The Shalom Wildlife Sanctuary, Knoxville Zoo, and Sharkarosa Zoo defy the intent of the Big Cat Public Safety Act, if not the actual letter of it
WEST BEND, Wisconsin; KNOXVILLE, Tennessee; PILOT POINT, Texas––One might call it “tiger porn.”
Mingling fantasy with delusion, voyeurism, exhibitionism, and profitable showmanship, the grotesquely misnamed roadside zoo calling itself the Shalom Wildlife Sanctuary has purported since mid-April 2026 to educate 495,000 Facebook followers about tiger reproduction and conservation with frequent updates about how the facility is––for the second time in as many years––breeding a litter of genetically redundant captive tigers.
Tigers notoriously breed in captivity as easily and prolifically as housecats. The American Association of Zoological Parks & Aquariums has recognized a captive tiger surplus, taking various measures to discourage tiger breeding by member zoos, since 1986.
Aimed to stop tiger breeding
The Big Cat Public Safety Act, signed into law by former U.S. president Joe Biden on December 20, 2022, was directed, in part, at ending the captive tiger surplus by putting an end to for-profit roadside zoos breeding tiger cubs for exhibition and petting while young and small, and for casual sale later to whoever might take them.
The so-called Shalom Wildlife Sanctuary, formerly more honestly called the Shalom Wildlife Zoo, had conveniently produced a litter of five tiger cubs shortly before the Big Cat Public Safey Act cleared Congress.
Two of those tiger cubs, born on August 6, 2022, drowned in an icy pond during the early morning of November 19, 2022.
Earlier, on August 11, 2022, one cub of the five-cub litter disappeared and was presumed dead.
Two tiger cubs remained.
(See What happened to the Shalom Zoo baby tigers, why?)
Why Shalom is not a “wildlife sanctuary”
An authentic wildlife sanctuary, as recognized by the Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries, The Association of Sanctuaries, and the American Sanctuary Association, provides care-for-life to animals of normally wild species who for whatever reason have come into captivity and cannot be safely returned to the wild.
Examples include non-human primates bred for laboratory use, animals retired from circus use, animals confiscated from illegal commerce, and animals who have become habituated to human care through being rehabilitated from illness or injury.
The most fundamental, bottom-line, almost universally agreed upon rule of wildlife sanctuary operation, acknowledged by all three of the major recognized sanctuary accreditation bodies, is that a bona fide wildlife sanctuary never, ever, under any circumstance breeds the animals, thereby contributing to the numbers of animals needing sanctuary care.
Daffy Duck & the Tiger Dating Game
But the self-designated Shalom Wildlife Sanctuary does not observe the sanctuary accreditation body rules. Despite the name change, it still operates as a zoo, including by echoing the common pretense of American Association of Zoological Parks & Aquariums-accredited zoos that their Species Survival Plans contribute to the conservation of species in the wild, rather than existing almost exclusively to perpetuate their own captive menageries.
The spring Shalom “tiger porn” show began on April 24, 2026 with a Facebook denunciation of “haters” combined with an admonition that, “If you believe that the world is better off with less tigers, please unfollow now,” reminiscent of Daffy Duck’s warning to those of faint heart to “Please leave the theater right now!” rather than risk titillation.
“This is the Tiger Dating Game with yours truly Father Nature,” the Shalom spiel promised, as if nature has much of anything to do with putting two captive tigers together in a cage.
Bait-&-switch
“Genetic diversity of tigers in captivity is the most important thing zookeepers can do,” the spiel continued. “Because there are so few tigers remaining in the wild, about 3,500, much inbreeding is taking place in the wild populations.”
Note the sleight-of-hand change of subject, from tigers in captivity, whose entire U.S population has been inbred from those imported prior to the 1973 passage of the Endangered Species Act, to tigers at large in their native habitat.
Note also that the Global Tiger Forum currently estimates the wild tiger population is about 5,574, with growing numbers in India, Nepal, Bhutan, Russia, and China.
“The wild population needs to be 100,000 tigers,” asserted Shalom, without mentioning where such a large number––the crudely estimated world tiger population in 1900, when the world human population was less than 25% of what it is now––might live and find prey.
