Who said anything about slavery here? Slavery is a human term that describes an unwilling subversion of one human to another. If someone is treating their animals with respect, they are not generally ‘unwilling’ to be with people, even if their ultimate goal is to be on my dinnerpate. The AR folks have been misusing ’slavery’, ‘geoncide’ and several other disgusting terms in an attempt to get you to believe there is a ‘holocaust’ out there. People take their word because they can’t immediately see the places they describe. I will not say that animal abuse doesn’t exist; it is just far less prevalent than the AR people with their loaded words would have you to believe.

And Speciesism? If you read my previous posts, you know I am a lion keeper and enthusiast. but that doesn’t mean I hold anything against other animal species. Most people who care about a specific kind or kinds of animals also care in general for all other animal species. And, you cannot label anyone who works with an animals in multiple ways a speciest, either. For instance. a deer is a beautiful animal that fills an important ecological niche. I love watching the wild deer who frequent my property.They are also wonderful petting zoo animals, and kids love to be with them. And the deer like being around the kids, becsue they get attention. Deer also make excellent food for both me and the lions, and their soft skin makes an excellent leather.

So yes, I have a Constitutionally guaranteed right to own a lion or what ever animal I choose. But, I also the have aresponsibility to properly care for the animal(s) I have, and I take this responsibility very seriously. If a person can properly care for animal, they should be able to own it, without society or extremists questioning them. And few people did question responsible animal owners until the last few decades, when the extremist AR folks came along. Extremism benefits no one but the extremists.

I do not own big cats, but I do own fennec foxes. I know that in the wild they only live an average of 3-4 years. In captivity they can live up to 14. In captivity they do not need to worry about disease, poachers, hunters, traps, starvation, shelter, injury, infection, etc. My fennec fox loves people, loves his nice, comfy pillow and his sunny windowsill. He loves his treats and toys. I am quite sure he is much more happy than he would be in the wild, where he would just be trying to survive. I doubt cats - big or small - feel any different. I am generally against removing an animal from the wild to make it a pet, but I am also highly against taking away a pet and trying to force it into wild behaviors. Let wild animals remain wild as much as possible, and let captive animals remain in the care of their owners.

Responsible pet owners love and care for their pets, and take care of them accordingly. Irresponsible ones do not, and these are the ones that make the news and add fuel to the AR propaganda. Think of it this way: if there really are 20,000+ tigers in the USA (as AR groups are so very fond of saying, despite the fact that there is no basis at all for this number) and only 1 person is killed by a tiger every year or two, and you only hear about “abused” or “neglected” tigers once or twice a year, then it is actually a fairly safe situation - both for the tigers and for the owners.

Let me tell the audience something: Being a pet is a great deal for the animal. Very nearly every one of them loves human company. Humans do a lot of good for the animals, like curing diseases. helping them develop more genetic variety, and supporting a lot more of them in comfort than can be supported by nature unaided. Humans are able to be the best that nature has produced, and the animal rights people have constantly downgraded humanity’s contributions.

Steve is wrong, the Centers for Consumer Freedom have done a lot of work to document crimes committed by animal rights, including felony arson and terrorism. It has also documented comments that contradict Rob’s statement. It sounds like Rob either lies for the animal rights activists or doesn’t know what they are about. Both Ingrid Newkirk and Wayne Pacelle have stated that they want an end to all ownership of animals. Anyone who says that they just want better treatment for animals is either lying or ignorant.

Carole Baskin is so ashamed of her extinction plan that she had it taken down from her website after word of it got around. It is something to be ashamed of. There are still many endangered and threatened animals living in captivity in the U.S., in greater numbers than the zoos can support when they spend hundreds of thousands of dollars per animal just making fancy enclosures. Carole Baskin is horribly negative against pet owners and apparently to her every pet owner who doesn’t suck up to her or give her money is scum. The consequences of laws that she wants passed include the death of a lot of perfectly healthy animals that could be used as breeding stock to restore the numbers of several threatened species, and to preserve their genome.

