​Rebuttal to "Carole Baskin on the Guilt of Her Past"

Someone acknowledging their own wrongdoings is great, however, one should question if that someone is actually being genuine. 
​Big Cat Rescue's Article - (CLICK FOR SOURCE)

Carole Baskin, CEO and Founder of Big Cat Rescue, always seems to use public apologies as way to gain sympathy while pretending that she owned up to mistakes. If it wasn't for people holding her accountable for her past atrocities, Carole would most likely have never admitted to any wrongdoing.

​Other times, Carole will admit to lesser mistakes in what seems to be a blatant attempt at fooling the public into thinking she has changed her ways, when in reality, she is just trying to hide something much worse. Case in point, the article she wrote regarding the "guilt of her past" has numerous omitted key details which we will fill you in on.

Carole begins her article by mentioning a now deceased tiger she possessed called Auroara:

​In 1996, at four weeks of age, Auroara was the 3rd tiger to come to Wildlife on Easy Street. She died of cancer in 2008 and it has taken me this long to be able to talk about her again.  (This article first appeared in 2011)

​According to inventory sheets from when Big Cat Rescue was operating as Wildlife On Easy Street (source), Auroara was purchased for $1,800 when she was only a few weeks old. We have been told that $1,800 was expensive for a tiger back then which leads us to believe that Auroara must have been a high quality cub.
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​Continuing further down the article, Carole appears to be lessening the severity of her wrongdoings by attempting to pass them off ignorance. In our opinion, that's a clear example of her not actually owning up to her past (emphasis added):

I think it is because of the guilt I’ve carried for some of the ignorant things I did all those years ago. I say ignorant because I didn’t see the big picture yet.  Jeff was telling me about some tour guests this week that kind of reminded me of that time.  They LOVE big cats and were all a-blather about how much they enjoyed petting them at some other facility.  People like this, are people like I was, who have been misled and lied to and they haven’t yet figured out that all those things they think are so cool are the reason that big cats languish in cages all around the country.

​Anyway, we have a hard time believing that lies and misleading information influenced Carole into leaving a harness on a cougar until it required life-saving surgery (source).

​What were the lies that led her to convert her facility into a bed and breakfast where tourists could sleep unsupervised with cubs (many declawed) in rented out cabins (source)?

​Was she "misled and lied to" when she recently launched a program where tourists can pay to "volunteer" for a week in which they have the possibility of touching a cat while it's sedated for a medical procedure (source)?

So for those of you that have participated in animal encounters, don't let Carole fool you into believing you're anywhere close to being on the same level as her past self. 

They have an enormous passion for animals and just don’t know how their actions are causing harm. Once they know better they are the most persistent of voices for the animals, and maybe it has something to do with the guilt.

​Maybe it has something to do with the lies their followers and tour guests are told? Many people think all of the cats at Big Cat Rescue were "rescued" from abusive situations, pet owners that got more than what they bargained for, or failed roadside zoos. The truth is that many of the cats they have exhibited were actually purchased from breeders, auctions, or were born at their facility. The Bay News 9 news report below shines a light onto what we're talking about.
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In 1996 my late husband Don and I went to a place called Predators Plus. They were in the edu-tainment business and used to take tigers to schools, fairs and parking lots. At that time they were the most professional looking outfit we had ever seen.  Fancy trailers, transport cages that would still make us drool for use around here, and of course, magnificent looking tigers.  But those were just the ones they showed.

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​Carole Baskin would also take her cats out to meet the public and like we already mentioned, she forced her cats to sleep with visitors in a cabin, as well as lease them out for magazine photo shoots (source). If you were to take a look at Jumanji's earlier biography, you will find where she mentions taking cats out to meet the public (source).

Don was telling them about some Serval kittens we had and again; back then we had been told that Servals didn’t breed well in zoos and that their only chance for survival was in being bred by the private sector.  We later learned that was a lie and that none of the cats bred by the private sector could ever be part of any conservation breeding program.  The owners of Predators Plus said they had always wanted an exotic cat that they could keep inside as a pet and tigers outgrew that role by the time they were just a few months old.

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​Are we really going to believe she was being lied to about breeding cats in captivity? If she only believed in conservation through breeding cats in captivity why did she purchase many Bengals (source)? Bengals certainly weren't endangered and aren't found in the wild since they are hybrid domesticated cats (source). Furthermore, Carole Baskin apparently doesn't believe in breeding programs such as the Species Survival Plan as evidenced in her 20 year plan (source). 

She said they had a litter of tiger cubs and one that they couldn’t “use” because she was lame and cross eyed and asked if we would trade her a Serval kitten. If you knew Auroara you know that she was cross eyed and lame and had some serious mental issues as well, but that just made her all the more adorable to those of us who loved her.  She typified a “throw away tiger” as that would have been her fate.  Because she was so small she wouldn’t have been a tiger that any breeder would have kept around to use as a cub-mill and because she wasn’t white none of the breeders, dealers or animal exploiters would want her.

​Auroara wasn't just traded for, she was purchased as we already pointed out. According to Auroara's former owner, Auroara was not cross eyed or inbred.  The former owner had also said, "[Auroara] lasted a lot longer than the serval I traded for, plus I gave her money!!! Oh well, Carole does like to tell a story." 

