TIGERS, LEOPARDS AND COUGARS

Shelter owner ailing; big cats left in lurch

So far, 6 of 34 land on their feet

Kellyn Kearney (left), Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge staff biologist, and curator Emily McCormack watch over Princess as they move the tiger out of Riverglen Tiger Shelter near Mountainburg on Wednesday afternoon.
Kellyn Kearney (left), Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge staff biologist, and curator Emily McCormack watch over Princess as they move the tiger out of Riverglen Tiger Shelter near Mountainburg on Wednesday afternoon.

A refuge that shelters wild animals near Eureka Springs has taken six large cats from a private Crawford County refuge since Monday, but the future remains uncertain for 28 large cats still at the refuge near Mountainburg.

Officials from Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge transported six tigers from the Riverglen Tiger Shelter near Mountainburg after the sheriff said its owner could no longer adequately care for them. That leaves 24 tigers, two leopards and two cougars still at the Riverglen shelter.

Sheriff Ron Brown said the remaining cats pose no threat to the public.

“This is one of the largest operations we’ve ever been involved in,” said Tanya Smith, president of Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge, which is about 7 miles south of Eureka Springs. “We can accommodate six, maybe eight [large cats], by the time we reshuffle everybody we can” at the refuge.

Riverglen owner Betty Young, 72, has been having health problems, which made caring for the 34 large cats increasingly difficult, she said.

Young said one of her neighbors and his wife have helped her daily, but even with that, caring for so many cats is too much for her. She founded the shelter in West Fork with her parents in 1992 and later moved it to its current location.

“Taking care of tigers is hard, physical work,” Young said. “They’re big animals, so everything you do is big. ... And no matter what the weather is, you have to take care of them every day.

“I have a bad hip and walk around on crutches. You can’t pick up a 40-pound box of meat when you do that.”

Smith said she hesitated to use the term “rescue” to describe what Turpentine Creek has done, insisting that the large cats had received good treatment at Riverglen. The first cat that Turpentine Creek took out — a female white tiger named Chopper — had a tumor the size of a grapefruit on her side, but no other animals needed serious medical care.

Chopper is doing well after the tumor was removed, Smith said.

Turpentine Creek has removed cats from Riverglen in pairs. Chopper and India, a female Bengal tiger, were taken Monday. Two more tigers were removed Tuesday and another two Wednesday.

“The cats are in pretty good shape,” Smith said. “The owner has done a great job with limited means of being able to keep the cats fat and healthy; she just needs some help. She really needs to go into the hospital.”

Taking on the additional cats poses challenges for Turpentine Creek, which was already home to 115 large cats. It would cost Turpentine Creek $235,000 to build new, secure habitats for all 34 cats, Smith said.

Turpentine Creek has been in contact with other largecat shelters around the country but has had little success in finding them new homes. As a result, most of the cats will stay at Riverglen for the time being.

Brown said he has been present each time Turpentine Creek has moved cats from Riverglen.

“I’ve not felt like I’ve been in danger, and nor are the tigers or the public,” he said.

Removing the cats is challenging because of their sheer physical size — male Bengal tigers average close to 500 pounds, and Young said the largest cat at the facility, a male Siberian tiger, weighs between 875 to 900 pounds.

The process of moving can also scare the cats, Young said. Chopper, for example, became frightened and had to been anesthetized to be taken off the property.

The Crawford County sheriff’s office first contacted Turpentine Creek about the large cats on Oct. 29, Brown said.

“What brought this on was we had been talking to Miss Young over the next couple years about her retirement plan, because she’s getting to an age where she’s having health issues, and [coming up with a] plan if something happened to her,” Brown said. “We needed to be prepared for tomorrow, because she doesn’t have immediate family that can take over the refuge, and to be honest, I don’t have the money or manpower to feed them 40 pounds [of meat] per day.”

Turpentine Creek officials didn’t know at first exactly what they were getting into, Smith said. She was told that there were 28 large cats on the premises, but she had also heard rumors that the actual number was 40-80.

Accompanied by Brown and a deputy, officials with Turpentine Creek visited and determined that there were 34 large cats.

“I was a little scared because it was an unknown area” for us, Smith said. “When you come out here, it’s a maze of cages, so we didn’t know where they all were.”

Most of the cats are ages 14-20, meaning they are on the older side; in captivity, tigers generally live to between 18 and 25, according to Turpentine Creek’s website.

Because they have been around other large cats, it likely will take them less time to get adjusted to the sights and sounds of other animals at Turpentine Creek, Smith said.

Many of the large cats that Turpentine Creek rescues come from private owners, and those cats have a more difficult time adjusting to life at Turpentine Creek because they have not been around other members of their species.

“These cats are old, so they don’t need to travel a long way,” Smith said, noting it’s about a two-hour drive between the two facilities.

Young said that despite her health problems, she hopes to keep “between eight to 10 cats, the ones that don’t move so well,” including the two leopards.

It has been difficult for her to let the cats go, Young said, because she has cared for many of them most of their lives. She also realizes that she has no choice.

“We needed some help, and I really couldn’t think of anyone else,” Young said. “No one likes dramatic change in their life, but unless [money] falls out of the sky,” the animals need to be cared for by someone else.

Turpentine Creek’s mission statement is “to provide lifetime refuge for abandoned, abused and neglected big cats, with an emphasis on tigers, lions, leopards and cougars.”

More information about the organization can be found at turpentinecreek.org.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 11/15/2012

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