But really, people who own animals have a lot to be proud of. Taking good care of an animal is something to be proud of. The good that animal owners do is enough to justify the attitude that humans should be allowed to own any animal that they can keep alive and healthy. This is pretty much any animal and it definitely includes tigers.

There’s not a lot of pride in letting animal rights activists make us feel guilty over issues that they knowingly and deliberately use to harm good people. The unwarranted negativity of the animal rights activists proves that they are not qualified to make such judgments. Carole Baskin certainly isn’t. Also, the big cats lose when private owners are forced to destroy their animals. To follow a negative and delusional ideology, Carole Baskin and other people who work with her have forced the destruction of a lot of animals, intend to force the destruction of a lot more animals, and they intend to monopolize what is left of the trade and own the Species Survival Plans. In a few years people will be on a new environmental kick and the “great Restoration” will be the big thing for government to pour billions of dollars into. Seriously, once there is a president of the U.S. who vouches for people like Baskin and says that this is our highest priority, there will be so much money poured into AZA accredited programs to restore species that the unscrupulous will be able to steal billions, and it won’t be accounted for any better than the money that was thrown at AIDS. In order to get at this money, various people (you know who you are) have done what it takes to trample the civil rights of owners, lied and lied and lied, had people’s stuff set on fire, and God knows what else in order to set it up so that a very few owners of sanctuaries are allowed to have fertile animals. Every law that Baskin asks for has unconstitutional exemptions for AZA certified businesses.

you are stating things as facts but aren’t backing them up. using consumer freedom as a resource does not give your argument merit. my argument is people’s intentions. not all businessmen are animal abusers, obviously, but when your business is to make a profit, then anything that does not lead to making money (such as animal welfare) can and many times take a back seat. otherwise, the businessman would be out of a job. anyone with a basic understanding of capitalism or share-holding understands that. your arguments are showing me your intentions are simply for your own benefit. you save and animal by rescuing it from an abusive situation. you don’t save an animal by keeping it captive and breeding more of them. that is NOT saving an animal. that’s creating more to be kept captive. if by some rare chance you’re reintroducing them to their safe natural habitat, then that’s one thing. otherwise it’s not to their own benefit but yours.

http://www.casperstartribune.net/articles/2007/07/19/news/regional/5c5f8ca0aa1611cd8725731c006eacb9.txt

Now, on Crol Baskin’s comments. First of all, leave quantum physics to the physicists! What you view as victories for the cats is actually a step closer to the realization of your ‘20 year plan’. This plan calls for the total eradication of captive big cats. Since the wild populations of these animals is disappearing about as fast as you are reading this, this is nothing but MANAGED EXTINCTION. Make no doubt about it, we need captive populations of big cats in order for thes species to survive. We need more than the handful kept by large, well financed zoos. Many more.

I do not see why you are equating social causes with big cat ownership. Most thinking people would have a huge problem with slavery to begin with. It divided our country from day one. Women’s rights was something that came about to correct heinous abuses of women that dated from an earlier age. We are talking about ENSLAVING OR BEATING OTHER HUMAN BEINGS BECAUSE WE CAN here. This is human rights, and few would agree that these old practices should come back. But with animals, it is different. Powerful lobbyists are trying to take away our right to responsibly own and use animals. For me, this means lions. I am not practicing lion-beating. I am not torturing lions. I am not depriving them of any important thing. These animals adapt quite well to captivity, and can be very happy when around those they love. (The animal rights people constantly forget about the ability of animals, especially higher animals, to adapt to new conditions and thrive in those conditions.) The ownership of animals goes back to the dawn of human civilization. Slavery and wife-beating do too, but those practices were barbaric to many even in those days. Owning animals, even exotics (BTW, ‘exotic’ is an artificial term made up by man that has no reality in the animal world. An animal is an animal. Animals know nothing about man-given labels.) is a FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT as discussed in the Declaration of Independence.