Often cubs like her, who prove to be imperfect, are drowned or incinerated, so there is no doubt that Auroara was rescued, but here is where the guilt sets in​​;​ I enabled the trade by giving them an outlet for getting rid of a tiger cub they didn’t want and I sent a Serval into a pet home.  I don’t know what ever became of the Serval and haven’t been able to track down this outfit.  Back then we believed that some of the smaller cats could be good pets and should be bred to protect their numbers and believing that bred and sold a small number of smaller cats.

​Is there any actual proof that cubs are drowned or incinerated? Could it be that Carole is just trying to justify her purchase of Auroara and the fact that she traded one of her servals to these people? If she thought these terrible people would drown or "incinerate" cubs, why on earth would she give her one of her own cubs? It's quite likely that this is just another one of Carole's wild self-serving stories.
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​What is a "small number"? Instead of being cryptic, why doesn't she just come right out as state how many cats were bred and sold at her facility?

She claims that she provided Predators Plus with an outlet for getting rid of a cat, but couldn't the same be said about her? Isn't it possible that the owners of the tiger provided Carole an outlet for getting rid of a serval she didn't want. According to Auroara's former owner, the serval didn't last long, whereas Auroara did, so who sold or traded an inferior cub? And if Carole only believed in breeding her animals for conservation why would she sell her cubs to be someones pet?

​In my own defense, I took back every cat who “didn’t work out” so some of the cats at Big Cat Rescue were born here, sold as pets and then came back when they grew up and began to spray and bite.  It was when the Servals and Bobcats began to come back that I came to realize that people just were not willing to make a life time commitment to the cats.  When I lost Don in 1997 we stopped both breeding and selling and began frantically building new cages to separate cats and neutering and spaying as fast as funds would allow.

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​When she "lost" Don? Carole is suspected of being involved in his disappearance. Jack Donald Lewis (Don) wanted a divorce and disappeared after filing for a protection order against Carole (source). According to the document, Don alleged that Carole hid his gun and threatened to kill him.

Carole continued to breed cats until 2001, 4 years after he had disappeared. Carole was the one who forced her cats to spend nights with tourists in rented out cabins (source). According to a Facebook post published on Big Cat Rescue's page, she was having her cats declawed until 2005 (source).

Yet still, even with coming to face my own ignorance and all of the work we have done here to educate the public about why they shouldn’t pay to play with cubs and why they shouldn’t pay to see tigers in performing acts, or pay to see the latest cub at the zoo, or go to movies that use big cats as props, I still carry a tremendous load of guilt for having had ANY part in the trade. It is only now that I am starting to see real change take place that I can speak about Auroara because I see the light at the end of the tunnel.

​Carole was forced to write articles confessing to her "guilt" after she has been constantly exposed for misrepresenting the cats the she purchased and passed off as "rescues" (source). Paying to see big cats perform is bad, but paying to see big cats in cages at her facility is good? Why is one form of exploitation more acceptable than the other? Exploitation is exploitation.

​That is why she came here from Ohio and when she saw what Big Cat Rescuers are doing in educating the public and getting them to sign the letters in the gift shop and sending them to the CatLaws.com site, she knew she had found her calling.  One of the things that helps our cause the most is engaging people in the conversation about white tigers, circus cats, zoos and the exotic pet trade.  We do that well with people who come to us, but we need to take the conversation to where it is happening.

Regarding circuses, many tigers were retired to their facility by Ringling Bros. Circus who paid for the retired cats food and the construction of their cages (source). Using Carole's logic, wasn't she enabling the circus to continue to use big cats by providing them an outlet to get rid of a cat that is no longer usable for performances? As for zoos, Carole actually tried to become accredited by the AZA, but was turned down after failing to meet all of the requirements (source).

​I asked her to sign up for google alerts on keywords like tigers, circus, fur, etc. and then log in to each article and post comments about what people can do to end the trade and suffering.​ This brings me back to the light at the end of the tunnel.  As I read these posts online, I see the trends shifting and see more people opposing the abuse.  We are reaching critical mass in the way people are thinking about wild cats and the way they are treating them.  It takes a long time and many of you have been especially helpful in this arena.

​Big Cat Rescue was previously offering people money to post comments favoring their philosophy in the comment section of articles and popular blogs (source). They even offered extra cash if someone managed to link to their website using the Big Cat Rescue name or an alias. ​How many of the people leaving posts were paid to do so or were just mislead by Big Cat Rescue's lies? ​

​When they do it will stop all of the backyard breeding of tigers.  The wrong has nearly been set right.  When that happens Auroara and all of the other tigers who have passed can truly rest in peace.  We are getting so close to the finish line and it is because we are all working together, overlooking each others shortcomings and focusing on each others strengths that we can end the trade once and for all.

By:  Carole Baskin, Founder and CEO of Big Cat Rescue

​Again, read her 20 year plan (source). She wants all facilities housing and breeding big cats to close down, including accredited zoos that participate in the Species Survival Plan. In that plan she predicts that the plight of wild cats will be a lost cause. Wouldn't many cats go extinct if there are no viable populations of wild cats left and if there is no breeding programs keeping them alive in captivity?

Carole wants you to overlook her "shortcomings" and forget her immoral, unethical past, but as you can see, she continues to misrepresent herself and suppress the truth even today. If you believe in her cause then support it, but do not support the lies and turn a blind eye to any wrongdoings.