The Honest Truth About Carole Baskin

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 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 such as ourselves 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, Auroara was purchased for $1,800 on 3/22/96 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.

Continuing further down the article, Carole appears to be lessening the severity of her wrongs by attempting to pass them off as just her being ignorant. 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 after it consumed parts of the harness in an attempt to free itself.

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?

Was she "misled and lied to" when she recently allowed a bobcat kitten infected with a highly contagious virus to nurse with domesticated kittens?

So for those of you that have participated in cub interactions, 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 visitors and donors are told? A Big Cat Rescue tour guide has been caught on video lying about how a black leopard named Jumanji arrived at their facility. Another cat that has been lied about is a recently deceased tiger named Shere Khan. Carole had 148 cats, almost all of them purchased, which were referred to as her "collection" when she decided to simply convert them to "rescues", invent stories of abusive situations, and charged people to see them.

In the case of Auroara the guilt didn’t fade for decades. It wasn’t suppressed by giving her a good home. It didn’t begin to diminish until the wrong was set right, or nearly so anyway.

When exactly did she start feeling guilty? Before or after Auroara died? Did she feel guilty because she purchased Auroara and lied to donors that she was rescued from horrible breeders (which is exactly what she herself was)? If so, does she feel the same about all the other cats she bought?

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.

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. Read Jumanji's earlier biographies and you will find where she mention taking cats out to meet the public, yet she wants you to believe that she was "horrified" that someone else would do this.

As they toured us through their facility I was horrified to see the tigers behind the scenes. Because the big money makers were white tigers they were inbreeding like mad to improve their ratio of white to golden cubs. Back then we didn’t know that is how white tigers were developed and they didn’t admit to it, but seeing first hand all of the abnormalities got me to wondering why.

Did you know, Big Cat Rescue participated in a study about white tigers. The study concluded that "there is not a significant difference between white tigers and orange tigers in terms of heterozygosity."

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.

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? Bengals certainly weren't endangered and aren't found in the wild since they are hybrid domesticated cats. Carole Baskin doesn't believe in the Species Survival Program as stated in her 20 year plan. "Back then" Carole herself was known for wanting to breed hybrids and for buying, breeding, and selling sick cubs.

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. Carole Baskin had no problem exploiting Auroara for magazine photo-shoots. According to Auroara's former owner, Auroara was not cross eyed or inbred. She says, "[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 hers? More likely this is just another of Carole's wild self-serving stories.

What is a "small number"? Carole was a prolific breeder and many people complained they were sold sick cubs from her. Couldn't the same be said about Carole? 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 for conservation why did she constantly breed and sell her cubs as pets?

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.

When she "lost" Don? Carole is suspected of being involved in his disappearance. Don wanted a divorce and disappeared after asking for an order of protection from Carole. In the filing Don alleged that Carole hid his gun and threatened to kill him. Carole continued to breed cats until 2001, 4 years after don disappeared. Carole was the one who forced her cats to spend nights with paying visitors in rented cabins. She also kept declawing her cats until 2005.

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 was exposed for lying about buying cats and saying they were rescued and for breeding cubs to use for her bed and breakfast and then telling donors they were "born into the pet trade." She sold sick cubs, people were being injured at her bed and breakfast, she was turned down to be licensed by AZA as a zoo. What choice did she have but to exhibit her cats and charge the public to see them, or pay for their care herself. She claims to be against exploiting big cats for money even though she does just that. Exploitation is exploitation. She inherited millions after her husband disappeared so she could care for her cats without exploiting them.

I spent 3 hours with one of our new AdvoCats. She had been volunteering at a big cat sanctuary and was proud of it until she came for a tour of Big Cat Rescue. She was on the 1:30 tour and said that their cages, their tours and their interaction policies are very similar to ours but what just blew her away was that the tour guide wasn’t just telling people about where the cats came from but was giving the guests specific steps they could take to end the trade. In all of her time volunteering at the other facility no one ever spoke to her about how to end the trade. As she would tell her friends and work collegues about the place they would often comment that it just sounded like a bandaid on the problem and that got her to wondering what she could do to be a part of the solution.

I'm not sure why anyone would be blown away since the tour guides often hid or lied about where their cats came from, and lying by omission is still lying. This is not to blame the tour guides as they only repeat what they are told. After learning the truth about BCR many stay the course anyway out of their love for working with big cats.

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.

We already shed light on the study BCR participated in that counters everything they say about white tigers. Many cats were retired to BCR by Ringling Bros circus who paid for their food and for their cages to be built, yet these cats too were touted as rescues. Using Carole's logic, wasn't she enabling the circus to continue to use big cats by accepting money to care for the ones they retired? Yet she was upset when the circus began retiring their cats to another facility, as this arrangement allowed Carole to both profit off of exhibiting the cats and get paid to care for them. Carole desperately wanted to become a zoo yet after being turned down twice for accreditation BCR is now totally against reputable zoos that participate in the species survival program. If she couldn't become a zoo she would turn against zoos.

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.

She paid people to go the articles and post comments. She paid extra if they linked to her website. How many of those people are paid to leave comments or were mislead by BCR's lies?

Thanks to all of the letters that you have written and those you have encouraged our guests to write, the USFWS took public comment in June 2010 to rescind the “generic tiger” exemption. Big Cat Rescuers have been the force that has caused them to reconsider this and will be the force that gets enough people to write the USFWS to get them rescind the exemption. More than 15,000 of you did, and yet today, in 2015, the USFWS still hasn’t implemented the final rule to end the rampant breeding of inbred and cross bred tigers.

Carole Baskin often gets her followers to harass businesses that don't accept her ideology. Many of the people writing those letters don't even live in this country and most do not know the truth about Carole Lewis Baskin and Big Cat Rescue. If they did, many would not be blindly led by her.

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. She wants all facilities housing and breeding big cats to close down, including the most reputable zoos. In that plan she also stated the plight of wild cats will be a lost cause. So dwindling wild cat populations plus no species survival propagation will eventually lead to extinction.

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 support it, but do not support the lies, the deceit, and the fraud that is Carole Baskin and Big Cat Rescue.

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

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