You call the banning of the responsible ownership of big cats a ‘win’. Why is it a win? IS a win when people cannot cherish the powerful relationships you can buiild with these animaIs? (Which, BTW is as good for the animal as it is for the keeper.) Is it a win when all the cats have died off, and enough are not left to sustain the species? Is it a win when children can only look at pictures of big cats in books or on the internet? Is it a win when all the ‘real’ cats that are left are pelts and mounts in museums?

The time is going to come when many of these places that have banned keeping big cats are going to wake up and realize they have been duped. Then, you will see these laws dropping off the books. It has already happened in Missouri. The ban passed in Arkansas has unfixable loopholes to the point they can hardly enforce it.

Extremist positions are never around for very long. Such will be the case with these exotic animal bans. There is another kind of critical mass already at work. This is animal owners of all stripe. More and more, dog owners are working to protect the rights of a lion owner to own their lions. The lion owner is working to protect the dog owners rights. The ban-backers might have lots of money, and know how to lie to legislators. The animal owners have the TRUTH about these matters, and they vastly outnumber those who back these extremist bans. Now, THATS CRITICAL MASS!

They never want to admit that there is such a thing as responsible exotic owners that care for and love their animals. They want to paint all exotic animal owners as exploiters and animal abusers. The AR groups and lobbyist want people and legislatures to ignore facts, to solely act on emotion and a false sense of fear.

It is an extremist attitude that wants everyone to think the way they do, to try and force their will on others by laws or force. Hence they are dictating what they believe is right, and taking away the freedom of choice.

According to the Internet dictionary, the definition of Critical Mass is: 1. The minimum quantity of fissile material required for a nuclear chain reaction. 2. The minimum amount of people with shared understanding to tip the balance and instigate change.

When a proportionately small fraction of electrons line up in an atom it creates an invisible force that causes all of the other electrons to snap into the same line. When enough people begin to think in certain ways, and reach a critical mass, then all of a sudden all of society begins to align that way. Changes that happen in one place begin to happen all over the world at the same time. Slavery began to be stopped in England in 1807 and around the middle of the 19th century, not only here, but in Asia, Africa and Indonesia because the belief emerged that this was no longer something we could tolerate. It started because one man, William Wilberforce, began to change the way the English viewed slavery and the rest of the world snapped into alignment.

Quantum Physics is not only stranger than you think it is, but it is stranger than you can think. It shatters the illusion of our separateness. If enough of us believe that something is intolerable we all begin to act that way.

The state of your life is nothing more than a reflection of your state of mind. The state of the world is nothing more than a collective state of mind.

The mass of changes that have taken place over just the past few years illustrate this, such as the falling of dictatorships in the Philippines, Nicaragua, Romania and Bulgaria, and the falling of the Berlin wall. These crises were all resolved with hardly a bullet being shed. It wasn’t as if the people in power all got together and said we shouldn’t be treating people this way. The new consciousness came about because enough of us began to align ourselves and out of that alignment came new leaders.

If you saw the recent movie called Amazing Grace, you may remember that in 1824 William Wilberforce started the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. It was the beginning of a change in consciousness toward animals. Up until 1920 women weren’t allowed to vote because they were thought to be irrational creatures and not as intelligent as men. The movement for female equality began in the 1500’s, but it wasn’t until 400 years later that it became law. We are seeing the same changes in attitudes toward the animals.

Big Cats have had big wins in the past couple of years. It began in 2003 with a law to ban the sale of big cats across state lines as pets. Since then eight states, including AR, IA, IN, KY, LA, MD, NY and WA have banned the keeping of big cats as pets. Three countries including Africa, Australia and Ireland and 12 communities in Canada have banned the keeping of big cats as pets. Five countries, including Brazil, Croatia, India, Scotland, the UK and 20 communities in Canada have banned circuses that use big cats in their performances. Six states, including AL, IN, MT, NY, OR and WA have banned killing exotic animals in canned hunts and 27 states, including AL, CA, IA, IL, KY, LA, MD, MS, NH, NJ, NM, OR, RI, SC, TX, WI & WY have banned killing animals over the Internet. Scores of cities and counties have also enacted similar protective measures for the cats and many more have bills that are currently pending.