God told Shalom to breed tigers?
“It is up to zoos and sanctuaries to make sure that tiger will be on earth at least one day longer than humans,” Shalom said.
“That is what God told us to do.”
Shalom apparently pretends to be talking directly with God, since no scripture in either the Judeo-Christian, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, or Jain traditions tells anyone to breed tigers in captivity.
“If cubs are born,” Shalom said, “they will be nurtured mostly by humans and then donated to a Shalom approved and licensed facility when we feel they are ready.”
Licensed by whom, for what?
Watch the @#$%ing tigers from a golf cart
The next two weeks of postings and photographs informed viewers of such details such as that “Tigers are induced ovulators, meaning the act of mating, which is painful for the female, triggers the release of eggs, causing a surge in hormone levels that can cause the female to roll. That behavior acts as a motor-reflex stimulated by the intense mating process. Rolling helps to rub off the male’s scent or pheromones, which is a response to the intense olfactory signaling during mating.
“The roll also indicates submission and a way for the tigress to comfort herself after the intense, often rough, mating act.”
Despite that, a later posting mentions that, “After 14 hours of mating every 5-6 minutes King,” the male tiger, “is unable to go on. Spice is just warming up and want to go on. In nature it take two to tango. She will have to wait until he gets his second wind.”
Of course Shalom visitors can watch all this, for the admission fee, even from a rented golf cart.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Braveheart the lion
On it went, until on May 12, 2026 Shalom asked, “Will there be babies? Now we wait. September 1st is the due date.”
That same day, Shalom announced the death of Braveheart, “A 22-year-old male African lion,” who “arrived at Shalom from a different zoo” in December 2025.
“The zoo he came from is slowly closing down due to health related issues the owners have had in recent years,” Shalom said, inadvertently spotlighting the institutional instability that is inherent among privately owned and operated zoos, and authentic nonprofit wildlife sanctuaries too, for that matter.
Providing care-for-life requires that the hosting institution will be around for the lifespan of the hosted animals. Few mom-and-pop facilities of any sort outlive the founders. Even fewer outlive a second generation who inherit responsibilities for animals who are not their primary interest.
(See Who will look after tigers, wolves, birds & horses as sanctuarians age? and Ex-West Coast Game Park Safari operator Brian Tenney cops a plea.)
“One is a rare white tiger cub”
What will Shalom do if there are tiger babies?
Promote the opportunity to see them from golf carts, of course, just as Shalom did after the last birth of tiger babies there, announced on August 19, 2025.
Then Shalom exulted that, “One is a rare white tiger cub.”
Claimed Shalom Wildlife Sanctuary co-owner David Fechter, who formerly operated the site as first a Christmas tree farm, and then a whitetail deer farm, before getting into the roadside zoo business, “They’re on the verge of extinction, and there are only about 200 white tigers in the world.”
In fact, because the white coloration is a distinct disadvantage to tigers, who hunt by stealth, no white tigers were known to exist in the wild, then or ever, when the world tiger population was believed to be circa 100,000.
All the white tigers in North America and perhaps the world are descended from Mohan, a lone albinistic white male captured in 1951 in central India, imported to be bred for exhibition.
(See “Ban white tigers & lion/tiger hybrids,” sanctuarians beg feds.)
Jeff Kremer vs. the Knoxville Zoo
Beyond just trying to stop the breeding of surplus tigers, the Big Cat Public Safety Act was meant to end pay-to-play baby big cat petting and handling rackets.
Jeff Kremer, introduced by WVLT television news in Knoxville, Tennessee as ” a retired animal advocate and former zoo professional,” recently complained to both the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and the U.S. Department of Agriculture that Zoo Knoxville, accredited by the American Association of Zoological Parks & Aquariums, flouted the Big Cat Public Safey Act by allowing lion cub handling on multiple occasions.
“Photos, posted publicly on Facebook in April, show several visitors with the cub, including Tennessee state senator Richard Briggs,” WVLT summarized. “One image shows a visitor placing her finger inside the cub’s mouth. That same visitor wrote in a Facebook post that she could say she had been bitten by a lion.”
