- [Narrator] The Netflix documentary series, Tiger King
has found a captive audience stuck
at home during coronavirus lockdowns.
- There's really only one big story
that everybody's talking about.
Tiger King.
- Tiger King.
It has to be seen to be believed and even then it's so wild.
- [Narrator] The protagonist personalities
and deep-seated rivalry have become cultural touchstones.
Making lines like this.
- Hey, all you cool cats and kittens, it's Carol.
- [Narrator] Into viral memes.
Tiger King elevated the bizarre culture
of tiger ownership in the United States.
But it didn't reveal how prolific this culture really is.
That's because no one's really sure.
(Slow music)
There's somewhere between 5,000
and 15,000 captive tigers living in the US today.
That's a lot more than the roughly
3,500 tigers living in the wild.
Their numbers have fallen for decades
due to poaching and loss of habitat.
The vast majority of tigers living
in the United States don't live in zoos.
They're owned by private individuals.
Because of this, there isn't a clear record
of how many tigers there are in the United States
and where exactly they're being kept.
According to legal experts and animal rights activists,
the laws meant to protect tigers actually led
to their proliferation in this country.
Putting the animals lives and public safety at risk.
Most of the tigers in the US weren't rescued
abroad or smuggled in.
They were born here.
There are nine subspecies of tigers.
Three are extinct and the remaining six are endangered.
Accredited zoos in the United States have breeding programs
designed to sustain endangered tiger populations,
but those make up a small fraction
of the tigers believed to be in the US.
Most are bred at so-called roadside zoos.
- It's really not a zoo.
It's just a menagerie of animals.
They offer pay to play experiences where you get
tiger baby time, where you can play on the floor
with baby animals, including tigers.
- [Narrator] This contact with baby tigers is called
Cub petting and can be big business for roadside zoos.
- Cub petting is extremely lucrative for exhibitors.
In fact, one cub can yield up to a million dollars
in revenue during its lifetime.
- [Narrator] The US department of agriculture,
which regulates roadside zoos allows cub petting
but recommends it be limited to cubs
between eight and 12 weeks old.
With such a limited window for public interactions,
roadside zoos are compelled to keep breeding tigers.
Experts say that this demand for cubs has led
to extensive crossbreeding of tigers in the United States
to the point where most are no longer genetically similar
to those found in the wild.
The most notorious example of this is the white tiger.
- White tigers are not a separate sub species
yet here in the United exhibitors love to breed them.
The problem is these tigers have to be heavily inbred.
Along with the white coloring comes really,
really premature death, renal failure and serious
kidney problems, blindness and also facial deformities.
- [Narrator] As many as 95% of the tigers in the United
States are believed to be these so-called generic tigers
and for a long time the US government didn't regulate
them like other subspecies.
Tigers in the United States are protected
by the Endangered Species Act.
This law prohibits the sale and transportation
of endangered animals unless you get a permit
from the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
- And that permit application has to be supported
by some sort of demonstration that the underlying activity
benefits the species' survival in the wild.
- [Narrator] In 1998, the Fish and Wildlife Service removed
the permitting requirements for generic tigers.
Their reasoning was that these tigers lacked conservation
value, meaning if they didn't exist in the wild,
then there was no reason
to regulate their movement here in the US.
this created a loophole for breeders to sell off
their generic tigers that were too old for cub petting
- And you would see without fail every single month,
tiger cubs available for sale for a couple
of hundred bucks or even for free,
once they pass that age where they could no longer
be legally handled by the public.
- [Narrator] The loophole was closed in 2016
but experts say by then thousands of tigers
had made their way across the country.
- For that loophole to exist for 18 years,
created an environment where enough tigers were bred
as quickly as possible,
for many of them to fall into a black hole.
- [Narrator] States vary in their restrictions of big cat
ownership, from outright bans to no restrictions at all.
Which experts say leads to them falling
into inexperienced hands and abusive situations.
Private ownership advocates contend that while
irresponsible big cat ownership can lead to abuse,
this represents a small portion of private owners
and has declined as new owners have become
better educated about big cats.
- No private individual has the capability
of providing a humane existence for these animals
and you cannot tame an apex predator.
You cannot take the wild out of a tiger.
- [Reporter] Dozens of exotic animals escape
from an animal reserve in Zanesville.
Deputies armed with assault rifles went to the animal farm
where they found the owner dead, animal cages open.
- [Narrator] In 2011 an Ohio man released dozens
of his privately owned exotic animals,
including 18 tigers into the local community.
- He released these animals into the community
placed first responders in an absolutely no-win situation
where they were forced to literally slaughter these animals
in order to keep the community safe.
So, that's what the Big Cat Public Safety Act
would help solve.
- [Narrator] The Big Cat Public Safety Act
is pending legislation that if enacted,
would ban private ownership of big cats and ban
public interactions like cub petting at roadside zoos.
Opponents of the legislation say laws currently on the books
are sufficient to protect big cats
and that the problem lies with lack of enforcement.
They also contend that a blanket ban on private big cat
ownership would create a precedent to ban other exotic pets.
- America loves tigers because tigers
are the most iconic of the big cat species.
They're really representative of how we look
at conservation of protected animals.
Their role is much bigger than just tigers themselves.