Please visit http://www.CatLaws.com today and support Haley’s Act, which is a bill that would end the use of baby big cats in photo booths and petting sessions. These cubs can only be used for a couple of months and then are discarded. You can help save them from lives of suffering with just a few mouse clicks at http://www.CatLaws.com

The reason bans are being enacted is because the public knows that legislation cannot change the heart, but it can restrain the heartless.

The big lie, repeated on lots of pro-exploitation sites, is that animal advocates want to deprive people of their pets. No reference or proof is given for this, and none could be, because it is a complete fabrication. Ingrid Newkirk, head of PETA, has cats. My wife and I have dogs. In my experience, animal advocates are actually more likely to have pets.

What we do object to is the idea that having a pet is just having a piece of property that one is free to abuse and mistreat. When animal exploiters say that animal advocates are against owning pets, that’s what they mean: They want to be left alone to irresponsibly exploit animals, rather than responsibly share their lives and homes with other living, feeling beings.

I’m so glad you said it Z the way it really is. This way it doesn’t sound so much like I’m whining about myself. But the fact is two years ago, I accepted the appointment to the Captive Wildlife Technical Advisory Group. Since we met approximtely every 5 weeks for 3 days, I could not get a job. Who is going to hire you if you say “oh, by the way I need 3 days off every month”. Then when the Python Bill came out, I spent 100% of my lobbying time dog trailing it so no other species would be added. I had no time for other clients and therefore made zero salary. I tried that summer to get ANY kind of job, and maybe its where I live but nothing came through, absolutely nothing. I did the same again this year, with zero salary, and now I ask you to look at what has happened. I was right, I was not wasting my time, that bill did get totally screwed up and I fought till I bled (with no help). I did everything I could to fight that addition of Class I Mammals, on a Reptile bill then when it passed anyway I worked 2 more months trying to get the Governor to veto it. Only about 5 people also wrote veto letters to the Governor and some just used my form letter. Now I’m doing everything I can to “guilt” the Commissioners into grandfathering us in.

Where has this got me? No income for 2 years. I just had a house fire. Computer crash Sometimes stay up 24 hours cleaning and trying to repair my house and still find a job. My personal business account is almost empty, and so is the Cougar Ridge Account.

Ironically, I probably will be the first to lose my animals because my house will be foreclosed on. Like a big dummy I thought if I did the “right thing” something would happen to get me through. Instead a $5000 cougar surgery, $2000 well pump, no job luck, house fire, and yesterday the plumbing broke. I can only send emails with no attachments and certainly can’t afford repair or a new one.

Two wonderful couples each sent me $200 during session actually apologizing it wasn’t more but wanted to help. No one else lent a dime and now I face ruin. Even cooperation was awful. THEY told ME what to do and they know nothing about lobbying (you know I’ve done it for 25 years). Sometimes against my advice they would do things or make calls that only worsened the situation.

Now I’m scared. If I manage to pull through It will be with a full time job and I want be able to lobby for free. I won’t be able to go to the capitol at all! So… who is going to step in? Who even knows how? To speak selfishly, I will have already lost everything for my stupidity in giving too much, so it won’t matter to me.

It’s time people woke up. Writing to each other doesn’t get anything done. It just makes YOU feel better. Start raising funds and hire a lobbyist. It is the only way this will really work. I cannot beat this into everyone’s head’s enough. They all think its because I want the job. Hey!!! I can’t take it now! I have to get a “real” every day job. I’ve never been so disgusted and depressed. I keep getting emails about Carol and this and that and that I MUST write a response. Dammit!!!! I’m trying to survive I don’t have time to do that kind of stuff. Thank god I saw this because it is worth responding to. Everyone else can do the other work they have so much free time for. I’m going back to repairing my kitching, cleaning soot off of everything, wall, furniture, carpet in every room; and find a job and some food for the cats.
Good Luck,
Glo