The Association of Zoos and Aquariums said in a prepared statement that it had “received this information and is in touch with our members concerning this matter.”
(Senator Briggs Facebook photo)
“Senator Briggs has had no comment”
“The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said it cannot directly provide complaint information,” WVLT said, “but that it can be obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. WVLT filed that request.
“Senator Briggs has had no comment at this time.”
Explained Kremer, “The Big Cat Public Safety Act requires that during public exhibition of big cats ‘the animal is at least 15 feet from members of the public unless there is a permanent barrier sufficient to prevent public contact.’
“The Association of Zoos & Aquariums was a very significant member of the coalition of animal related entities and law enforcement entities that endorsed and urged the passage of the Big Cat Public Safety Act,” Kremer told ANIMALS 24-7.
“Typically, zoos accredited by AZA are not the kind of entities one expects to find violating the law. But recently images taken at AZA zoos have appeared online that appear to be among the clearest violations of the law that have surfaced since the law passed in late 2022.
“Similar happened at the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans”
“On February 17, 2026,” Kremer detailed, “two lion cubs were born at Zoo Knoxville. One did not survive; the other was removed from the mother to be hand-raised.
“On April 7, 2026, when the infant cub was under nine weeks old, a woman named Nikki Elliott posted on Facebook photos of herself and family and/or friends being allowed to handle the cub in violation of the Big Cat Public Safety Act.
“A similar, but not quite as blatant, violation of the law,” Kremer alleged, “happened just two months earlier at the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans with cubs under four months old.
“A self-described ‘fairly new photographer’ and companions were allowed close access in violation of the 15-foot requirement to photograph the young cubs and then participated in ‘photo ops’ with the cub.
“It is unclear if they were allowed to actually hold the cubs themselves,” Kremer acknowledged, “since the person holding the cub in the photo appears to be a zoo staff member. But touching the cub is not a requirement for this to be a violation of the Big Cat Public Safety Act.”
Nzuri & Kali
The Big Cat Public Safety Act reinforces older provisions of federal Animal Welfare Act, some of which have been in effect for as long as 55 years, but enforcement has never been especially consistent.
The Animal Legal Defense Fund in early May 2026 spotlighted Animal Welfare Act failures of enforcement at the Sharkarosa Zoo in Pilot Point, Texas, on behalf of the seven-year-old white lion sisters Nzuri and Kali.
“The lions at Sharkarosa Zoo are protected animals under federal law,” Animal Legal Defense Fund transparency and regulatory affairs program director Brittany Peet explained.
“The Animal Welfare Act requires licensed animal exhibitors to demonstrate adequate experience and care for these animals, but the lions at Sharkarosa Zoo do not appear to be receiving adequate veterinary care. The Endangered Species Act prohibits the harassment of protected animals such as failing to provide proper medical care, which appears to be the situation at Sharkarosa Zoo.
Does inbreeding produce the audience as well as the animals?
“Captive white lions like Nzuri and Kali,” detailed Animal Legal Defense Fund spokesperson Mike Heymsfield, “are the result of genetic inbreeding that can cause numerous issues due to lack of genetic diversity, including compromised immune systems and spinal issues.
“Recently captured video footage,” Heymsfield detailed, “shows Nzuri swaying and staggering as she tried to walk, unable to lie down or stand up again without significant struggle. She stumbles, loses her balance, and is severely uncoordinated — symptoms consistent with a serious neurological disorder. Signage on the lion’s enclosure and statements from a Sharkarosa Zoo keeper indicated that Kali also experiences these disturbing symptoms.”
That case had a somewhat positive ending, Heymsfield updated four days later, when Nzuri and Kali were “moved to a Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries-verified facility where treatment and advanced diagnostics are already underway.”
The Protecting Local Zoos Act
Meanwhile, Humane World for Animals president Kitty Block and Sara Amundson, president of the subsidiary Humane World Action Fund, on April Fools Day warned that less than four years after the passage of the Big Cat Public Safety Act, “trade associations representing some of the worst of the institutions regulated by the Big Cat Public Safety Act, many of them privately owned zoos and menageries, are launching an attack on the law.”
