Biden Signs Tiger King Bill Into Law

Remember March 2020, after we have been all caught inside watching a kooky homosexual large cat proprietor do battle with one other kooky tiger-print-wearing large cat sanctuary proprietor? One of these catty characters simply scored an enormous win in Washington.

On Tuesday, President Joe Biden signed into law H.R. 263, often called the “Big Cat Public Safety Act,” which places a slew of latest amendments on an older regulation that regulates wildlife trafficking. The legislation bans personal residents from breeding, buying, and transporting large cats, mandates homeowners register animals they already personal, successfully phasing out personal possession of huge cats. The invoice, which unanimously handed the Senate earlier this month, additionally restricts public contact with six species: lions, tigers, cougars, leopards, snow leopards, and jaguars.

The invoice’s journey has been an extended, odd one, and was partially documented within the hit 2020 Netflix miniseries “Tiger King.” Carole Baskin, the proprietor of a Tampa-based large cat sanctuary and an animal rights activist, was one of many key advocates for the invoice’s passage. In the sequence, Baskin was filmed touring to Congress to foyer for the rights of huge cats, sporting her signature animal print clothes.

The Netflix present centered on the rivalry between Baskin and Joseph Maldonado-Passage, in any other case often called Joe Exotic, who owned an animal park in Oklahoma that Baskin alleged exploited and abused large cats. In response to Baskin’s allegations in regards to the welfare of his animals, Maldonado-Passage made claims within the documentary that Baskin had fed the physique of her former husband to the cats on her property.

The sorts of amenities that the regulation would be the most damaging to—roadside zoos and different small, personal animal parks that encourage petting cubs—are, just like the cats they home, endangered. Marty Irby, govt director of Animal Wellness Action, told E&E News that the variety of all these institutions is already a lot smaller than when the primary model of the invoice was launched greater than a decade in the past. Back then, Irby mentioned, there have been greater than 60 cub-petting institutions throughout the nation; now, the quantity is within the single digits.

“Public awareness has shut down most of them already, and Covid had an impact on closing a few of them, as well,” Irby advised E&E.

Cub petting and cubs used for photograph alternatives are thought of the most damaging practices to encourage breeding and promoting large cats, for the reason that infants rapidly mature previous the age when it’s protected to work together with them—and develop into much less helpful as they age and get bigger. There are round 340 amenities within the nation which have licenses to breed and present large cats; these amenities must implement a 15-foot barrier between the general public and the cats transferring ahead.

At the tip of the Netflix sequence, Maldonado-Passage was charged with hiring two males to homicide Baskin and was sentenced to greater than 20 years in jail in 2019. Since the sequence’s finish, Baskin has been on its subsequent sequence in addition to “Dancing with the Stars” and has given generously to political candidates throughout each events. In a video posted to Facebook earlier this month celebrating the invoice’s passage out of the Senate, Baskin, sitting in entrance of a tiger-striped and leopard-spotted curtain, mentioned her years of advocacy for this laws had made her the goal of “narcissistic, abusive, dangerous men” concerned within the large cat commerce.

“I am thankful that apparently, I am harder to intimidate and kill than some thought!” she mentioned.