‘Tiger King’ 2: PETA Celebrates a Bad Year for the Series’ Villains

For Immediate Release:
September 23, 2021

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

After exposing audiences to the criminal underworld of big-cat breeding, trade, and exploitation, Netflix’s Tiger King is up for a highly anticipated second season. Below, please find a statement from PETA Foundation Deputy General Counsel for Captive Animal Law Enforcement Brittany Peet, who appeared in the first season of the hit documentary series and played a pivotal role in helping to get Joe “Tiger King” Maldonado-Passage locked up:

“It’s been a deservedly rotten year for Tiger King’s villains, nearly every one of whom is now in prison, out of business, or facing criminal charges or lawsuits. PETA is glad to have played a role in all the work to end their appalling abuse and neglect of magnificent wild animals and trusts the second season will do more to highlight those who exploit them.”

PETA has celebrated the following victories for animals since Tiger King’s first season aired:

• We won a lawsuit against Tiger King subject Tim Stark, establishing the first-ever federal precedent holding that prematurely separating tigers, lions, and tiger-lion hybrids from their mothers; declawing them; or using them in public encounters violates the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
• As part of our ESA victory against Stark, PETA confiscated 25 big cats from him and his former business partner Jeff Lowe of Tiger King Park.
• After we spent years urging the feds to take a stand against cub petting, the U.S. Department of Justice relied on the precedent that we had set in its own lawsuit against Lowe, leading—in part because of evidence obtained and provided by PETA—to the eventual confiscation of all wild and exotic animals from him. Now, there are no more tigers at Tiger King Park.
• Exhibitor “Doc” Antle of Tiger King faces trial on state cruelty-to-animals and ESA charges stemming from a seizure at a Virginia roadside zoo that PETA triggered with complaints to the office of the Commonwealth’s attorney general.
• The U.S. Department of Agriculture just slapped Tiger King villain and former drug trafficker Mario Tabraue with two federal Animal Welfare Act violations after PETA reported that a lion cub bit a visitor at his facility.
• The use of big cats for photo ops has plummeted following the first season’s release—and will likely drop even more with the start of the second.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.