Here is my personal experience with BCR. This is lengthy, but it is the only way I know to give a complete picture.
Don Lewis was a financially successful real estate broker with a love for wild cats. (He had some grown children from a previous marriage which will be relevant shortly). He and his new wife Carole Lewis (now remarried as Carole Baskin and head of BCR) started a large scale cat breeding center known as Wildlife On Easy Street. (Don may have started it before they were married, but I do not think so). The name came from the fact that they are located at the end of a street in Tampa named Easy Street.
I visited WOES for the first time in early 1997 (February I am almost certain). I signed up and paid extra for a private photo safari, which I learned about from their ad in Outdoor Photographer magazine. They had a very impressive variety of cats, perhaps the best in the country at the time (or a close second to Cincinnati Zoo). I was taken inside the enclosures of black leopards - even had one put on my lap for a photo - a group of juvenile pumas, as well as several smaller cats. Also photographed tigers and other big cats from outside the enclosures. I spent the night before at a cabin on the grounds and Carole met me wearing a coat with genuine leopard fur trim. Other staff were my guides, but I had brief encounters with Carole and only saw Don once (the two of them were never together).
The photo opportunities were so good, that I made two or three return visits over the next several years, once with my photographer cousin. However, between my first and second visit, I learned from their newsletter that Don had mysteriously disappeared and was feared dead. His truck was found, but never his body. In the newsletter, Carole stated that Don's children (but not hers remember) were fighting to keep her from getting his real estate money, which is what she used to keep the place going. I found out much later that some or all of them actually suspected she was the one who killed him. Since no proof was ever found and murder is a terrible accusation to make, I will not make that accusation myself. I only bring it up to illustrate the financial struggles she had to keep the place going.
By the time of my last visit, they had changed the name from WOES to BCR. They were now claiming that all of their cats were rescues, which I knew to be a lie as I was photographing many of the same cats that they had either purchased or bred themselves. On my next to last visit, the one with my cousin, we photographed an amur leopard cat kitten that had been born there, "accidentally" they claimed. Some of the cats were rescues, but they were starting to hide their history and use the rescue angle to raise funds and sympathy. In all fairness, I will note that the leopard cat kitten was one of the last kittens born there and they have not bred any cats for several years. Also, many of the cats they currently have are genuine rescues.
Carole had formed a friendship with another woman who led a private small cat breeding compound (SOS Cats) in north San Diego County. Together they were going to help small South American zoos improve their facilities and in exchange get cats for their centers. SOS had the only group of oncillas in the country, as well as sand cats and two or three other very small cats. (As an aside, I wrote to see if I could photograph there but was denied as she would not allow any visitors. She has since retired and all her cats are presumably gone by now.) The BCR website even had a photo and name of an oncilla they were to get from SOS for public display. However, since BCR started becoming anti-breeding, that transfer never happened and the two groups soon severed ties.
During this interim period, the first Gulf War (the one in Kuwait when Bush SR was president) resulted in half a dozen orphaned sand cats. They were sent to the United States to be put into zoos for care and new breeding bloodlines. I think two went to accredited zoos and three or four went to BCR who agreed to hold them until space opened up at AZA facilities. They agreed to then transfer them when requested. When the request finally came, BCR was completely anti-breeding and refused to transfer the cats. So a group of wild-caught, pure-blooded sand cats was held hostage in Tampa and never allowed to breed. Not only did I personally see these cats at BCR, I also learned of their refusal to release them from a first-hand conversation with one of this country's leading wild cat breeders (who also has sand cats).
After my last visit, I continued to remain on their mailing list for several years. (They have finally cut me off because I don't send them any money). Their newsletter routinely printed half-truths or outright lies. Here are a couple I remember. One statement was that bengal cat breeders only keep the good cats and kill the unfit (or ugly) ones. Cat breeders are animal lovers and as far as I know there is not one shred of proof to back up this claim. Another example was when they got some orphaned puma cubs from a state game department (someplace like Idaho or Wyoming) and claimed they were saving them from being sent to a zoo to produce more cubs. The truth is, the AZA had a moratorium on breeding pumas at that time, something BCR failed to mention.
Currently, they use their website and social media to portray themselves as THE experts on wild cats in captivity. They have a news list with anything related to cats. However, this is not only slanted against breeding or zoos, it is often sprinkled very slyly with lies. A couple years ago, the AZA zoo that I volunteer at had a litter of african lions. In the interest of portraying every cat news item, BCR listed it on their site and copied our news release word for word. However, they added one sentence of their own (a complete lie) and put it in as if it was part of the original release. They said we bred our lions even though they were not part of the SSP. The truth is, we had our previous lions on birth control because they were not SSP and waited many years until they died and we could get in a new approved pair for breeding. These were absolutely SSP recommended and the only reason BCR threw in that lie is because they knew that is the way to discredit an AZA accredited facility.
BCR currently is one of several animal rights extremists backing a bill in Congress to ban exotic cat breeding in the United States. (As a concession, they exempted the AZA because they knew they would be too powerful to fight). But they have stated outright that zoos ought not to exist and their ultimate goal is the elimination of all wild animals in captivity in the United States. If you visit them or give them money or even click on their internet links, you are helping to further their anti-zoo agenda.
