Tiger King star Carole Baskin is CLOSING her Big Cat Sanctuary

Tiger King star Carol Baskin has announced she is ready to close her Big Cat Rescue sanctuary in Florida, with the proceeds from the sale of the property going to do “more to save big cats in the wild.”

Baskin’s husband, Howard, said in a statement that the cats will be transferred to the Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge in Arkansas, “where we will continue to fund their care for the rest of their lives.”

The sale of the Florida sanctuary will also be used to fund “species conservation projects in the wild.”

“We have always said that our goal was to ‘go out of business’, meaning there would be no big cats needing to be rescued and there would be no need for the sanctuary to exist,” the memo added.

Baskin rose to fame in 2020 when his bitter feud with convicted felon Joe Exotic was detailed in the hit Netflix documentary ‘Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness’.

35 big cats from Baskin’s Big Cat Rescue sanctuary in Florida will be transported to Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge in Arkansas, pictured

Howard Baskin wrote on the sanctuary’s website that rising expense costs had put considerable financial pressure on the Big Cat Rescue property.

“2023 is going to be the most challenging financial year in the sanctuary’s history,” he said, noting that managing the property has overhead costs of $1.5 million per year, or more than $36,000 per cat.

“As the population declines, it becomes increasingly inefficient to use per-cat donor funds to operate a facility like ours,” the statement continued.

“The win-win solution for both our captive and feral cats is to merge our cat population with the population of another existing accredited sanctuary,” he wrote, with the remaining resources going to projects that help prevent extinction.

“Supporting our cats in larger enclosures at Turpentine Creek, at a much lower cost per cat than we incur by continuing to operate Big Cat Rescue, will free up resources that will allow us to do much more to save big cats in the wild.” .

The sanctuary owner also noted that the passage of the Big Cat Public Safety Act in 2021, which prohibited unlicensed individuals from owning animals, contributed to the property’s closure.

The rapid popularity of the ‘Tiger King’ documentary, which was viewed by more than 34.3 million people in its first 10 days in the US, according to data firm Nielsen, highlighted the issue of copyright ownership. big cats and led to the passage of the bill. step in Congress.

‘With the passage of the BCPSA, we expect the need for bailouts to decrease over the next decade. If the need continued at the rate we saw up until a few years ago, we would be making a different decision,” the statement read.

The Baskins’ memo added that because the legislation has “ended most abuse of big cats,” their resources can now be used for “one third of our mission”: donating to projects that save cats. of extinction.

Howard Baskin, left, said legislation passed in 2021 helped end the abuse of big cats in the US, which also contributed to a decreased need for sanctuaries.

Carol Baskin, pictured in the second season of Tiger King, has announced that her Florida estate is closing, with 2023 expected to be “the most challenging financial year in the sanctuary’s history.”

Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge announced the partnership in a Facebook post Thursday, saying it would help build “a sustainable future for animal rescue.”

The sanctuary will house 35 cats from the Baskins’ Florida estate.

“He approached the Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge and was asked to accept the remaining BCR cats,” the ad read.

‘BCR no longer performs rescues and will change its targets. There is no professional affiliation between the ownership, operations or management of TCWR and BCR.’

Baskin recently captured headlines when footage of her claiming that her ex-husband, whom Joe Exotic accused of murdering, was still alive.

A 2021 interview was uncovered showing the executive director of the big cat sanctuary claiming that her missing — and presumed dead — husband had been found alive in Costa Rica.

Baskin has protested her innocence for years since ‘Tiger King’ Joe Exotic claimed she murdered her ex-husband Jack ‘Don’ Lewis, who mysteriously disappeared in 1997.

And while Baskin continues to fight the allegations, his arch-rival Joe Exotic has claimed he lives “at the bottom of hell” while behind bars in an Atlanta federal prison.

Exotic, 59, whose real name is Joseph Maldonado-Passage, was convicted and sentenced to 22 years in prison on 17 federal counts of animal cruelty and two counts of attempted murder for hire stemming from his feud with Baskin.