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As the new year begins, it’s a great time to consider what you stand for and how that impacts the world around you. You know the dollar has power, and the way you spend your money affects the supply and demand. Dollars decide which products are available in your grocery store. They dictate the songs we hear on the radio and the movies at the box office. They motivate legislation, and they can be the deciding factor for which businesses stay, and which go. Using that tool as leverage, when you refuse to engage in activities that exploit animals, the demand deminishes. One less animal will suffer, and you’ve just shaped the world, just a little bit. 

Don’t pay to pet a tiger cub or have your photo taken with it.

Cub-petting facilities capitalize on animal-lovers’ insatiable need for cute and make millions of dollars per year. The cubs are only useful to businesses for four weeks of their lives, when they are small enough to handle. Once they get too large and aggressive, they are discarded to the pet trade market or roadside zoos. Some are sadly euthanized. 

• Cubs may be underfed or declawed 
• Cubs are stripped away from their mothers almost immediately 
• Mothers are breeding far more often than nature intended 
• Cubs are discarded after just a few weeks

Caprichio Tiger was a pay-to-pet cub. He was malnourished, without proper vet care, and now he suffers from metabolic bone disease, a life-long illness that causes pain. We keep him happy and comfortable with therapy, enrichment, regular vet checks, and medication.

Saber Tiger is a former magic-show tiger, whose teeth were ground down and claws removed to make him “safer”

Don’t participate in trophy or canned hunts

Since there have been weapons, people have killed animals. Some do it for food, but others do it for trophies, like lions and elephants. Often times, canned hunting facilities will let paying customers choose an animal out of as book, and then drive you to that animal so it can be shot. There are around 1,800 huntable male lions in Africa, and trophy hunting claims an unsustainable 665 of them per year.

Trophy hunters lead people to believe that a lion’s value will increase in order to influence rural communities to conserve the big cats. This is a misconception, as there is no scientific proof backing this practice.Trophy hunting hasn’t proven itself a sustainable venture. It also features several harmful facets, such as baiting lions out of protected areas, exceeding the quota and destroying prides’ males. As a result, young males are removed from the possibility of reproduction.

Laws and Legislation

Each of the fifty states in America has different laws regarding the ownership of wild animals. Some states, such as North Carolina, Alabama, Wisconsin and Nevada, have absolutely no legislation, allowing anyone to own whatever animals they want, however they want. Does this mean there’s a lion living next to your child’s school? What about the police officer that unknowingly encounters a tiger in a home where he is called for a domestic disturbance? Is it legal to have a lion as a haunted house prop? Answer: YES! Sebastian Lion was used in a haunted house in Texas, where he terrified patrons on a daily basis. 

It’s only a matter of time before something terrible happens and someone accidently gets hurt. Contact your legislature, vote for bills that regulate ownership, reduce exploitation and improve animal welfare.

One last thing? Support the formerly exploited animals at Carolina Tiger Rescue, plan to visit or volunteer to care for them. We couldn’t do it without you!