EUREKA SPRINGS -- Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge near Eureka Springs will receive 35 big cats from Big Cat Rescue in Tampa, Fla., statements from both the Arkansas and the Florida organizations confirm.
Big Cat Rescue is an animal sanctuary whose efforts help shut down entertainer Joe Exotic's Big Cat attraction in Oklahoma. His operation was featured in the Netflix series "Tiger King."
The animals to be moved to Arkansas include tigers, bobcats and lynx, according to a statement from the Tampa organization. The relocation of the big cats was first announced in a statement posted online by Howard Baskin of Big Cat Rescue.
Big Cat Rescue executive Carole Baskin, wife of Howard Baskin, was the target of a murder-for-hire scheme by Joe Exotic, an animal park operator and entertainer she accused of animal abuse and neglect. Exotic, whose real name is Joseph Maldonado-Passage, was convicted in April 2019 of two counts of hiring someone to murder Baskin, eight counts of falsifying wildlife records and nine counts of violating the Endangered Species Act. The jury trial took place in Oklahoma City. Exotic, now 60, was sentenced to 22 years in prison. An appeal by Exotic reduced his sentence by a year, to 21 years.
Turpentine Creek confirmed the news on its Facebook page late Wednesday night and in a news release Thursday. Big Cat Rescue will pay Turpentine Creek for some of the costs of moving, keeping and caring for the relocated animals, but the operations of the two nonprofits will remain separate, according to the announcements.
"Our mission is to provide lifetime refuge for big cats, and we are honored to have been chosen to take these animals into our care, " said Tanya Smith, president of Turpentine Creek.
Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge, located south of Eureka Springs in Carroll County, has rescued abandoned, abused and neglected big cats for more than 30 years. The nonprofit has assisted in the placement of more than 500 animals during that time, according to the refuge.
The move will end Big Cat Rescue's animal shelter operations, the Florida company's statement says. Big Cat will concentrate on conservation efforts, it says.
"For 30 years, the mission of Big Cat Rescue has been expressed as having three prongs: to give the best life we could to the cats in our care, to stop the abuse and to avoid extinction of big cats in the wild," the Florida entity's statement says. "For those same 30 years, we have always said that our goal was to 'put ourselves out of business,' meaning that there would be no big cats in need of rescue and no need for the sanctuary to exist."
Big Cat Rescue and Turpentine Creek, among others, successfully sought federal laws through Congress in 2022 to curtail "petting zoos" where tigers and other big cats were bred to supply cubs and private ownership of these animals as pets.
The cubs at petting zoos tended to become neglected or abused when they grew too big, Baskin's statement says. The same often happened with pets. Success at passing the law, however, resulted in the remaining big cats producing little income while their aging required more expense for their care.
"A few decades ago, we had 200 big cats," the Big Cat Rescue statement says. As recently as 2011, when the group started working on the Big Cat Public Safety Act, the federal legislation, it had 119 big cats. Of those, 89 were over fifteen years old.
Overhead costs such as utilities and maintenance total $1.5 million a year at Big Cat Rescue, its statement says.
"When we had 100 cats, that $1.5 million in overhead was $15,000 per cat. At 41 cats, it is over $36,000 per cat. As the population declines, it becomes an increasingly inefficient use of donor funds per cat to operate a facility like ours."
"The win-win solution both for our captive cats and the cats in the wild is for us to merge our cat population with the population at another existing accredited sanctuary" and devote the remaining resources of our sanctuary to projects being conducted around the world to avoid extinction, Howard Baskin's statement says.
Turpentine Creek is accredited by the Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries.
"We have come to know Tanya and Scott Smith who operate Turpentine Creek," Big Cat Rescue's statement says. "They and their staff are closely aligned with us in philosophy and in principles of animal care, and in recognizing the importance of advocacy to pass better laws."
The expense of the move and the building of pens for the animals in Arkansas is expected to cost $1.8 million, according to Howard Baskin's statement. Some of the animals to be moved suffer from serious health conditions such as cancer.
Construction on the new enclosures at Turpentine Creek has begun and is expected to take six months, the Florida company's statement says, with the first cats moving into the first-completed tiger enclosures as early as July.
Statement by Howard Baskin of Big Cat Rescue on the merger:
https://bigcatrescue.org/merger/
Confirmation from Turpentine Creek:
https://www.facebook.com/TurpentineCreekWildlifeRefuge