That was no joke. Paul Gosar, a Republican Congressional representative from Arizona, with co-sponsors Darren Sota, a Democrat from Florida, and Carol D. Miller, a Republican from West Virginia, on February 24, 2026 held a hearing before the House Natural Resources Committee on a piece of legislation called the Protecting Local Zoos Act.
The very name of the bill, Block and Amundson wrote, “implicitly suggests that it is not the animals who need protection but the local zoos.”
Bill would gut the Big Cat Public Safety Act
What it would do if passed, Block and Amundson said, is “significantly expand the private breeding and international trade of big cats,” on behalf of the Feline Conservation Foundation and the Zoological Association of America, a couple of misleadingly named entities “seemingly devoted to opposing or weakening all laws, regulations and accreditation requirements that protect wild animals in captivity.”
In specific, Block and Amundson detailed, “Their bill would exempt USDA Class B licensees from the strictures of the Big Cat Public Safety Act, giving wild animal dealers operating under those licenses renewed opportunities to buy, breed and sell big cats as pets. It would green-light reliance on non-professional volunteers for contact with dangerous animals at captive display operations. It would remove snow leopards and clouded leopards entirely from the protection of the current law.”
(Big Cat Rescue photo.)
Watch for stealth amendments
Exempting volunteers at wild animal exhibition facilities “from the direct contact restrictions of the Big Cat Public Safety Act,” Block and Amundson explained, “would create a loophole under which any visitor could be designated a ‘volunteer’ long enough to pay for and experience an hour or a day of direct contact with captive big cats.”
Removing clouded and snow leopards from Big Cat Public Safety Act coverage would allow the roadside zoo industry to “swap in snow and clouded leopards as substitutes for other big cats in public encounters,” Block and Amundson said.
Currently, with no additional cosponsors, the Protecting Local Zoos Act does not appear to be going anywhere––but that does not mean it cannot be added to a budget bill by stealth amendment between now and the end of the present Congress, after the November 2026 election.
Traveling Wildlife Act goes to gov in New York
Good news on the captive wildlife exhibition front came on May 15, 2026 from Voters for Animal Rights spokesperson Michelle Aptman.
“The New York State Senate,” Aptman emailed, “just passed the Traveling Wildlife Act (S.3629-A / A.5850) with a bipartisan vote of 54–8, and the state assembly already passed it 100–38.
“This bill,” Aptman explained, “would ban the use of wild animals, including big cats, bears, and primates, in traveling shows and circuses across New York state.
“The bill now heads to New York state governor Kathy Hochul’s desk,” Aptman said. “We need to keep the pressure on to make sure she signs it into law.”
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It seems as if any and all protections for the vulnerable and innocent, of any and all species, as minimal as they are or ever have been, are being dismantled. The doubletalk and out-and-out lies increase, and the gullible who still purport to care swallow them hook, line, and sinker. “With friends like these…”
Sharing with gratitude and much sorrow.
It often appears to be the case, and perhaps always has, regarding our deeply flawed species, that our acquisitiveness/ avarice supplant or override our sense of the humane with an outcome such as that you outline here.
For those of us who deem ourselves animal advocates, we are doomed to learn of or experience such despicable mistreatment/abuse of sentient beings almost daily.
But, nonetheless, if there is ever to be a hope of a reversal, it must be articulated which you have done here. So for this, I thank you!,
Thank you for updating your readers on this important issue. I contacted my legislator and all humane supporters should do the same. If you need help finding their info, please see https://humaneaction.org/action-center/protect-big-cat-public-safety-act .
It was perhaps naive to think that the roadside zoo industry would just give up their lucrative cub petting enterprise so easily. It’s a shady world to begin with, and they are going to try anything they can to get around the rules.
If there is any more unsavory, repulsive and exploitative industry than the sleazy roadside zoo industry, I can’t think of any.
Thank you for shining a big spotlight on these despicable places and the scum that run them