Farming exotic cats in USA

While organisations plead for funds to preserve big cats in the wild, USA is home to a breeding programme that few would admit to.

] with rob cope-Williams

While there are an estimated 5,000 feral tigers in the wild, there is an estimated three times that in the States and they are being bred and sold on both the open market, and the black market.

Owners of the sanctuary in San Diego say their organisation known as Lions, Tigers and Bears was started when they realised the conditions some adult big cats were facing.

While they are cubs they romp and play with their owners, but once they get big and strong, the reality hits, they still want to romp and play, but they don’t know their own strength and weight.

That is when many of them are banished to small cages, or basements where they exist like prisoners kept in the dark and food thrown in from above.

Already the sanctuary has a collection of tame big cats, lions, tigers, leopards, bobcats, serval cats, jaguars and some bears.

The residents consume $10,000 worth of chickens and horse meat a month, all the funds coming from donations.

The obvious solution would be to return the cats to their normal habitat release them, but the folk I met who run the sanctuary assured me the lions would be not welcome into an established pride, and tigers are solitary only gaining contact with other cats for mating.

Having been tame, they have no concept of hunting, so they starve to death.

I was amazed by the ignorance people showed those running the sanctuary with respect to big cats and their world.

“When do the lion cubs turn into tigers and get their stripes?”

“Do you get a tiger to breed with a lion to get more tigers?”

“What do lions and tigers eat?”

“Are they native to the States?”

I am somewhat inclined to be very con- cerned about the average IQ in a country that asks those sort of questions while being numbered as one of the great powers holding peace in place in our world.