their parts!

Sample Letter to Committee Members:

There is currently no way to know if tigers bred or owned in New Jersey are being slaughtered for the growing trade in their body parts. These parts are used to make alleged traditional Asian medicines, tonics, clothing, ornamentation and tiger bone wine. In addition to the cruelty of using tigers in this way, if our tigers are being used to supply, and therefore expand, the market for tiger parts, it creates additional incentives for poaching tigers from the wild and will lead to extinction.

As a resident of New Jersey, I urge you to quickly approve S. 3061 in hopes that it can leave the Committee and become law in the current session to insure that our State is not contributing to the extinction of the tiger in the wild.