Tiger King star Carole Baskin is CLOSING her Big Cat Sanctuary

Tiger King star Carol Baskin has announced she is set to close her Big Cat Rescue sanctuary in Florida, with proceeds from the property’s sale going towards doing ‘more to save big cats in the wild’.

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

The Florida sanctuary’s sale will also be used to finance ‘species-saving projects in the wild’. 

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

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

Carol Baskin and her husband Howard, pictured together, have announced that they are closing their Florida big cat sanctuary

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 mounting expense costs had placed considerable financial pressure on the Big Cat Rescue estate. 

‘2023 is going to be the most challenging financial year in the history of the sanctuary’, he said, noting that running the property has overhead costs of $1.5 million per year, or over $36,000 per cat. 

‘As the population declines, it becomes an increasingly inefficient use of donor funds per cat to operate a facility like ours,’ the statement continued. 

‘The win-win solution both for our captive cats and the cats in the wild is for us to merge our cat population with the population at another existing accredited sanctuary,’ he wrote, with the remaining resources going to projects helping stave off extinction. 

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

The sanctuary owner also pointed to the 2021 passage of the Big Cat Public Safety Act, which prohibited unlicensed individuals from owning the animals, as contributing to the estate’s closure. 

The rapid popularity of the ‘Tiger King’ documentary, which was viewed by upwards of 34.3 million people in its first 10 days in the US, according to data firm Nielsen, brought the issue of big cat ownership into the spotlight and led to the bill’s passage in Congress. 

‘With the passage of the BCPSA we expect the need for rescues to decline over the coming decade. If the need were going to continue at the pace 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 of the abuse of big cats’, their resources were able to now be used for ‘the third prong of our mission’ – donating to projects saving cats from extinction. 

Howard Baskin, left, said legislation passed in 2021 helped end big cat abuse in the US, which also contributed to less need for sanctuaries

Carol Baskin, pictured in the second season of Tiger King, has announced her Florida property is set to close, with 2023 expected to be ‘the most challenging financial year in the history of the sanctuary’

Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge announced the partnership in a Facebook post Thursday, which they maintained would help build ‘a sustainable future for animals rescue’. 

The sanctuary will be taking in 35 cats from the Baskins’ Florida property.  

‘Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge was approached and asked to take in BCR remaining cats,’ the announcement read. 

‘BCR no longer conducts rescues and will be pivoting their goals. There is no professional affiliation between TCWR’s ownership, operations, or management and BCR.’ 

Baskin recently captured headlines when footage of her claiming her ex-husband, who she was accused of murdering by rival Joe Exotic, was still alive. 

An interview from 2021 was unearthed showing the big cat sanctuary CEO alleging that her missing – and reportedly 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 combat the allegations, her archrival Joe Exotic has claimed he is living ‘in the bottom of hell’ as he remains 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 charges of animal abuse and two counts of attempted murder for hire stemming from his feud with Baskin.