Exotic animal sanctuary planned for East Kimberley

Simon Hampel

Simon Hampel

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Ex-premier's son says he's no tiger king despite push for outback big-cat zoo

A plan to breed big cats in an exotic animal sanctuary in the East Kimberley has seen the youngest son of former premier Colin Barnett dubbed Australia's own tiger king.

But 30-year-old Sam Barnett insists his open-range zoo would be "the opposite" of the facility that shocked viewers around the world in the documentary miniseries about notorious zookeeper Joe Exotic.

Unlike Exotic's Greater Wynwood Exotic animal park, Mr Barnett said his zoo would not be open to the public but instead be a private "scientific endeavour".

... read more​

Key points:
  • Sam Barnett, son of former premier, Colin Barnett, plans to build a private exotic animal sanctuary in the East Kimberley
  • The "scientific" facility would be built on land purchased last year within the Shire of Wyndham-East Kimberley
  • Mr Barnett claims two Sumatran tigers, previously owned by Joe Exotic, will be arriving in Australia this month
  • The Federal and WA agriculture departments' say they have not yet received permit applications for the proposal

Good thing it wouldn't be open to the public, because you basically can't get much more remote than the East Kimberley.
 
Bizarre
 
Citing Tipperary Station as his inspiration doesn’t inspire confidence; though importing the first Sumatran tigers into the region since 2007 is no bad thing - especially if he achieves what he said he has set out to do - i.e. contribute to the gene pool/regional breeding programme.

This venture is first and foremost a personal hobby of his, as to state the obvious - no visitors = no income. If he has the money to support it long term and can rejuvenate some of our breeding programmes in the process, I say good luck to him. Hopefully he likes Grant’s zebra! :p
 
That article is complete fantasy. Joe Exotic doesn't have pure Sumatran Tigers. He has a group of Bengal hybrids like most private Tiger keepers in the United States.

Even if they had sold hybrid Tigers to the guy in the article, under the illusion of them being pure Sumatran, there is currently no US export permits online for such a transfer :rolleyes:
 
Zoofan15 said:
Citing Tipperary Station as his inspiration doesn’t inspire confidence; though importing the first Sumatran tigers into the region since 2007 is no bad thing - especially if he achieves what he said he has set out to do - i.e. contribute to the gene pool/regional breeding programme.

This venture is first and foremost a personal hobby of his, as to state the obvious - no visitors = no income. If he has the money to support it long term and can rejuvenate some of our breeding programmes in the process, I say good luck to him. Hopefully he likes Grant’s zebra! :p
Click to expand...

Something tells me ZAA won’t be putting too much trust in the purity of ‘Sumatran’ tigers bred by Joe Exotic.
 
Just to be clear, the ZAA mentioned in the article is the American ZAA which is basicly an association for zoos that don't want to meet the AZA's more stringent accreditation requirments. No relationship to the Australian and New Zealand ZAA.
 
When the journalist captions a photo of Joe Exotic feeding a 'lion', it tells me a lot about the veracity of the story and it's author.

:p

Hix
 
MRJ said:
Just to be clear, the ZAA mentioned in the article is the American ZAA which is basicly an association for zoos that don't want to meet the AZA's more stringent accreditation requirments.
Click to expand...
The article actually refers to the "Zoological and Aquarium Society" which does not appear to exist, unless it is some grand name an animal dealer has given themselves. The closest is the old name for the AZA (which was the American Zoo and Aquarium Association).

The article also says he is claiming that these tigers which exist are being imported "in the coming weeks" "before July", but then the article says that "The Federal Department of Agriculture said they had not received a permit application for the import of live tigers correlating to this scenario."

The whole story sounds made up.
 
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