This week The Florida Times-Union profiled the St. Augustine Wild Reserve, a nonprofit wildlife sanctuary. Its founder Deborah Warrick spoke to the paper about two male ligers, who arrived at the sanctuary from The Institute of Greatly Endangered and Rare Species (T.I.G.E.R.S.). “They were no longer needed for the shows, so they gave them to us,” Warrick said.
T.I.G.E.R.S., which produces exploitive animal shows at Jungle Island in Miami, is known for its irresponsible breeding of animals such as white tigers and “ligers” (tiger/lion hybrids). In 2014 they made a big deal about the birth of a litter of ligers. Sadly, it appears that once the animals got too large to be used in money-making shows and photo-ops, they were discarded.
Warrick also mentioned the health problems that many hybrid big cats suffer from: “You can see when they walk that they have bad hips. It’s just not a good thing to do, to produce a hybrid like this.”