(Moderator Note - this discussion was moved from the Shambala News thread because it is a topic unto itself) I agree with your stance on the anti-zoo thing, but surely you support their stand on big cat breeding in private ownership which from this side of the pond seems rampant, uncontrolled and unregulated.
It is NOT rampant, uncontrolled and unregulated. That is a lie that sanctuaries like this perpetuate and the media buys into without even checking. For example one of their (sanctuaries and animal rights extremists) favorite claims is there are more tigers living in backyards in Texas (between 3,000 and 5,000) than remain in the wild. Feline Conservation Federation did an extensive survey and found a total of only 300 tigers in Texas, most of them in zoos.
@AD, indeed fact-checking and finding ain't the biggest asset of the animal rightist movement. Unfortunately, their media presence and lack of engagement to get the facts out and communicated properly makes it come out like it is a reality (as opposed to a dreamworld ... by pressure group members' privately held perceptions). BTW: I am not saying pressure and public interest groups are necessarily not a good thing, they are. However, one needs to separate the chaff from the corn here.
I know you like repeating that, but just because this one organisation conducted a "survey" (in 2011) doesn't make it true. They got their information solely through Freedom Of Information requests. You know what that proves? How many registered tigers there are in the USA. Nothing more. That's like conducting a survey on how many undocumented immigrants there are in the USA by only recording the numbers of legal immigrants. Until recently (possibly still - I'm not sure if the law has actually caught up with their intention to enforce it), only pure-bred tigers were covered by legislation of the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Generic tigers in private hands are basically a big unknown in the USA - that's where the rampant speculation comes from, because they are unregulated (in some states, literally so). Nobody knows how many there really are.
If no one knows how many there are, then how are they coming up with the figure of 3,000 to 5,000? (Not a sarcastic reply, I honestly would like to know). As far as I can tell, no one has produced documentation of any kind to back it up.
I dunno. Made it up? Extrapolation? The point isn't that the other claim is correct - because the numbers are actually unknown - the point is that counting how many registered tigers there are in the USA proves only how many registered tigers there are in the USA. That's why almost all the tigers in the "survey" were in zoos and sanctuaries. It is an even more dishonest claim than that of the animal rights organisations in a way, because they are putting it across as a scientifically-arrived fact. I found it kind of ironic that in your post you railed against "a lie that sanctuaries like this perpetuate and the media buys into without even checking" - and then did exactly the same thing yourself simply because the source was one you liked.
