lion shot in california?

We love them, but they can't love us. They are not our friends, our kin spirits, or our God's (and we certainly aren't theirs-my Dog's devotion aside); they are wild animals and we disrespect millions of years of natural selection or six days of creation if we behave otherwise. Fetishizing big cats and other powerful beasts has a powerful, spiritual grip on the human psyche....it can manifest itself on a cave wall, or a hunter's trophy room, a Las Vegas stage, or a Chinese traditional medicine shop. Sadly, and oftentimes just as tragically for the animal,it manifests in the naive hearts of their admirers. I hope she has found her peaceable kingdom.
 
This is not a proper sanctuary and was a tragedy waiting to happen..

at this stage it's unclear what prompted the attack
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err ... woman going into enclosure maybe! :eek:
 
I thought this bit was interesting:
Officials at another sanctuary, Big Cat Rescue in Tampa, Florida, told the Associated Press in 2012 that at least 21 people, including five children, had been killed and 246 mauled by exotic cats in the US since 1990. Over that period 254 cats escaped and 143 were killed.
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HELLO people out there...time and time again I guess people of the public and apparently trainers forget these animals have a wild mentality and are not tamed. I get annoyed reading these stories as I feel bad for the animal and what ends up happening in the end to the animal.
 
OK - let me stop the rumor mill you are all starting and give you the facts. (I also briefly posted this on the Cat Haven news thread).

1) They do NOT condone going in with their lions (or tigers or jaguars). The intern was cleaning the main enclosure, the lion was feeding in its lockout area, and somehow it escaped into the main enclosure.

2) Cat Haven is a professional facility set up solely to support conservation. They support numerous field projects and probably donate a higher percentage of their overall income to conservation than just about any other zoo.

3) The facility quoted about the number of attacks - Big Cat Rescue - is a notorious anti-zoo facility that is trying to stop breeding of all exotic cats and to shut down all non-AZA zoos. (Only because they know the AZA is too big to take on). Think about their quote - 21 deaths since 1990 - that is an average of only one per year. Do you think one death a year in a country of 300 million is an epidemic that needs to be stopped? Why isn't BCR trying to ban automobiles that kill people every day?

I am a personal friend of Cat Haven founder Dale Anderson and I can assure you they are a first rate facility. This was a terrible accident - I am sure no one feels as bad about it as he does - but it was just that, an accident.
 
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Arizona Docent said:
1) They do NOT condone going in with their lions (or tigers or jaguars). The intern was cleaning the main enclosure, the lion was feeding in its lockout area, and somehow it escaped into the main enclosure.
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The BBC site says the lion got his paw under the door to its feeding enclosure while his big enclosure was being cleaned and escaped to where the woman.
 
Thanks Arizona. I admit I have a bit of Treadwell-itist when I see these stories. My apologies.
 
Arizona Docent said:
3) The facility quoted about the number of attacks - Big Cat Rescue - is a notorious anti-zoo facility that is trying to stop breeding of all exotic cats and to shut down all non-AZA zoos. (Only because they know the AZA is too big to take on). Think about their quote - 21 deaths since 1990 - that is an average of only one per year. Do you think one death a year in a country of 300 million is an epidemic that needs to be stopped? Why isn't BCR trying to ban automobiles that kill people every day?
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that may be the case but it also said 246 people were "mauled", which averages about eleven people per year, and 254 cats escaped which averages about eleven escapes per year. I just thought it was interesting and a bit alarming that there are such high figures, although I don't doubt that their definition of mauling probably includes minor scratches and that "cats" probably includes small as well as big cats.
 
Chlidonias said:
that may be the case but it also said 246 people were "mauled", which averages about eleven people per year, and 254 cats escaped which averages about eleven escapes per year. I just thought it was interesting and a bit alarming that there are such high figures, although I don't doubt that their definition of mauling probably includes minor scratches and that "cats" probably includes small as well as big cats.
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But like Docent said lots of numbers are thrown out when it comes to any statistic you can imagine but its hard to appreciate the scale of 300 million.
 
tschandler71 said:
But like Docent said lots of numbers are thrown out when it comes to any statistic you can imagine but its hard to appreciate the scale of 300 million.
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It's irrelevant really, only a tiny fraction of that population has the slightest exposure to this risk. How many of these incidents occur per year of exposure to this type of proximity is more to the point. It's like saying only 20 out of 5 million people were killed down a mine so it's not very dangerous even though 4,999,800 never went near a mine.
 
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